Sweet Home Chicago?: Mexican Migration and the Question of Belonging and Return 9783839441312

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Franziska Bedorf Sweet Home Chicago?

Global Studies

Franziska Bedorf (PhD) is a sociocultural anthropologist and a postdoctoral researcher at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include migration, identity formation, and boundary making.

Franziska Bedorf

Sweet Home Chicago? Mexican Migration and the Question of Belonging and Return

This publication was sponsored by the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthology at the University of Hamburg.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de

© 2018 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld Cover layout: Maria Arndt, Bielefeld Cover illustration: Franziska Bedorf, Chicago, 2011 Typeset by Dr. Klara Vanek, www.textuelles.de Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4131-8 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-4131-2 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839441312

Contents

Acknowledgements | 11 1. Introduction | 13 2. Theoretical perspectives: discussing migration, return and belonging | 21 2.1 Research on Mexican migration to the United States | 21 2.1.1 Situating Mexico-U.S. migration research in the field of migration studies | 23 2.1.2 Mexican migration to Chicago | 35 2.2 Return migration | 38 2.2.1 Return migration – universe of cases | 39 2.2.2 Return migration – the U.S.-Mexico case | 44 2.2.3 Return migration upon retirement | 46 2.2.4 Implications for this study | 50 2.3 Belonging | 52 2.3.1 Collective belonging: criteria, consequences and dynamics of group membership | 58 2.3.2 Individual belonging: affirmative situatedness at the interface of memberships | 59 2.3.3 Formations and transformations of individual belonging | 62 2.3.4 Narratives, belonging and the life course | 64 2.3.5 Implications for this study | 65 2.4 A conceptual framework for the analysis of retirement return migration | 66

3. Research design and methods | 73 3.1 Initial design of the study | 73 3.2 Periods of the fieldwork | 75 3.2.1 Fieldwork part I: San Antonio, Mexico, July and August 2010 | 75 3.2.2 Fieldwork part II: Chicago first phase, September–October 2010 | 80 3.2.3 Fieldwork part III: Chicago second phase, November 2010–February 2011 | 83 3.2.4 Fieldwork part IV: Chicago third phase February–July 2011 | 88 3.3 Methods of data collection in Chicago | 89 3.4 Personal circumstances of the fieldwork | 93 3.5 Data analysis | 96

4. Setting: exploring Mexican Chicago | 99 4.1 Mexican migration to the United States | 100 4.2 Chicago: an introduction to the Windy City | 106 4.2.1 A brief overview of history and populations trends | 106 4.2.2 People of Chicago today | 108 4.2.3 Chicago government and political entities | 109 4.3 Tracing Mexico in Chicago | 110 4.3.1 The history of Mexican Chicago: a journey through the past 100 years | 111 4.3.2 Mexican Chicago today | 116

5. Locating the people: elderly Mexicans in Chicago today | 123 5.1 Prologue – three scenes, three parts of a mosaic | 123 5.1.1 Lotería | 123 5.1.2 A Mexican Burger King experience | 124 5.1.3 Pilsen by night | 126 5.2 The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds | 127 5.2.1 Basic characteristics: age, gender, time spent i n the United States | 128 5.2.2 Backgrounds in Mexico | 129 5.2.3 Life in Chicago today | 141 5.3 Epilogue – four scenes, four parts of a mosaic | 154 5.3.1 The routines of Harrison Park | 154 5.3.3 Karaoke at Casa Maravilla | 156 5.3.4 The ladies gathering at Dvorak Park | 157

6. Expectations: envisaging a place for the future and weighing the idea of return | 159 6.1 Residence intentions identified: the array of decision outcomes | 161 6.2 Factors influencing return considerations upon retirement | 165 6.2.1 Reasons leading to a residence plan including Chicago | 167 6.2.2 Reasons leading to a residence plan including Mexico | 168 6.2.3 Motives with unclear implications | 169 6.3 Quantitative analysis | 170 6.3.1 Statistical analysis: identifying systematic inter-personal patterns of reasoning | 171 6.3.2 Qualitative Comparative Analysis: combinations of factors as conditions for a residence intention | 177 6.3.3 Reflecting on the results: findings derived from the statistical analysis and QCA | 179 6.4 Qualitative analysis: adding narratives | 180 6.4.1 Cases illustrating the residence intentions | 180 6.4.2 Reflecting on the results: findings derived from the qualitative analysis | 201 6.5 Filling the ‘blackbox:’ reconfigurations of belonging as a key to changed return considerations | 207

7. Experiences: configuring belonging by remembering the past – narratives of emerging attachments and detachments | 211 7.1 Spaces of experience: context engagements, master narratives and anchoring points | 212 7.2 Beginnings: first contacts with Chicago | 218 7.3 “Seguir adelante”/ Getting ahead: pursuing and achieving the ‘American Dream’ | 223 7.3.1 Coming to an industrial city: factory work for everyone in the “City of Big Shoulders” | 225 7.3.2 Challenge or chance? Politics of belonging | 231 7.3.3 Social capital from ‘home’: origin networks opening doors in Chicago | 247 7.3.4 Reaping the fruit of one’s sacrifice: the successful second generation | 250 7.3.5 Reflections | 252 7.4 “Volver”/ Returning: origin matters | 254 7.4.1 Mexico as resource and obligation | 256 7.4.2 Aging parents and American children: Mexico fading? | 265 7.4.3 Mexico emerging in Chicago | 273 7.4.4 Reflections | 276

7.5 “Adaptarse”/ Adapting: the goals and contingencies of adjustment | 277 7.5.1 Avoiding Mexico in Chicago | 280 7.5.2 Reflections | 282 7.6 Contextualizing the results | 282

8. Expressions: practices of belonging today | 287 8.1 Social embeddedness: people’s networks today | 287 8.2 Delineations from the current migrant generation | 290 8.3 Final resting places: relatedness in this world and beyond? | 291

9. Discussion and conclusion | 295 9.1 Main findings | 296 9.2 Relating the findings to the wider field of research | 301 9.2.1 Adding to research on return migration upon retirement | 301 9.2.2 Adding to research on belonging | 303 9.2.3 Adding to research on transnationalism and assimilation | 304

Appendix | 307 A. Results QCA analysis | 307 B. Overview of correspondents | 328 C. Structured interview questionnaire | 333

List of figures and tables | 345 Bibliography | 349

To my parents

Acknowledgements

Saying thank you at the end of this long process of my PhD research and gradually turning it into a book almost feels like the most important part of it all. And at the same time like one of the most challenging tasks. During the years of research and writing, there were so many sources of support and inspiration – in many different ways – that made this publication possible. I will try and remember at least some of them here. My doctoral fieldwork formed part of the research project “Age(ing) in transnational social space. Processes of (re)migration between Mexico and the United States”, headed by Julia Pauli and Michael Schnegg. I would like to thank the German Science Foundation (grant SCHN 1103/3-1) for funding this project and making the research possible. The Department of Anthropology at East Carolina University (ECU) in Greenville, North Carolina, kindly sponsored my stay as a visiting scholar at ECU during my fieldwork in the United States. My most sincere gratitude goes to my supervisors Julia Pauli and Michael Schnegg, who inspired me to undertake this research and introduced me to the field in the valley of Solís in Mexico. Thank you for providing guidance and substantial theoretical and empirical advice and for being a valuable source of critical feedback and encouragement throughout the years of my PhD and beyond. A special thanks also to Christine Avenarius for her tremendous support before and during my stay at East Carolina University, not least for welcoming me into her home during my visits to Grenville. My PhD colleagues in Hamburg as well as in Cologne constituted an indispensable source of both intellectual exchange and doctoral community life. In Hamburg, Maren Rössler, Theresa Linke, Kathrin Gradt, Erwin Schweitzer and Frank Weigelt were always there for discussing ideas during energizing coffee breaks. In Cologne, I was extremely lucky to be able to rely on the ethnodocs, in particular Anja Becker, Christiane Naumann, Ulrike Wesch, Anna Grumblies and Simone Pfeiffer, not only for feedback on at times confusing ideas and first drafts but also for sharing both the frustrations and the fun that come with writing a PhD. Sitting in a

