“I’m Here, but I’m There”: Latina Transnational Motherhood

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila study Latina immigrant domestic workers in Los Angeles whose children live in their countries of origin. They combine a survey, in-depth interviews and ethnographic material to examine how separation reorganises mothering. Earnings and remittances can sustain a child’s life while daily care depends on arrangements with people who remain nearby.

Care in two households

The analysis draws mainly on recorded interviews with 26 domestic workers, eight of whom lived apart from their children, and on a separate non-random survey of 153 workers. Recruiting through English classes, parks and bus stops underrepresented workers with cars or better English. The authors also report that some agencies placing live-in workers did not refer applicants who had young children in Los Angeles. Recruitment practices could thus help sustain the separation that employers treated as a precondition for work.

Patricia provides a useful comparison within the same city. Her daughters live in Los Angeles, but her live-in job keeps her away during the working week. Their father and a younger relative whom the family pays care for them. Employment can produce separation even within a city. Crossing a national border adds constraints on visits, reunification and coordination to demands already visible in Patricia’s account.

The authors also examine workers’ selective emotional ties to employers’ children and how what they see in employers’ homes reshapes their accounts of good mothering. A worker may provide hands-on care to one child while actively arranging support for another across a border. Treating proximity as the sole measure of mothering misses the work that makes those arrangements possible.

Transnational arrangements may also transfer demands to people who stay behind. The article opens questions about who decides how children are cared for, who bears the costs of coordination and whether separation can end. Immigration status, employment and family resources shape the answers.

The work done by a phone call

Read María Elena’s discussion of the telephone. Sending money keeps material support available. Talking helps her tell how her son is doing and can help relatives coordinate care. The people present can respond to immediate needs, while a mother at a distance has to sustain channels of communication. Both activities use time and resources. Co-residence and remittance totals on their own cannot show who keeps informed about a child or how decisions move between households.

The research concerns a particular setting and period in Los Angeles. Servants of Globalization offers a comparison through Filipino migrant domestic workers and their families, opening questions about how distinct migration systems distribute similar care responsibilities.

Original text

Journal article hosted by the author