Paper presented at the IX Symposium of culture studies.
Book International Fairs, Guadalajara.
(December 3, 2008)
network of recreation spaces for recreation. Moving
and cultural habits, communities, settlements and other notions about identity and belonging in the context of culture and migration.
Luis Rodolfo Morán Quiroz
Department of Cultural Studies Regional, U. G.
rmoranq@gmail.com start this paper with some anecdotal evidence relating to some elements of the migratory history of my own family, and then use that information as a link with conceptual tools and empirical data derived from studies avocados to the cultural aspects of migration. I hope that the fact of starting with some data close to my own experience allows me to be brief in presenting the argument about the experience of building networks of identity and belonging that is often a trait shared by those directly experiencing the migration, but also by the successors those who have made the move from their places of origin and other reception. For the sake of brevity I quote Bourdieu when he says: "The word time is a scarce resource and I am too aware of how far the speak is a monopolization of speaking time to keep a period too long" (Bourdieu 1990: 159). The anecdotal
begins by stating the son of "immigrants" in Guadalajara. While not the glamorous and the suffering that involves the transfer across national borders, my parents came to this city from different parts of the country. Both arrived as a teenager to study in high school, by back in the forties. My father, born in the land of Pedro Moreno arrived in Guadalajara at the request of another Laguens Martin Alfonso de Alba, while my mother took from Ciudad Juarez in this city were already two older sisters to become student High School Jalisco. Highlight this first bond with people that shared ancestry, it is also a factor that is often common in migrants, both in regard to internal migration to international. The migration stories of my parents have regarding previous generations of both families. Although my mother was born in Ciudad Juárez neither parent was born there town, as my maternal grandmother was born in Mineral de Hidalgo del Parral (Chihuahua), while my grandfather was born in Tepatitlán of Morelos, in a season in which my grandfather Emilio Quiroz (from the center of the country and English immigrant family) was head of government of the Diaz regime there. The revolution itself made families Ramos Quiroz and fled the former Paso del Norte, a city that bear the name of a character raised to hero just by the sight of Porfirio Diaz.
The fortunes of the arrival of the Lagos de Moreno Moran are irrelevant, but worth mentioning what happened next in the case of immigration of my father to the state capital. My father has always been given to the discussion and the cultivation of many friendships. Surely it was that social skills coupled with his easy smile which contributed to the friendship with one of her colleagues in the medical career, with whom he met, among many other peers, to share the fact that immigrants this city. Add to this the fact that Guadalajara (as often happens with people of the host societies) already had their own ways to pass the time before that coincide with their peers from other people and it became a breeding ground culture to "immigrants" to share problems and solutions in regard to finding accommodation, employment, livelihood. The friendship with that partner led, after some years in the marriage of my father and my mother (sister of the fellow student) and eventually extending to us the descendants of an extensive network of kinship with both trans-territorial in nature different states, and transnational, given the existence of relatives on both sides of the border. The announcement of the marriage of my relatives Laguens stoke their prejudices expressed in sayings such as "whiteness is half the beauty", partly to remind my father that "the source Laguens NEVER English mixed with the Indians and marrying a dark-skinned woman from "Sin City" would lose much of their ancestry. However, the shrapnel of my relatives alteños not enough to keep my father married my mother, nor have children been "mixed" served to question their identity and geographical landmarks and social. I am sure that the mere mention of a story that the Moran actually was a renegade branch of Ledesma, who had emigrated from other people other than Lagos, affected over the identity of my father's perception that the admonitions of his little nothing kindred.
I come now to the crux of the argument that I want to stress: a child I was "natural" to travel to Lagos de Moreno and (especially in times of conflict between my parents) to take the long road trip to Ciudad Juarez and beyond and contact with my uncles and cousins \u200b\u200bin these places and also keep in Guadalajara.
is, not only were my parents as immigrants, who have adopted different spatial reference points (two for each), but the children have had at least three spatial reference points, as more origin of our mother, our father and our own we are always an anchor point to which we turn to relative familiarity, where we visited relatives in what we know at least some of the local and regional products. It is therefore not surprising that for many years consumers have been produced in Chihuahua Mennonite cheese, and continue eating cheese Lagos. In fact, my father still assuming that this is the best cheese in the world, although once a French immigrant in Guadalajara challenged him saying, "if you want we can talk about cheese cheese, which the French have a tradition" . My father was as calm as though it certainly has never been connoisseur of cheese and other dairy products, knows that this cultural element "local" is actually an immigrant work arrived in Lagos at the hands of a Swiss company, and from a country that also has "a certain tradition."
