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Colonies of the Little Motherland: Membership, Space, and Time in Mexican Migrant Hometown Associations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2008

David Fitzgerald
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego

Extract

The hometown associations (HTAs) formed by international migrants sharing a place of origin are considered the quintessential “transnational” institution linking migrants to family and townspeople who stayed behind. Scholars of transnationalism present HTAs as the expression of a new kind of “transnational community” or “transnational social field” that is redefining what it means to belong to a community by including people who are physically absent but who make their presence felt through regular visits and remittances and by sponsoring charity and development projects in their hometown. New transportation and communication technologies stretching the limits of space and time are said to be the driving forces that allow migrants to belong to a single community anchored in multiple, distant geographic localities. Such migrants transcend the old boundaries of territorial belonging that depended on a sedentary population, and call into question basic social scientific concepts like “citizenship,” “community,” “nation-state,” and “migration.” Even the most recent transnationalism literature, which has retreated from some earlier claims of novelty to rediscover transborder practices of older migrations, continues to claim that new conceptions of membership are necessary to understand both new and older practices (Basch, Schiller, and Blanc 1994; Levitt 2001; Portes and Landolt 2002; Smith 2006).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History 2008

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References

References

Antorcha (Guadalajara, 1977–1982)

Arandas (Arandas, 1971–1972)

El Arandense (Arandas, 1986–2002)

El Arandense (Mexico City, 1946–1951)

Archivo de la Arquidiócesis de Guadalajara

Oficina de Atención a Jaliscienses en el Extranjero (Guadalajara)