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Acknowledgements

library on a Saturday afternoon is so much more enjoyable when you know that you are not the only one who is struggling to write these magic 500 words a day. And when you can enjoy a glass of wine together afterwards. I would also like to express my gratitude to my friends and colleagues from Philippstraße for co-creating such a pleasant, focused and extremely inspiring co-working space and writing environment in Cologne. I am glad that the collaboration continues and very grateful for Klara Vanek’s help with the text’s layout. Words, however, can only tell that much. Henrik, you found novel and beautiful ways of translating my sometimes far too abstract ideas into concise (as concise as is possible on the basis of my made-too-complex ideas) illustrations full of lightness and new perspectives. Tack så mycket. There are three people who deserve special thanks for immersing themselves into the process of my research and writing: Andy Hofmann, Lina Oravec and Taiya Mikisch, thank you so much for long brainstorming sessions, patiently listening to new ideas, bearing with the doubts I had, following my lines of thought and reasoning and always being there with feedback and inspiration. Time to move from the more “professional” realm to the more personal one (although this is often hard to distinguish). Looking back, I feel immensely grateful, honored and humbled to be surrounded by so many wonderful people, family as well as dear friends. Andy, thank you for sharing and exploring (Mexican) Chicago with me during the fieldwork. And for your everlasting encouragement and your belief that my ideas made sense. In particular, I would also like to thank my parents Ulrike and Wolfgang Bedorf, my brother Oliver Bedorf, my sister Juliane Bedorf with Namik, Luca and Cengiz and my uncle Martin Bedorf. Thank you for always supporting me, for enduring my (geographical and mental) absences and for providing a home, or rather several homes, both in Germany and in Sweden, full of love and warmth. Last, and most importantly, I am immensely indebted to the people from San Antonio, Mexico, and the many individuals from Chicago, U.S., for meeting me with curiosity and kindness and lending their support and time to the research project.

1. Introduction

“Yo vengo del centro de Mexico, San Luis Potosí, so es casi el centro de México que hay que cruzar para el norte. Entonces de allí llegamos aquí en downton para la central y de allí, claro, tomé un taxi para darle la dirección de la casa de mi hermano que es acá en el norte. Y me acuerdo que al bajar del taxi, no sé si no tenía suficiente para pagar el taxi, yo tenía que bajar para decirles que me pagaron el taxi y me acuerdo que al bajar el taxi me caí, me caí en el hielo. Y aquí hay una tradición que dice que uno que se cae aquí en el invierno en la nieve ya no se va, no sé si era cierto pero es una tradición que dicen.”1 This is how Francisco Gallardo, who came to Chicago in 1958 at the age of 17, remembers his first contact with the city. Francisco has a very vivid memory of this particular moment, describing how he arrived at Chicago’s main station, took a cab that drove him to his brother’s place in the north of Chicago and slipped on the ice when he got out of the cab and set a foot on the ground. When Francisco tells me that story, we are sitting in his office at the Nuestra Señora de Gracia church in Logan Square, where Francisco still works as a deacon two days a week. Although the church is not very far from where I live, I regret for the first time having taken my bike and not the car or bus to get to our meeting because the streets are so slippery – just like on that winter day of 1958 when Francisco met with the ‘Windy City’2 for the first time. “Yo llegué en invierno,” he remembers. “Me accuerdo ahora con el hielo que llegué.” At the beginning of December 2010, the famous Chicago winter everyone has cautioned me against is finally taking a serious approach, letting the first ten1 | Interview Francisco Gallardo, 07.12.2010. I have changed the names of all my correspondents. 2 | ‘Windy City’ is a term often colloquially used for Chicago. It is said to originate either from the fact that Chicago is literally a very windy city – particularly in its center part, the ‘Loop’, where the wind coming from the lake hits the highrises – or Chicago’s windy (in terms of corrupt) politics.

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Introduction

tative snowflakes swirl through the air, covering everything with a thin layer of ice and claiming the city for itself, rushing the people inside. I am not yet equipped properly, I realize, as I without avail try to protect myself against the biting wind, Chicago winter’s pride and joy, blowing from Lake Michigan while I pedal cautiously along Humboldt Boulevard, then Fullerton Avenue and into Ridgeway Avenue, where the church is located. When I hurry inside, I am shivering, cursing myself that I did not invest in a proper winter coat and serious gloves in good time. Francisco, in contrast, appears as if he was born into such a kind of weather and has spent his entire life strolling through the snow when he opens the door a few minutes later. He smiles heartily, takes off his seemingly Siberian fur hat to shake off the remaining snow flakes, peels himself out of his thick sturdy coat and stomps firmly with each foot to clean his shoes from pieces of dirt and ice. “It says that if you fall on the snow here in winter, you never return [to Mexico]. I don’t know whether it’s true.” Francisco has, in fact, not returned to Mexico and does not plan on doing so either. Already by looking at his clothes, one can tell that he has adapted to the Chicago winter, and happily so. Francisco recalls his first impression of Chicago covered with snow and ice more than fifty years ago as if this experience already predicted that he would stay there for good. The weeks and months following his fall on the ice when greeting Chicago were far from uniformly pleasant and happy, quite the contrary in fact. Francisco describes that period as “un cambio terrible”, because of “el ambiente mismo, el idioma, el frío.” Adjusting to the new environment, Francisco recalls, was extremely challenging for him, particularly since he had been working as an accountant in Mexico and had no choice but to do physically demanding factory work in Chicago. He found a job in a metalworking factory, “una fábrica donde pintaban acero.” His task consisted of operating a machine painting car seats. “Imagínese Usted: Yo venía de una oficina sentado, trabajar con mis manos y mi cabeza, y de repente yo tenía que estar cargando esto para colgarlo en una máquina.” Francisco still shakes his head in disbelief when recounting the situation 50 years later: “Fue una cosa terrible.” Nevertheless, he talks almost as if his arrival in Chicago already determined that he would stay, his fall on the ice binding him to Chicago, sealing the accord, still unknown to him, that he would never really leave again. Francisco tried to move back to Mexico once, with his wife Juanita and his four small children, but it did not work out. They were both drawn back to Chicago. Francisco recalls the situation during his stay in San Luis Potosí that made things clear to him: “Un día digo a Juanita que vamos al cine a ver una buena película en inglés. Era una película, se llamaba, Robert de Niro hizo una película en estos años que era muy buena, algo con hunter. Bueno, esa pelicula era muy familiar, pero muy familiar, la

Introduction

vida de aquí [Chicago] de las fábricas, vímos la nieve, la navidad, todo eso. Nos pusimos tan nostálgicos que salímos todos emocionados. Total, los dos decidímos que debíamos regresar, después de un año y medio.” Looking back, it makes sense to Francisco that he could not do anything but return to Chicago, because this was the place, “este era el lugar.” Francisco’s interpretation of his arrival in Chicago almost implies a notion of fate. Although he smiles half-mockingly when he mentions the proverb that slipping and falling in Chicago means that one is going to stay there, it seems that he refers to the story to create a rationale for the turns his own life took when looking back. When people migrate, the issue of return is mostly, if not always, inextricably linked with these movements. Migrants leaving their homeland usually plan to stay in the new country for a limited time and to go back to their home country some day, at the latest upon retiring from work (Golbourne, et al. 2010: 121; Levitt 2001: 92).3 More than that, they might never leave in the first place if they did not expect to return later (Serrano 2008). This intention of return often impacts the entire migration experience, influencing how people relate to both their place of origin and their new residence. The desire to return might, as the literature on transnationalism has suggested, even constitute one of the main causes for migrants to remain connected with their home country “thus consolidating transnational social fields” (Sinatti, 2011: 154, see also Conway 2005: 276; Golbourne, et al. 2010: 135). However, several studies have demonstrated that over the course of time, return often turns into a “myth” (Anwar 1979; Bolognani 2007; Brettell 1979; Senyürekli and Menjívar 2012). Contrary to their initial intentions, migrants frequently keep postponing their return and end up remaining in the host country permanently. This ‘myth of return’ is particularly evident in the United States, a nation overwhelmingly composed of former migrants, many of whom probably intended to only stay in the U.S. for some years before moving back ‘home’ – and ended up staying. It is this puzzle of the transformation of return intentions I want to explore in this study. Retirement constitutes a special case in this respect since most migrants move back to their country of origin either within a few years of migrating or when retiring from work (King 2000: 41; Klinthäll 2006: 173; Massey, et al. 1987: 310; Percival 2013a: 8). The phase of the life course thus, it seems, affects the likelihood of return migration. This is linked to the fact that economic factors (better income opportunities) usually constitute the primary factor initially motivating and subsequently perpetuating (labor) migration. 3 | This refers to the context of international labor migration. People migrating for reasons of war or because they are politically persecuted in their home country might have a similar desire to return, but less pronounced actual plans of returning.