Today, not only the cheeses are present in the life of my father, but the images of the temple and sanctuary of Calvary, among many others of Lagos de Moreno, including the coat of arms still adorn the walls of the parental home and office, while effigies of Tarahumara Indians, Chihuahua cooking recipes and the counterpart of the many sayings still present in the maternal home. In addition, the contact between relatives in different spaces, telephone bills testify in both homes, as they say to events worth commenting on (the marriage, illness, births, birthdays, baptisms, death), calls are made to Lagos and the Bajio in the case and the house of my father, and to Ciudad Juarez, City Mexico and Nayarit (place you went for medical aunt when she married a descendant of Yucatec Nayarit) in the case of my mother.
In conclusion, I emphasize that the easy smile of my father assured him a fair amount of friends and to a certain number of enemies, then there are those who firmly believe (including my mother) who is a mocking smile. And among his wide network of relatives and the children have developed much of our own friends, addition to the contacts, willy nilly, we have provided my mother, much less given to socializing, but that, yes with relatives rather prolific. As my father always said that "it is better to have friends than money," recognizing the value of social capital that implies, was a certain intuition of my mother about the existence and functioning of social networks which deprived us of pediment having home court, then, referring to the various medical friends of my father and my other relatives Laguens, said: "If we pediment not out of my house." The conceptual
In this symposium we are not have met to discuss regional cultural products of the places they are from our parents, or (much less!) in the history of the arrival of the Moran and Quiroz to this noble and loyal city. In contrast, anecdotal information which I provide is the basis to illustrate that in many cases, migrants keep with them their social networks, make efforts to rebuild from its knowledge of people and also through indirect contacts recommendations, and also carry cultural elements that become natural and customary for their offspring, there is contact or not with the places of origin. In many cases, migrants reconstruct their spaces to establish businesses that have been called "ethnic" others that sell native products from the same place in the region and the locality to ensure that they can eat and eat as well as in their home direct, indirect or even mythical (see Light and Gold 2000, Portes 1995). Analyses
stressed the need to resort to the notion of community to understand the relationships that exist between migrants, both before departure, as in their attempts to rebuild their environments and their affection and economic relations in locations. Thus, the community has been part of discussions about the importance of remittances, the nostalgic market, preservation of traditions, food habits, reproduction of myths and other narratives.
anecdotal information with which I open this discussion refers primarily to the way that immigrants take hold of social networks and social capital become but also how, in addition to carrying their ways of thinking, devotions, their loyalties, their idiosyncrasies and prejudices, they bring cultural products that allow them to rebuild their ancestry spaces in places of arrival. Many immigrant groups are concentrated again in places of employment and create colonies, ethnic markets and neighborhoods, and even charities and bands are and evil gangs around the nostalgia, the moral obligation to support those who remain, the feeling of being "still" natives of certain points, even several generations later. For example, although many of my cousins \u200b\u200band I are tapatíos often not as important to previous generations and even to our contemporaries located in places of origin. No wonder why we still consider my brothers and me (and even my children) as "El Alto" and Don Lalo, hardworking Tire repairman originally from Hidalgo del Parral every morning I greet you with a loud "Hello, paisano "when passing by your establishment. Such is the case with the transformation of organizations of immigrants in ethnic organizations, when the descendants of the early arrivals are still drawn to them in search of identity elements and contact with people who belong to a (mythical) "same" original group.
worth mentioning that the conceptual baggage that has been built to understand the histories of movements of different groups, is extended to include not only elements from the anthropological theories (especially in regard to kinship networks), but also from the visions of the theories of organizations (for example to focus the analysis of immigrant associations and their descendants as "ethnic" groups, or from multidisciplinary perspectives, as with concepts such as transnationalism.
In this case, the conceptual development has gone through the discussion of transnationalism "from above" (from above) and "bottom" (From Below, Smith and Guarnizo 1998) is not the same as Coca-Cola and the Catholic Church expressions of the first type of transnationalism, that being part of a network of contacts between relatives and acquaintances (usually with links to ancestry), a network that crosses national borders and which exploit the resources of social capital "in short" as an expression of transnationalism from below. In many cases in the world, flows of migrants have been constant and extend for decades or even centuries. Thus, to mention the cases that we are close in this conference, the Italian immigrants in the United States and Argentina and the United Mexican States, have constitutito multiple "layers" historic immigrants have ended up even generational groupings and depending their times of arrival. It should be noted that expressions of transnationalism in many cases include the "colonization" of spaces that previously prevailed in other ethnic groups. Thus, in the Pilsen neighborhood in Chicago not only Poles, Italians and Germans seen that areas have been colonized by Mexicans to move along their ethnic economies, markets nostalgic, their publications, their language, religious images, but previous groups of immigrants as the Czechs (hence the name of Pilsen, as bohemian village that causes a type of beer a reputation as "German" - Pilsener) witnessed how that space was colonized by the subsequent flows of migrants would then be colonized again.