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Moya, Jose C. 2004. “Diaspora Studies: New Concepts, Approaches, and Realities?Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association, Chicago, 18–21 Nov.Google Scholar
Orellana, Carlos L. 1973. Mixtec Migrants in Mexico City: A Case Study of Urbanization. Human Organization 32: 273–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ottenberg, Simon O. 1955. Improvement Associations among the Afikpo Ibo. Africa 25: 327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, Robert E. 1950. Race and Culture. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.Google Scholar
Portes, Alejandro, Guarnizo, Luis Eduardo, and Landolt, Patricia. 1999. The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research Field. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22: 217–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Portes, Alejandro and Landolt, Patricia. 2002. Social Capital: Promise and Pitfalls of Its Role in Development. Journal of Latin American Studies 32: 529–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Bryan R. 1974. The Interrelationships of City and Provinces in Peru and Guatemala. Latin American Urban Research 4: 207–35.Google Scholar
Rodríguez, Victoria. 1997. Decentralization in Mexico: From Reforma Municipal to Solidaridad to Nuevo Federalismo. Boulder, Col.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Skeldon, Ronald. 1977. Regional Associations: A Note on Opposed Interpretations. Comparative Studies in Society and History 19: 500510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skeldon, Ronald. 1980. Regional Associations among Urban Migrants in Papua New Guinea. Oceania 50: 248372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Michael Peter. 1994. Can You Imagine? Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics. Social Text 39: 1533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Michael Peter. 2003. Transnationalism, the State, and the Extraterritorial Citizen. Politics and Society 31: 467502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Michael P. and Guarnizo, Luis E.. 1998. Transnationalism from Below. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Smith, Robert C. 2006. Mexican New York: The Transnational Lives of New Immigrants. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Suro, Roberto. 2005. Attitudes about Voting in Mexican Elections and Ties to Mexico. Washington, D.C.: The Pew Hispanic Center.Google Scholar
Taylor, Paul S. 1933. A Spanish-Mexican Peasant Community: Arandas in Jalisco, Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Valenzuela, M. Basilia. 2002. Municipalización, ciudadanía y migración en Los Altos de Jalisco. In, Bernal, A. S., ed., Experiencias Municipales de Cambio Institucional. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara.Google Scholar
Waldinger, Roger and Fitzgerald, David. 2004. Transnationalism in Question. American Journal of Sociology 109: 1177–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winnie, William W. 1984. La Movilidad Demográfica. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara.Google Scholar
Abu-Lughod, Janet. 1961. Migrant Adjustment to City Life: The Egyptian Case. American Journal of Sociology 47: 2232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. 1991. Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology. In Fox, R., ed., Recapturing Anthropology. Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press, 191210.Google Scholar
Armentrout Ma, L. E. 1984. Fellow-Regional Associations in the Ch'ing Dynasty: Organizations in Flux for Mobile People: A Preliminary Survey. Modern Asian Studies 18: 307–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Basch, Linda, Schiller, Nina Glick, and Blanc, Cristina Szanton. 1994. Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and the Deterritorialized Nation-State. Langhorne, Pa.: Gordon and Breach.Google Scholar
Bataillon, Claude. 1972. La Ciudad y el Campo en el México Central. México: Siglo Veintiuno.Google Scholar
Deutsch, Karl W. 1966. Nationalism and Social Communication. New York: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Díaz Cayeros, Alberto. 1995. Desarrollo económico e inequidad regional: hacia un nuevo pacto federal en México. México, DF: M.A. Porrúa Grupo Editorial.Google Scholar
Doughty, P. 1970. Behind the Back of the City: Provincial Life in Lima, Peru. In, Mangin, William, ed., Peasants in Cities: Readings in the Anthropology of Urbanization. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, David. 2000. Negotiating Extra-Territorial Citizenship: Mexican Migration and the Transnational Politics of Community. La Jolla, Calif.: Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, David. 2004. Beyond ‘Transnationalism’: Mexican Hometown Politics at an American Labor Union. Ethnic and Racial Studies 27: 228–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzgerald, David. 2005. A Nation of Emigrants? Statecraft, Church-Building, and Nationalism in Mexican Migrant Source Communities. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Garibay, Manuel C. 1993. El Grupo que Cambió Nuestro Rumbo. Arandas, México: Ediciones El Mechero.Google Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1987. The Nation-State and Violence. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Glick Schiller, Nina. 1999. Transmigrants and Nation-States: Something Old and Something New in the U.S. Immigrant Experience. In, Hirschman, C., Kasinitz, P., and DeWind, J., eds., The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience. New York: Russell Sage, 94119.Google Scholar
Goldring, Luin. 2002. The Mexican State and Transmigrant Organizations: Negotiating the Boundaries of Membership and Participation. Latin American Research Review 37: 5599.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hatton, Timothy J. and Williamson, Jeffrey G.. 2005. Global Migration and the World Economy: Two Centuries of Policy and Performance. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo. 1986. The Migrant Village Association in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis. Latin American Research Review 21: 729.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo. 1993. Cultural Capital: Mountain Zapotec Migrant Associations in Mexico City. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Inter-American Development Bank. 2006. Pooling Resources through Hometown Associations. May 31. At http://www.iadb.org/NEWS/articledetail.cfm?Language=En&parid=4&artType=WS&artid=3077.Google Scholar
Kane, Abdoulaye. 2002. Senegal's Village Diaspora and the People Left Ahead. In, Bryceson, D. and Vuorela, U., eds., The Transnational Family: New European Frontiers and Global Networks. Oxford: Berg, 245–63.Google Scholar
Kearney, Michael and Besserer, Federico. 2004. Oaxacan Municipal Governance in Transnational Context. In, Fox, J. and Rivera-Salgado, G., eds., Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States. La Jolla, Calif.: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies and Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego, 449–66.Google Scholar
Knight, Alan. 1990. Revolutionary Project, Recalcitrant People: Mexico, 1910–1940. In, Rodríguez O, J. E., ed., The Revolutionary Process in Mexico: Essays on Political and Social Change, 1880–1940. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 227–64.Google Scholar
Lanly, Guillaume and Valenzuela, M. Basilia, eds. 2004. Clubes de migrantes oriundos mexicanos en los Estados Unidos. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara.Google Scholar
Levitt, Peggy. 2001. The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massey, Douglas, Alarcón, Rafael, Durand, Jorge, and González, Humberto. 1987. Return to Aztlán: The Social Process of International Migration from Western Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S., Durand, Jorge, and Malone, Nolan J.. 2002. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Free Trade. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Migration News. 2006. Mexico: HTAs, Fertility, Labor. 13, 4 (Oct.).Google Scholar
Moch, Leslie P. 2004. Migration and the Nation: The View from Paris. Social Science History 28: 118.Google Scholar
Moya, Jose C. 2005. Immigrants and Associations: A Global and Historical Perspective. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31: 833–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moya, Jose C. 2004. “Diaspora Studies: New Concepts, Approaches, and Realities?Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association, Chicago, 18–21 Nov.Google Scholar
Orellana, Carlos L. 1973. Mixtec Migrants in Mexico City: A Case Study of Urbanization. Human Organization 32: 273–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ottenberg, Simon O. 1955. Improvement Associations among the Afikpo Ibo. Africa 25: 327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, Robert E. 1950. Race and Culture. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.Google Scholar
Portes, Alejandro, Guarnizo, Luis Eduardo, and Landolt, Patricia. 1999. The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research Field. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22: 217–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Portes, Alejandro and Landolt, Patricia. 2002. Social Capital: Promise and Pitfalls of Its Role in Development. Journal of Latin American Studies 32: 529–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Bryan R. 1974. The Interrelationships of City and Provinces in Peru and Guatemala. Latin American Urban Research 4: 207–35.Google Scholar
Rodríguez, Victoria. 1997. Decentralization in Mexico: From Reforma Municipal to Solidaridad to Nuevo Federalismo. Boulder, Col.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Skeldon, Ronald. 1977. Regional Associations: A Note on Opposed Interpretations. Comparative Studies in Society and History 19: 500510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skeldon, Ronald. 1980. Regional Associations among Urban Migrants in Papua New Guinea. Oceania 50: 248372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Michael Peter. 1994. Can You Imagine? Transnational Migration and the Globalization of Grassroots Politics. Social Text 39: 1533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Michael Peter. 2003. Transnationalism, the State, and the Extraterritorial Citizen. Politics and Society 31: 467502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Michael P. and Guarnizo, Luis E.. 1998. Transnationalism from Below. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Smith, Robert C. 2006. Mexican New York: The Transnational Lives of New Immigrants. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Suro, Roberto. 2005. Attitudes about Voting in Mexican Elections and Ties to Mexico. Washington, D.C.: The Pew Hispanic Center.Google Scholar
Taylor, Paul S. 1933. A Spanish-Mexican Peasant Community: Arandas in Jalisco, Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Valenzuela, M. Basilia. 2002. Municipalización, ciudadanía y migración en Los Altos de Jalisco. In, Bernal, A. S., ed., Experiencias Municipales de Cambio Institucional. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara.Google Scholar
Waldinger, Roger and Fitzgerald, David. 2004. Transnationalism in Question. American Journal of Sociology 109: 1177–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winnie, William W. 1984. La Movilidad Demográfica. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara.Google Scholar