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Introduction

When work becomes less relevant with old age, economic motives recede, and the possibility of return comes into clearer focus (Bolzman 2013: 68; Hunter 2011: 179). I will therefore address the ‘blackbox’ between initial plans of return when migrating and potentially altered residence intentions at retirement (see figure 1.1). What, I ask, does this ‘blackbox’ contain? What are the factors shaping individual residence decisions that can account for substantial dynamics in population movements? Figure 1.1: The puzzle of return intentions

Original intention of return

time of migration (1960s to 1980s)

?

Present residence intention

today

Examining this ‘blackbox’, as will become apparent, sheds light on important processes and transformations inherent in migratory experiences, such as changes in social relations, cultural preferences and loyalties, interactions with different spheres of home and host society, and processes of assimilation and transnational engagement. It illuminates the institutional, social and cultural structures framing migration on local, national and global levels, such as formal and informal politics of belonging, economic frameworks and social networks. It unveils the larger discourses informing and reflecting how migrants react to and engage with these frameworks and reveals shared patterns. It also highlights the role of emotions, affects and narrated experiences in this context. Ultimately, I suggest, exploring this ‘blackbox’ represents a key for understanding how notions of connectedness with people, culture and places (belonging) evolve and change in the migratory context over the life course, eventually modifying the initial plan of return. This question is rooted in individual biographies and thus – at first glance – concerns the micro-level. Yet, as I have mentioned above, and as anthropologist Katy Gardner has aptly pointed out, different levels of analysis are tightly interconnected here, since life courses are “shaped by culture, history and global economies,” which “articulate with

Introduction

various forms of movement and migration between different places” (Gardner 2009: 229). Resolving the puzzle thus requires taking into account migration as a process comprised of individual experiences that allow for discerning general patterns and dynamics. In this study, I will investigate the puzzle of the transformation of return intentions upon retirement for the case of elderly Mexicans (aged 55 and above) living in the United States, more specifically in Chicago. This migratory context represents a case in point for studying retirement return migration since Mexican migration to the United States, just like to European countries, rapidly gained momentum in the 1960s and 1970s (Massey, et al. 1987: 3; Passel, et al. 2012: 19). Even Chicago’s Mexican population increased considerably during this time, growing more than six-fold within the city limits to 352,560 people, which made Chicago the city with the second largest Mexican population in the United States after Los Angeles (De Genova 2005: 116; Lowell, et al. 2008: 16). Consequently, Mexicans who migrated to Chicago in these decades represent the first substantial cohort of Mexican migrants who are approaching retirement in the United States and might consider a return to Mexico today. The potential impact this entails for both the U.S. and Mexican society is significant: Where this generation chooses to live after retirement will have consequences for the welfare sector, politics and the demographic setup in both countries. With this study, I therefore aspire to contribute to the understanding of an issue that will be of increasing importance both in the Mexico-U.S. context and in many other Western countries in the future and has been underexplored so far. While some research has been conducted on return migration upon retirement, there are hardly any studies covering the Mexico-U.S. context. 4 Additionally, and more importantly, this study will move beyond existing research by addressing return migration as a process and a result of migratory experiences. Going beyond the identification and testing of factors that might influence return considerations, I focus on the transformation of return intentions and relate these processes to changes in individual belonging as linked to the migratory life courses and the wider contexts shaping them. Following Katy Gardner, I assume that “movement through the life course affects our propensity to move” (Gardner 2009: 229). Addressing this topic will, first, contribute to the discussion on return migration, specifically on Mexico-U.S. return migration. Second, it touches upon questions of assimilation and transnational involvement of migrants and links these, third, to a systematic exploration of how be4 | A notable exception is research conducted by American sociologist Michael B. Aguilera (Aguilera 2004). Several studies on Mexican migration examine post-retirement return from the United States to Mexico as one aspect (Jarvis, et al. 2009; Massey, et al. 1987; Sana and Massey 2000; Smith 2006) (see also chapter 2.2).

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Introduction

longing is reconfigured in the context of migration. This contributes, fourth, to the discussion regarding the relationship between migration and time articulated by the interaction of individual migrants with meso- and macrolevel contexts over the life course. Doing so requires taking into account the migrants’ narratives in the sense of remembered and narrated experiences. My approach is somewhat unusual in that my study does not investigate the dynamics of one transnational community, even though I consider cross-border ties. In contrast to much insightful sociological and anthropological research on migration, I did not investigate migrants who are from the same region or even village in Mexico. Instead, I focused on three neighborhoods in Chicago and included people from different home regions in Mexico in my sample.5 While concentrating on a bounded transnational group certainly helps to trace long lasting cross-border ties and practices, it neglects those migrants who are not part of a transnational community. The approach I adopted covers a potentially more heterogeneous set of people. This makes the question of belonging all the more intriguing. It will be interesting to see whether migrants with a variety of backgrounds nevertheless display a similar sense of belonging. The study is based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork in San Antonio, Mexico (July–September 2010) and Chicago, U.S. (September 2010–August 2011). The research question underlying my fieldwork was twofold: First, I aimed to explore where elderly Mexican migrants living in Chicago planned to live after retiring. Second, I wanted to examine the reasoning and justification for their possibly altered residence intentions, the content of the ‘blackbox’. The book is structured as follows: In chapter 2, I delimit the fields of research my work draws upon. I start by discussing research on Mexico-U.S. migration in general and to Chicago in particular (2.1) as well as studies on return migration in general and return migration upon retirement in particular (2.2). I also reflect on the concepts of ‘belonging’, specifically in the context of migration (2.3). Based on these theoretical reflections, I then build a conceptual framework for the analysis of retirement return migration (2.4). Subsequently, I move to ‘the field’: Chapter 3 presents my research design and the stages of my fieldwork. I delineate my initial design (3.1), the different periods of the fieldwork (3.2) as well as methods of data collection (3.3). The chapter concludes with a discussion of my personal circumstances and role during the fieldwork (3.4) and the methods of data analysis (3.5). In chapter 4, the setting of the study is introduced. This includes an overview of Mexican migration to the U.S. (4.1) and a presentation of Chicago (4.2). I also trace the history and the current characteristics of ‘Mexican Chicago’ (4.3.). This sketch of the setting is 5 | The initial idea of the research project was to explore a transnational community (see chapter 3.1). When I, however, had to adapt my research design, I came to realize the advantages of not focusing on a bounded transnational group.