The mechanisms by which migration involves the transfer of cultural elements as well as understandable sense guidelines for its carriers, and in the way of specific cultural products, have been studied from various perspectives. Demographers and economists are interested in knowing how many and how much money they send, while anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists have stressed shipments understand what they mean in terms of nostalgia, suffering, social reproduction, restoration of social networks, generating organizations by migrants (hometown associations, ethnic) and other institutions to respond positively (governments, churches). There are even some studies (eg Menjivar 2000) that explore how networks work and how they have limited capacity to receive to new migrants, which is why many Salvadoran immigrants prefer Menjívar studied by literally breaking their ties with their native villages to prevent further depleted its resources to support the people and their representatives. The
Numerous empirical studies on migration, especially in recent years (eg. Levitt 2001; Brettell 2000 and 2003, Smith and Guarnizo 1998) have highlighted the existence of transnational networks and have shown that they have contributed not only the integration of newcomers to the destinations but also to the survival of those who remain and the preservation of traditional economic, social and cultural rights by long seasons. The transnational perspective also included the study of how immigrant networks resulting in ethnic and cultural groups interested in preserving identity elements such as language, religious beliefs, ties with institutionalized efforts to hold together migrants and their descendants (whether by state agencies as part of non-governmental organizations).
Some studies have emphasized the integration of immigrants into host societies, while others are interested in understanding the resistance to integration of those who kept the project (not always succeeded) to return. Others have explored the effects is the return of migrants to their places of origin, not only in terms of who left and returned, but also about the perception of those who stayed and resume the relationship with the returnees (eg. Levitt 2001 and Brettell 2003). Some studies have emphasized the organizations supporting migrants without having been founded by them (eg. Borzomati 1989), while others emphasize the study of organizations founded by the migrants themselves to help each other both in the place of arrival as the relationship with the places of origin (Moran 2007; Halm 2008).
Although scarce, studies on immigration to Mexico have also found that emphasis in the draft back to their places of origin or at least the preservation of language and culture and ties with the natives of the same places. Studies highlight the English exile in the late thirties (among many others, for example Matesanz 1999, Fernández de Castro 2004), but there are other studies of less famous cases, such as those compiled by Bonfil Batalla (1993) and by Yankelevich (2002) in the past and relating to other ethnic groups, national and linguistic backgrounds.
In short ... From the first pages of a book that could be considered his autobiography in exile, Tzvetan Todorov (2008) argues that
... Cultural identities are not purely domestic. There are also other groups related to age, sex, profession, social environment (...) The national cultural membership is simply the strongest of all because it combines the traces - in body and spirit - by the family and community, language and religion. So why sometimes live in euphoria and others in trouble? (Todorov 2008: 28).
do not intend to respond to challenges posed by Todorov and let the audience the task of reading itself concerns that underlie it. Instead, I want to emphasize that even though the criticisms of "nationalism methodology, many immigrants still think in terms of nationalism, and that at least two senses: that of the country "girl" (the town, region, state) and the country linked with a state nation. Much of the identity of migrants is constructed from the spatial reference that is both a reference to a political-administrative space that - generally involve migrants - is associated with a particular culture, as well as products (edible or more permanent ), habits and ways of thinking. However, it is also true that many of the immigrants and migrants cyclic think about their places of origin as a reference in your daily life in the passage of time - a time lag in several places at once and those who have interests and concerns, if only because there are investments of affection and money.
Studies of migrant enclaves are down and show that this often linked to specific locations, often beyond national boundaries, sometimes in reference to areas within the same nation but always "simultaneizados" by the action and aspirations of the migrants themselves and even the actors involved in promoting the return (sometimes family, sometimes their countries of origin or churches) and those interested in promoting integration (sometimes receiving states, sometimes ethnic groups). The effect is usually a concept of space for migrants, despite being separated by thousands of miles, it is not in their affections and projects. Thus, it is common for immigrants keep one foot in the place of destination and one in the home. The possession of houses, bond, interest, commercial leagues in both of these are just some of these manifestations of those who consider both natives of a place and integrated into another. The preservation of linguistic expressions, the reference to the birthplace of the ancestors, the reference at the place of birth, cooking methods and culinary secrets are others.
Some other studies have focused on the continuous integration, assimilation, resistance, preservation of culture of origin in certain ethnic groups and migrants, and this suggests that just as culture is not easy to get lost, there is also the possibility that cultures of arrival will be accepted or rejected and therefore considered by the migrants themselves as "easy" or "difficult" according to certain beliefs and values \u200b\u200babout what should be (or not) the correct way to behave ...
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