Ethnographies of migrant mixtec women in California. An anthropological approach to narratives of transmigration, transnational motherhood and pregnancy in the context of western medicine

Abstract

This article examines the narratives of mixtec women from Oaxaca, Mexico, who migrated to Oxnard City, California, USA. The ethnographies derived from their migratory process were analyzed through 27 in-depth interviews. The complexity involved in the study of international migration, intersected with gender and ethnicity, has required a multi-methodology in accordance with this specificity. Through a decolonized investigation this research examine the situations of inequality and oppression that affect indigenous women, defined in different historical contexts than those of urban, white, western and heterosexual women, which classic feminism has formulated. The first section of the article focuses on the narratives of transmigration, which are analyzed in relation to the dimensions that influence and intervene in terms of gender roles. The second section explore the complexity of transnational motherhood in the host society as mothers or mothers-to-be, approaching the multidynamics of transnational care, and how the health management of pregnancy is a complex issue in the face of cultural difference and the lack of an inter-ethnic sensitive health care system. This research highlights the challenges and cultural impacts that they face as indigenous women, migrant women, and mothers, in a transnational and migratory context. Everything related to their role as mothers is very complex, since they are the ones who entirely take care of their family. This assumption of care empowers the agency of these women who are attentive to their family on both sides of the border. This research has focused an approach on these subjects and underline how colonialism, gender and ethnocentrism constantly act on indigenous populations, greatly affecting women, as well as to highlight on the transformative and significant involvement and agency of these women.