Introduction

followed by an introduction of my sample, the people this study is about (chapter 5). In order to give an impression of both my interlocutors’ backgrounds and their current circumstances, I present several vignettes (5.1 and 5.3) that frame an overview of their contexts prior to migration, their motives for migrating and their lives today (5.2). I present the major part of my empirical data and my analysis in chapters 6 and 7. In Chapter 6, I examine my interlocutors’ return considerations by applying both quantitative (6.3) and qualitative (6.4) methods of analysis. I find that the majority of the older Mexicans living in Chicago included in my sample envisions a future either exclusively in Chicago or going back and forth between Chicago and Mexico (chapter 6.2). Permanent returns to Mexico are only rarely planned. In order to explore this common transformation in return intentions and fill the ‘blackbox’, I examine whether certain motives my interlocutors stated in their explanatory discourses are systematically linked to their considerations. I first employ a statistical analysis and then conduct a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in order to see whether there are consistent patterns in their reasoning (chapter 6.3). In a second step, I add a qualitative in-depth analysis of cases representing different residence intentions (chapter 6.4). I find that pragmatic factors (such as economic motives or the legal status) hardly influence the migrants’ current considerations, whereas relational factors (belonging) feature prominently. The analysis further reveals the role of emotionally laden key experiences and shared overarching motifs framing my correspondents’ narratives for reconfigurations of belonging over time (chapter 6.5). Accordingly, chapter 7 focuses on the transformation of belonging as a key to comprehend my correspondents’ return considerations. To this aim, it traces narratives of attachments and detachments and prominent key experiences included in them over time. These developments are tightly linked with my correspondents’ interactions with institutional, social and cultural contexts and framed by shared motifs manifesting their aims and achievements: “seguir adelante”/ getting ahead (7.3), “volver”/ returning (7.4) and “adaptarse”/ adapting (7.5). The analysis of my correspondents’ experiences interlaced with their manifestations of belonging today indicates that, by and large, their sense of connectedness to people, culture and places has shifted to Chicago. Chapter 8 relates these findings to the present by exploring some expressions of belonging today in detail. To this effect, it explores the migrants’ social worlds, their delineation from the current migrant generation and their intended places of final rest. In chapter 9, I summarize the insights and provide a conclusion. Before I continue, two remarks on the terminology are in order: First, in what follows, return migration refers to migrants returning to their home country voluntarily as opposed to migrants deported by the sending countries’ authorities (e.g. Drotbohm 2012). Besides, following Gmelch’s definition that return migration is “the movement of emigrants back to their homelands to re-

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Introduction

settle” (Gmelch 1980: 136), I use the term return migration to speak about permanent returns, leaving aside seasonal or temporary return migration. Second, when speaking about the places my correspondents relate to, I will often refer to ‘Mexico’ and ‘Chicago’. This different level of labelling – referring to Chicago as a concrete place in the United States while ‘Mexico’ remains unspecified – might be confusing. It reflects, however, my correspondents’ terminology. Usually, they used the more general expression ‘Mexico’ even when actually referring to their home region. In the following, when I speak of ‘Mexico’ this refers to the respective home region in Mexico, if not indicated otherwise. Finally, before letting the study unfold, I want to quote the anthropologist John Borneman in order to highlight that, although the following insights are based on empirical data, the account I present here represents, of course, my interpretation. Hence, “in the narrative that follows, the initial meanings may be theirs, but the final story is mine” (Borneman 1992: 37).

2. Theoretical perspectives: discussing migration, return and belonging

This study is related to three main topics and research fields. First, on a very general level, it is about Mexican migration to the United States (specifically to Chicago) and thus ties in with the broad field of migration studies. Second, it addresses one subfield of migration studies in particular, return migration, and within this realm is specifically concerned with return migration upon retirement. And third, matters of belonging constitute another important framework this study is situated in. In this chapter, I intend to present an overview of the research which has been conducted in these three areas. At the same time, I seek to carve out some of the theoretical perspectives and assumptions emanating from the research this study builds upon and discuss their implications and use for investigating the topic of older Mexican migrants’ future residence intentions.

2.1

R ese arch on M e xican migr ation to the U nited S tates

As Mexican migration to the United States has significantly shaped and influenced both the U.S. and Mexican society for the past 100 years – since the 1950s Mexican immigrants have constituted the largest immigrant group in the U.S. and roughly ten percent of the Mexican born population live in the United States today (Fitzgerald 2009: 2, 6)1 – it is hardly astonishing that the research covering Mexican migration to the United States is extensive. It largely evolved in parallel with migration studies in general, when international migration gained momentum as a rapidly growing global, phenomenon in the second half of the 20th century, particularly the 1960s and 1970s (Massey 1999: 34; Massey, et al. 1993: 431; Vertovec 2010: 2ff.). In the “age of migration” (Brettell 1 | For the history of Mexican migration to the U.S. see chapter 4.1.

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Theoretical perspectives: discussing migration, return and belonging

and Hollifield 2000: 1), Mexico-U.S. migration, too, drew the attention of researchers from numerous academic fields. A wide range of academic disciplines (e.g. economics, demography, social and cultural anthropology, history, sociology, political science, human geography) have addressed multitudinous aspects of Mexican migration to the U.S., contributing to the vast array of theories and concepts migration research in general has generated over the course of the past decades. Studies examining Mexico-U.S. migration range from investigating the reasons for migrating from Mexico to the United States (Cohen 2004; Massey 1999; Massey, et al. 2002), the role of networks in migration (Palloni, et al. 2001; Singer and Massey 1998; Wilson 2009c), the flow and consequences of remittances (Cohen 2001; Wilson 2009b), the legal framework and changing migration regimes and managements (Bean, et al. 1990; Bean, et al. 1989; Escobar Latapí 2008; Fitzgerald 2009; Martin 2008), questions of changing identities (Gomberg-Muñoz 2010; Hensel 2004; Striffler 2007), ethnicities (Gutiérrez 1999), gender roles (Hirsch 2002; Hirsch 2003; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994) and social structures (Dreby 2010) in the migration process, to the effects of migration on both Mexican society (Pauli 2007a; Pauli 2007b; Pauli 2008) and the United States (Borjas 2007; Mora 2012), the history of Mexican migration (GombergMuñoz 2009; Gonzales 2009; Henderson 2011; Wilson 2010) and the emergence, character and effects of transnational ties linking Mexico and the U.S. (Félix 2011; Fitzgerald 2004; Kummels 2007; Murillo 2009; Smith 2006; Striffler 2007) – just to name a sample. Social and cultural anthropology as well as its neighboring discipline sociology have played a central role in studying Mexican migration to the United States, often posing related questions and choosing similar methodological paths to answer them.2 At some universities, both in the United States and Mexico, research centers were founded with the specific purpose of addressing Mexico-U.S. migration issues, a prominent one being the Mexican Migration Project, located both at Princeton University and the Universidad de Guadelajara, headed by sociologist Douglas Massey and social anthropologist Jorge Durand.3 Addition2 | However, in compliance with the until recently upheld research foci of the disciplines (sociology ‘at home’, social and cultural anthropology ‘away from home’), research from the U.S. addressing (Mexican) migration is a “core theme in American sociology” (Foner 2003: 7) and has been more likely to be carried out by sociologists. By contrast, research on Mexican-U.S. migration from Europe tends to rather be located in the anthropological terrain. For a history of anthropological research on migration see (Brettell 2000). 3 | The Mexican Migration Project was created as an interdisciplinary enterprise in 1982, with the purpose of gathering knowledge and deepening the understanding of migration processes from Mexico to the United States. Over the last 30 years, it has

Research on Mexican migration to the United States

ally, there are independent research institutions and think tanks investigating Mexico-U.S. migration. The Pew Hispanic Center, to name only one renowned research center, was established as a nonpartisan research organization in 2001. Renamed the Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project in 2013, it conducts surveys and publishes reports on aspects concerning the U.S. side of Latino migration and Latino life in the U.S., 4 such as on demographic developments, religious and political attitudes, identity questions and the second generation. Since the number of Latinos in the U.S., most of whom are Mexican, is constantly growing and has increasing political impact – for which they receive particular attention – these findings in turn are frequently used by policy makers and government officials, influencing policy making in the immigration sector to a certain degree.

2.1.1 Situating Mexico-U.S. migration research in the field of migration studies Considering the substantial body of research on Mexico-U.S. migration, it would be a futile attempt to try and give an overview on all the insights gained and theoretical strands developed in the field. Overall, however, the questions posed and concepts applied adhere to the lines of thought migration studies in general have developed since the 1920s. Therefore, in order to locate this study thematically and theoretically, it is expedient to discuss the main concepts, trends and theoretical foundations which have guided migration research and matter for the theoretical framework of this study. Concurrently, I will also refer to research conducted on Mexican-U.S. migration that ties in with the respective concepts and paradigms. Essentially, the topics that both migration studies in general and works investigating Mexico-U.S. migration have addressed have pertained to two basic questions: First, why do people move? And second, what do these movements mean for the migrants, the home society and the host society? Depending on the field of study, the research has varied in terms of thematic focus (economic, social, political or cultural aspects), levels examined (the individual, households, communities, states, global systems) and concepts applied. Overall, howsampled households in various communities in Mexico as well as in the respective destination areas in the U.S. and gathered both quantitative and qualitative data (http://mmp.opr.princeton.edu/). 4 | The Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project addresses, as already indicated by its name, not only Mexican migration but all Latino migration to the U.S., albeit with a focus on Mexican migration since Mexicans account for the largest Latino immigrant group in the United States, see http://www.pewhispanic.org/.

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ever, two important transformations in the approaches to how to answer the two basic questions posed above have shaped migration studies and constituted significant paradigm shifts in the field. First, when trying to explain migration, the theoretical perspective shifted from emphasizing economic motives to acknowledging wider social, political and cultural aspects as possible causal factors. Second, when asking how migrants relate to their home and their host country, a change of perspective from assimilationist assumptions to a multiculturalist and transnationalist framework took place. As a result, the field of migration studies is characterized by a multitude of partly conflicting concepts. Since, as I will show later, both the question of what originally motivated the migrants to leave Mexico and the phenomenon of relating to and interacting with both environments are central for understanding return considerations (see chapter 7), I will elaborate on both paradigm shifts and the concomitant theoretical angles.

Explaining migration: from economics to society and culture In parallel with a broader trend in the social sciences, a significant new orientation in migration studies lay in discarding a view popular until the early 1980s, which framed migration, first and foremost the causes for migration, in economic terms and assumed rational, utility-maximizing actors as well as an economic balance that was to be achieved between home and host countries (Arango 2000: 284-286; Massey 1994: 701ff.; Massey 1999: 35f.). This neoclassical view was modified by including alternative levels of analysis (households and communities) and by considering other motives than economic forces as explanatory elements. Regarding the macro level, Immanual Wallerstein’s world system theory for instance pointed to historically grounded imbalances and hierarchical relationships between countries as the main cause of migration, which in turn perpetuated the unequal relationships between ‘centers’ and ‘peripheries’ (Wallerstein 1974). For the micro level, too, social scientists studying migration started taking into account explanations going beyond economic factors, such as social ties and networks, norms and values, when trying to explain the causes and processes of migration (Arango 2000: 287ff.; Cohen 2004; Massey, et al. 1987). Migration, in short, was not longer assumed to be a merely economic phenomenon, but to also entail social, political and cultural aspects. Network studies conducted by social anthropologists from the 1970s onwards were central in this respect (Massey, et al. 1987; Menjívar 2000; Wilson 1998; Wilson 2009c). They contributed to the theoretical body of research explaining why migration occurred by exploring how social ties fueled this kind of mobility. Networks, thus the insight, transported knowledge and information about destinations and life in the new country back home and facilitated the journey as well as the arrival, thereby motivating further relatives and friends to migrate. Today, it is widely agreed that migration constitutes a

Research on Mexican migration to the United States

multilevel process, the causes of which can rarely be reduced to one factor but comprise economic as well as social, political and cultural aspects. Douglas Massey and others in this context have pointed to “cumulative causation” regarding the “tendency of migration to perpetuate itself over time, regardless of the condition that originally caused it” (Massey, et al. 1993: 733). Each act of migration, they argue, alters society and individual conditions (e.g. the distribution of capital, social networks, norms and values) in a way that makes future migration more likely. Regarding this study, keeping the different theoretical stances on what causes people to migrate in mind is important for two reasons. For one thing, the causal premises made when studying return migration – a similar question since it also addresses why people do or do not move – display certain parallels to the theories explaining migration, which I will get back to in chapter 2.2. For now, suffice it to say that I assume that in order to comprehend why people move – no matter whether migrating or re-migrating – one has to take into account multiple possible levels and motives exerting an influence on the migratory decision. Second, theories on why people migrate touch upon return intentions of elderly Mexicans in Chicago because the initial reasons for their migration are linked with their deliberations of return.

Comprehending migrant experiences: from assimilation to cultural pluralism to transnationalism – and back In the second significant shift in migration studies, centrally involving sociology and social and cultural anthropology, the experiences and trajectories of migrants after they had left their home country gained center stage. This change in perspective led to a particular focus on the migrants’ interaction with their country of origin and the ‘new’ country. Until the 1970s, migration research was by and large guided by a theoretical framework highlighting the perspective of the receiving countries and assuming migration as a unidirectional process, implying assimilation and the severance of home ties (Anwar 1979: 7ff.; Gordon 1964; Olwig 2007: 8; Wimmer 2004: 1). This included assuming what Smith (1998) calls “the citizenship model of membership”, where the national community was seen as inextricably linked with territory and national membership as exclusive (Smith 1998: 198f.). Scholars of migration thought of assimilation – segmented into cultural, economic, structural and spatial assimilation – as the “natural end point of the process of incorporation into American society” (Alba and Nee 2003: 3).

Assimilation revoked: prevailing ethnic diversity instead of ‘melting pot’ A competing perspective evolving in the middle of the 1960s and by and large superseding assimilation theory completely at the beginning of the 1980s was the multiculturalist framework, also called ‘cultural pluralism’ (Newman

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1973). Its proponents posited that migrants, even after having established themselves in the new country for several generations, did not assimilate and discard their identities completely, but that ethnic organizational principles continued to matter (Glazer and Moynihan 1963; Smith 1998: 199; Wimmer 2004: 1). Contrary to earlier views of the United States as a ‘melting pot’ where all of the immigrants’ earlier characteristics would dissolve into one national identity based on an Anglo-American mainstream, this ‘differentialist turn’ led to assumptions of ethnic diversity persisting among immigrant groups (Brubaker 2001: 532).5 While the historian Oscar Handlin, in accordance with assimilation theory, had characterized migrants as ‘the uprooted’ in the 1950s (Handlin 1951), 30 years later his colleague John Bodnar coined the term ‘the transplanted’ as an image for the cultural pluralist perspective applied in the 1980s (Bodnar 1985). Scholars identified several reasons for the prevalence of ethnic group identification, such as making resource claims, ethnic entrepreneurship or being discriminated by the mainstream society (Glazer and Moynihan 1963: 17ff.; Waldinger 1996: 449ff.; Zhou 2007). “By the end of the 1980s”, notes Brubaker, “when the effects of ‘new ‘new immigration’’ had become unmistakable, earlier conceptions of assimilation seemed to have lost all relevance” (Brubaker 2001: 531).

Transnationalism: focusing on connections instead of incorporation Whereas assimilation as well as pluralistic understandings of migration constituted frameworks aimed at understanding the migrants’ interaction with and integration into the host society, a new guiding perspective arising in the 1990s emphasized that migration was as much about sustained ties to the homeland as it was about interaction with the new society. The idea of ‘transnationalism’ has since then influenced most migration research in the social sciences. The concept of transnationalism emerged in line with globalization theories as developed by Ulf Hannerz, Arjun Appadurai and Robert Robertson (Appadurai 1996; Hannerz 1989; Hannerz 1996; Robertson 1992),6 and postulated that migrants usually did not lose touch with their country of origin. On the contrary, they were considered to actively perpetuate border spanning relationships with both societies (Basch, et al. 1995; Glick Schiller 1999; Kearney 5 | Brubaker points out that the “differentialist turn has not been restricted to […] the immigration issue” but that it constituted a “much broader and more general movement of thought and opinion”, both in the U.S. and in Western Europe (Brubaker 2001: 532). This substantial normative transformation was propelled by the U.S. civil rights movement, exposing “the unstated but institutionalized equation of American identity with whiteness” (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003: 594). 6 | For an overview of globalization theories and anthropological perspectives on globalization see (e.g. Bruman 1998; Hylland Eriksen 2003; Hylland Eriksen 2007).

Research on Mexican migration to the United States

1995; Levitt 2001; Portes 1997; Portes, et al. 1999b; Rouse 1991; Smith 1998; Vertovec and Cohen 1999). While the dynamics of cross-border connections had been investigated for large-scale organizations, such as firms, in the 1970s already (Faist 2013: 450), several anthropologists and sociologists ‘discovered’ transnationalism in the early 1990s with regard to international migration.7 Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton-Blanc advanced the term ‘transnational’ in their 1994 book Nations Unbound, where they investigated Haitian, Filipino and Grenadian migration to the U.S., defining transnationalism as “the process by which migrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement” (Basch, et al. 1995: 7). In order to fully comprehend migrant experiences, they suggested the term ‘transmigrant’, denoting “immigrants who develop and maintain multiple relationships – familial, economic, social, organizational, religious and political – that span borders” (Basch, et al. 1995: 7). This line of thought reflected a growing skepticism towards the idea of rootedness, territorialized identity and bounded communities, which had been implicit not only in migration studies but in the social sciences in general and which anthropology and neighboring disciplines started to challenge in the early 1990s (Greiner and Sakdapolrak 2013: 374; Gupta and Ferguson 1992; Malkki 1992). Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton-Blanc as well as other scholars of migration regarded transnational connections as a genuinely new phenomenon of the late 20th century, contingent upon what Apadurai described as the “new global cultural economy” (Appadurai 1996: 32), characterized by new and amplified technologies and means of communication and travel (Portes 1999: 29; Portes, et al. 1999a: 27; Smith 1998: 231). Skeptics, particularly historians, hastened to demonstrate that migrants had always sustained ties to their homeland and that there was nothing new about transnationalism as a phenomenon (Foner 1997; Harper 2005; Smith 2003; Wyman 1993). Although conceding that the novelty might have been exaggerated, many scholars see considerable differences between the scope and nature of earlier international migration on the one hand and contemporary population movements on the other. They postulate that cross borders ties have considerably increased and intensified due to communication and transportation technologies, stronger homeland identifications, global economic connections and greater ethnic pluralism in the United States (Levitt 2001: 22f.; Levitt, et al. 2003: 569; Smith 2006: 8). Others do not conceive of maintained ties across borders as a novel reality. Instead, they think of transnationalism as a valuable analytical lens to perceive the 7 | The term ‘transnational’ had been used much earlier in the context of migration studies (Bourne 1916), but it was in the early 1990s that scholars studying migration coined transnationalism to describe a supposedly new form of migration and as a concept to capture aspects previously neglected in the migration process.

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world that sheds light on aspects previously neglected in migration research, which had primarily focused on the receiving society, overlooked cross-border links and taken the nation state as the main unit of analysis (Olwig 2007: 7ff.; Smith 2006: 9; Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003: 596). The transnationalist view, these scholars say, provides a remedy to counteract such shortcomings. It takes a global, deterritorialized perspective and focuses on migrants as active agents and their networks, seeking to understand migratory experiences more comprehensively. The general assumption of maintained political, social, cultural and economic ties that transcend national borders, of deterritorialized and unbounded communities and emerging “transnational social fields” (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004) or “transnational migrant circuits” (Rouse 1991: 14), which the transnationalist perspective entails is inherent in most anthropological and sociological migration research today, the Mexico-U.S. field included (Boehm 2008; Boehm 2009; Boehm 2012; Cohen 2001; Cohen 2004; De Genova 2005; De Genova 2008; Mendoza 2006; Núñez-Madrazo 2007; Re Cruz 2009; Smith 2006; Striffler 2007). Studies assuming a transnationalist view often include an explicit focus on the role and meaning of the migrants’ transborder networks (Olwig 2007).8 Scholars have, for example, investigated how Mexican hometown networks facilitate both the migration and settlement process by providing social capital9 – such as support with visa issues, in finding accommodation, a job and general orientation – for the journey and the arrival in the U.S (Adler 2005; Gomberg-Muñoz 2010; Gomberg-Muñoz 2011; Rodriguez 1987). David Fitzgerald explores how hometown networks impact the politics of an American labor union (Fitzgerald 2004). Steve Striffler finds that the annual trip to their small home town in Guanajuato is crucial to Mexicans working in the Arkansas poultry industry, because it is during those weeks ‘at home’ in Mexico that social ties structuring life ‘at home’ in the U.S. are forged and cultivated (Striffler 2007). Other research following the transnational paradigm explores the meaning of place in the context of transnationalism (Mendoza 2006; Re Cruz 2009) or shows how transnationalist practices emerge in and structure different fields of life, such as politics, religion, sports and family, and how these different arenas in turn constitute spaces where transnational com8 | Earlier, in the 1940s and 1950s, anthropologists already applied network analysis in the field of internal, rural-urban migration in Africa and studied how migrants from rural areas maintained and changed their social relation when they moved to the city (e.g. Gluckman 1963). 9 | Bourdieu und Wacquant (1992) define social capital as “the sum of the re­ sources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalied relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 119).

Research on Mexican migration to the United States

munities are forged (Dürr 2011a; Kummels 2007). Robert Smith, for example, investigates how the social and political lives of a community of Mexicans from southern Puebla living in both Mexico (Ticuani) and the United States (New York) are connected and thus transnationalized through practices and institutions (Smith 1998; Smith 2006).

Revising the transnational perspective At a first glance, the sheer volume of research assuming a transnational perspective seems to suggest that all migration processes are characterized by the emergence of densely knitted transnationalist communities where national borders lose their meaning, distinctions between ‘here’ and ‘there’ dissolve and all migrants become transmigrants, who are connected with both contexts alike or rather inhabit a kind of merged “third space” (Bhabha 1994: 53ff.), devoid of boundaries. A closer look at the numerous refinements the concept has undergone since its conception, however, reveals that this absolute and generalized view has been partially revised. For Mexican migrants living Albuquerque, New Mexico, for example, anthropologist Cristóbal Mendoza finds that “large number of immigrants decide to either sever their ties with Mexico (and somehow integrate into the American melting pot) or return to Mexico in the near future. Real transnational lives are scarce among interviewees” (Mendoza 2006: 558). Research of the second phase of transnationalism after 2000 stresses that only a rather small number of migrants are involved in regular border spanning activities. It delimits ‘regular migrants’ from ‘transmigrants’, defined as “persons who, having migrated from one nation-state to another, live their lives across borders, participating simultaneously in social relations that embed them in more than one nationstate” (Glick Schiller 2003: 105) and as “a new class of immigrants, economic entrepreneurs or political activists who conduct cross-border activities on a regular basis” (Guarnizo, et al. 2003: 1213). Similarly, one of the the most outspoken critics of transnationalism, sociologist Roger Waldinger, who has extensively challenged the concept and argued for a more nuanced understanding of migration and cross-border connections holds that “migrant reality takes more diffuse forms” (Waldinger 2008a: 5) and argues that cross-border ties tend to both vary in intensity and change, often withering over time (Waldinger 2008a: 9). Identifying indicators for different degrees of connectedness across borders – phone calls, remittances, travel – Waldinger (2008a) and Soehl and Waldinger (2010) conclude that only a minority of Latino migrants in the U.S. in fact live lives across borders and remain connected in so many ways that the label ‘transmigrant’ would be justified (Soehl and Waldinger 2010: 1507; Waldinger 2008a: 3, 26). At the same time, however, every act of migration engenders cross-border ties. “Connectivity between source and destination country”, as Waldinger points out “is an inherent aspect of the migration phenomenon” (Waldinger

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2008b: 268). By defining transmigrants in too narrow a sense and drawing a line between migrants who are involved in cross-border activities and those who are not, scholars “miss the pervasive nature of the everyday cross-border activities entailed in travel, communication and remittance sending” (Soehl and Waldinger 2010: 1490). In order to capture all kinds of cross border connections and practices, varying in scope, intensity and durability, Soehl and Waldinger suggest applying the notion of ‘transnational social field’ since it encompasses migrants with all kinds of strong or weak links to the stay at homes (Soehl and Waldinger 2010: 1491). Although some studies today concede that migration is not exclusively characterized by tight transnational connections (Levitt 2001: 8; Levitt, et al. 2003: 569; Smith 2006: 7ff.), transnationalism as a phenomenon has remained a strong focus in anthropological research on migration, investigating how cross-border practices and ideas originate and develop and how these transnational spaces impact both the people involved as well as their environments. By contrast, how and why migrants’ cross-border connections vary in scope and intensity remains largely underexplored. Similarly, studies sometimes mention cases where such ties change, either augmenting or attenuating, or cease to exist and migrants “fall out of the transnational social field” (Soehl and Waldinger 2010: 1491), but there is hardly any research on why and how this occurs. Migrants who are not actively engaged in transnational practices are thus by and large absent from the field of research, at least from qualitative anthropological case studies. Akin to what Morawska has found for migrants who were not involved in ethnic organizations at the heyday of pluralist research (Morawska 1994: 83), these migrants “disappear”. Much of transnational research is still, like Wimmer and Glick Schiller rightly remarked, “conceptually blind for those cases where no transnational communities form among migrants or where existing ones cease to be meaningful for individuals” (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003: 598). It remains therefore a vital task to identify different kinds of cross border ties (from non-existent to all encompassing) and to further explore the conditions which might account for variations and changes in the range and strength of such transnational connections. Singular authors have taken steps in that direction. Mendoza, when studying how local places matter for the emergence of transnational spaces in the lives of Mexican migrants living in Albuquerque, observes that the extent of cross-border ties differs and suggests to examine the migrants’ “attachment to places, migration status, labor market position, or life cycle situation” in order to explain these differences (Mendoza 2006: 558). Waldinger and Soehl find that most Latino migrants in the U.S. are not “living lives across borders” but nevertheless maintain some kind of connection to their home country. The scope and degree of these home country connections, they conclude, depend on the legal and material resources the migrants

Research on Mexican migration to the United States

have at their disposal and are ready to deploy as well as on their acculturation as indicated by language use (Soehl and Waldinger 2010: 1508f.). Both findings call attention to the fact that, as important as it is to consider the agency of migrants, it remains central to be mindful of both the legal and economic constraints they face and of the social and cultural parameters shaping their migration experiences.

A third way: reconciling neo-assimilationism and transnationalism At present, assimilationist and transnationalist perspectives tend to no longer be seen as binary oppositions. The assumption instead is that people can well integrate and adjust (to a certain extent) to the country they moved to while at the same time maintaining and recreating connections with their home country (Brubaker 2001: 533ff.; Faist 2013: 455; Levitt 2001: 5; Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004: 12; Soehl and Waldinger 2010: 1492).10 11 The renewed focus on assimilation in the field of research implies a different, redefined understanding of the concept. It is no longer conceptualized and used normatively and “associated with the ideal of Anglo-conformity” but applied “intransitively in the general, abstract sense of becoming similar” (Brubaker 2001: 533f.). Examining what he calls the ‘return of assimilation’ in U.S. scholarly research since 1985,12 Brubaker argues for the use of the term as a conceptual and analytical instrument in order to be able to include the analysis of certain notions of assimilation, such as adaptation and integration, when studying migrants. He stresses that the modified new concept of assimilation sees migrants no longer as mouldable ‘objects’ but as ‘subjects’, even if assimilation does not constitute a purpose they consciously pursue but rather a contingent, unintended result of their acts and decisions. At an aggregate group level assimilation thus represents “not something done to persons, but 10 | Implicit in this assumption is a specific perspective on group membership starting from the premise that it is possible to belong to and identify with several social contexts at the same time (see chapter 2.3.) 11 | Some scholars view the two phenomena as tightly interlinked and interdependent, assuming a “simultaneity” (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004: 2) of involvements and proposing that transnational life might even foster assimilation or vice versa, being “both the result of it [assimilation] and the context in which negative or positive assimilation takes place” (Smith 2006: 279). Others hold that transnationalism and assimilation are not closely linked, but actually pertain to different phenomena, since “whereas assimilation refers to a mode of immigrant incorporation into a receiving society, transnationalism […] is a mode of connection between and across the borders of various states” (Faist 2013: 455). 12 | Brubaker examines the ‘return of assimilation’ not only regarding academic research in the U.S. but also in French public discourse and German public policy.

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rather something accomplished by them […] as an unintended consequence of myriad individual actions and choices in particular social, cultural, economic and political contexts” (Brubaker 2001: 543, original emphasis). In a similar vein, sociologists Richard Alba and Victor Nee propose rethinking the concept of assimilation since its core, they argue “has not lost its utility for illuminating many of the experiences of contemporary immigrants and the new second generation” (Alba and Nee 2003: 9). Drawing on the Chicago School’s conception of assimilation formulated in the 1930s (Park 1930), Alba and Nee reformulate the concept, defining assimilation as “the decline of an ethnic distcinction and its corollary cultural and social differences” (Alba and Nee 2003: 11). Their definition, similar to Brubaker’s stance, is devoid of the normative impetus the concept’s earlier, structural-functionalist meaning implied. It presumes assimilation into a ‘mainstream’, albeit supposing mainstream not as static but rather flexible part of society, which might alter itself in the process. When assimilation is used in such a non-normative, more general sense to describe “a direction of change, not a particular degree of similarity” (Brubaker 2001: 534, original emphasis), it constitutes an illuminating, even indispensible, device for exploring migrant experiences. Even understanding what motivates elderly Mexicans living in Chicago to stay or return is hardly possible without taking into account their experiences of adaptation and integration.

Beyond assimilation and transnationalism: challenging groups as units of analysis A recent trend in migration studies contests the central assumption inherent in the (traditional) assimilationist as well as in the pluralist and transnationalist framework. It posits that considering nationally or ethnically bounded groups to be the underlying principle of social organization in the migration process – what Wimmer and Glick Schiller call ‘methodological nationalism’ – does not always adequately capture the migrants’ reality (Pfaff-Czarnecka 2013: 7f.; Wimmer 2004; Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003). For the everyday life of migrants, other categories, such as religion or class, might be more important than ethnic groups and nations. This line of thought accords with Brubaker’s, who also criticizes the tendency to take groups as given units of analysis in the study of nationalism and ethnicity and suggests going beyond potentially essentializing ‘groupism’ (Brubaker 2004; Brubaker 2009). In a similar vein, Morawska accuses pluralist migration research of focusing too much on ethnic communities and missing the migrants who did not form part of those communities and therefore “disappeared” from scholarly research (Morawska 1994: 83). Although this concern about essentializing perspectives informed much of the transnationalist literature, too, and contributed to its nascence (Faist 2000: 215; Faist 2013: 451), the concept of transnationalism was accused of falling into

Research on Mexican migration to the United States

the same trap it had sought to alleviate. The transnational perspective aspires to redress the ‘container model of society’ by highlighting processes connecting territories. Nonetheless, it exaggerates the “internal homogeneity and boundedness of transnational communities [and] overestimates the binding power for individual action” (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003: 598), thereby again taking bounded groups as units of analysis. By doing so, thus the critique, scholars of transnationalism tend to reify exactly the kind of groupism they had intended to remedy. Besides, transnationalism still focuses on national divisions thereby reinforcing the meaning of national identity as opposed to the transnational ‘other’. The concept of ‘translocality’ has recently emerged as a new perspective to counteract this shortcoming and take the local contexts more into account (Brickell and Datta 2011; Greiner and Sakdapolrak 2013). In this study, I partly adhere to the constraints of a groupist approach since I am interested in a particular group of people, elderly Mexican migrants living in Chicago. Nonetheless, I do not focus on one bounded Mexican community living in Chicago but on individuals from several backgrounds residing in different neighborhoods. I do not assume that these people due to their being Mexican migrants necessarily share some kind of collective identity and characteristics guiding their actions and perceptions and constitute a homogeneous migrant community. Instead, I put individuals as members of different collectives at the forefront of my investigation and examine their trajectories, asking whether they share future deliberations and in how far this is linked with similarities and differences in their potentially similar migratory background and present situation. By taking into account not one migrant community from one place of origin but including people from different parts in Mexico in the sample, I seek to also consider migrants who are not be part of a transnational community.

Implications for this study The transnational perspective has called attention to the fact that migrants perpetuate cross-border relationships and thus substantially widened the perspective since migration research before largely ignored sustained ties and loyalties to the home country. In accordance with this insight, this study builds upon the premise that international migration always engenders activities, ties and practices transcending borders and that transnationalism as a phenomenon is (and always has been) the norm rather than a new phenomenon of the late 20th century. Immigration, as Waldinger reminds us, has never been migration for settlement, but migration “flows leave large numbers of persons moving back and forth, not sure where to settle, let alone how much importance to place on connections between ‘here’ and ‘there’” (Waldinger 2008a: 4). Consequently, I assume that the Mexican migrants who migrated to Chicago some decades ago are likely to have maintained some kind of ties with Mexico and to move in

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transnational social fields. Transnationalism as a lens represents therefore an important device to grasp the complexity of return intentions. Nevertheless, it would be misleading to start from the premise that all migration processes are characterized by lasting, static transnational relationships where boundaries between ‘here’ and ‘there’ become entirely blurred. The intensity, scope and duration of those ties is likely to vary – both between individuals and over time –, not least because international migration is embedded in both social and political processes. Changing social and cultural frameworks as well as immigration politics and policies exert considerable influence on the migrants’ movements and the developments of their connections and loyalties, rendering international migration “not just a social but a political phenomenon” (Waldinger 2008a: 8). Regardless of how external factors shape the degree and scope of cross-border connectedness migrants maintain, individuals might also consciously decide to sever the ties to their old home. Hence, focusing on cross-border connections alone does not cover the whole range of migrant experiences. While some degree of transnational involvement is probable, it is at the same time likely that older Mexicans who have lived in Chicago for a significant part of their lives to have related and adapted to the U.S. context to varying degress. To include assimilation as a concept when investigating the situatedness of elderly Mexican migrants in Chicago seems therefore useful to capture the migrants’ involvements with both contexts. When speaking about assimilation, my understanding follows Brubaker’s suggestion to comprehend and use the concept in a general sense, designating “a direction of change, not a particular degree of similarity” (Brubaker 2001: 534). Transnational connections and processes of assimilation are not mutually exclusive. They often occur simultaneously and impact each other (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004: 12), without necessarily being causally related. A “gradual withering away of home country ties can be interpreted as evidence of assimilation”, Waldinger notes, albeit cautioning that “such an interpretation would miss the fundamental tensions produced when international migration encounters the liberal state and its bounded, political community [since] the potential to maintain contacts to the home country (or the hometown) is impeded by states’ ever more vigorous efforts to control migratory movements” (Waldinger 2008a: 25, original emphasis). Migration always constitutes a social, cultural and political process since e.g. legislation, social networks and cultural values exert considerable influence on ideas and practices of connection and incorporation. Following Alba and Nee (2003), I therefore suppose that the reasons for and trajectories of this changing situatedness – in this case of elderly Mexicans living in Chicago – are constituted by the “interplay between purposive action of immigrants […] and the contexts – that is, institutional structures, cultural belief and social networks – that shape it” (Alba and Nee 2003: 14). A comprehensive view

Research on Mexican migration to the United States

of return intentions of elderly Mexicans in Chicago has to take into account potential transformations (attenuations as well as enhancements) of relationships to both societies and distinguish between degrees of incorporation into a transnational social field, including possible exits and orientation towards one country. Ultimately, the question is less whether or not cross-border ties prevail and new ties are developed or not but rather why and how this occurs in varying forms. As conceptual lenses, both transnationlism and assimilationism constitute indispensible devices for understanding the changing, dynamic nature of the migrants’ involvements with their contexts. When analyzing why Mexicans living in Chicago aspire a certain residence after retiring, I will therefore take into account both their expressions of what Levitt and Glick Schiller call “practices and (conditions for) ideologies of connection and community” (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004: 5) and their assimilationist practices and ideologies. The institutional, social and cultural frameworks the migrants interact with will also be part of the anaylsis.

2.1.2 Mexican migration to Chicago Although Chicago has been a destination for Mexican migrants for more than one hundred years (see chapter 4.3) and counts the second-largest Mexican population among U.S. cities today after Los Angeles (Arias and Durand 2008: 13; De Genova 2005: 117), its Mexican communities have, compared to e.g. communities in Los Angeles, been object of fairly little ethnographic attention. Singular works, however, do exist and allow glimpses into Mexican lives in Chicago from the 1920s until today. In the following, I will outline the development of research on Chicago’s Mexican communities and elaborate on some of the studies.

Early works on Mexican Chicago When Mexicans started migrating to the Midwest in greater numbers in the 1920s, this captured the interest of three sociologists and anthropologists at the University of Chicago. The first social scientist to pay attention to Chicago’s growing Mexican migrant population was Robert Redfield. Redfield, who was trained at the University of Chicago’s department of sociology and together with Robert Park and Ernest Burgess contributed to the foundation of the Chicago School of Sociology and the establishment of urban sociology 13, started 13 | A group of researchers at the department of sociology at the University of Chicago, under the supervision of Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, at that time started to address how the arrival of different immigrant groups in Chicago transformed and affected the city (e.g. Park et al. 1967). This endeavor resulted in the development

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doing ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago’s emerging Mexican communities in the 1920s. For six months in 1924 and 1925, he conducted interviews in three areas in and around Chicago – the Hull House area on the West Side, South Chicago and the Calumet region – where the first migrants from Mexico established themselves. Redfield never published his findings and moved on to conduct research in Mexico, first in Tepoztlán and later in Yucatán (Redfield 1928a; Redfield 1928b; Redfield 1930) but parts of his field diaries were edited by Jorge Durand and Pactricia Arias, translated into Spanish and published some years ago (Arias and Durand 2008). They provide fascinating insights into evolving Mexican structures in the Midwest, documenting the experiences of migrants from Mexico in a place that until then had hardly had any contact with people from there (Arias and Durand 2008: 14). This first investigation of Mexican life in Chicago Redfield initiated in the mid 1920s was followed by studies by two fellow sociologists, Manuel Gamio and Paul Taylor, a few years later. In his book Mexican Immigration to the United States. A Study of Human Migration and Adjustment, Gamio analyzed Mexican migration to several places in the United States, among them Chicago (Gamio 1930). Based on the same material he also published life histories of Mexican migrants (Gamio 1931). Paul Taylor, finally, was the first researcher to conduct multi-sited fieldwork, studying Mexican migration in the three major migration destinations – California, Texas and Illinois – and following the migrants back to Mexico when many were deported from the U.S. during the economic crisis in 1929 (Arias and Durand 2008: 20). Taylor apparently also used Redfield’s field notes from his research in Chicago and exchanged ideas with Manuel Gamio. His book on returned Mexican migrants in Jalisco was thus influenced and bears traces of both Redfield’s and Gamio’s works (Taylor 1933). Just like the growth of a Mexican migrant population in Chicago had spurred the interest of researchers and resulted in the three studies named above, the deportation of a large number of Mexicans between 1929 and 1937 and a concomitant significant decrease in their numbers led to a decline in research interest, both in Chicago and in the U.S. in general. Apart from some works on the Bracero program14 and its corollaries, investigations on Mexican migration to Chicago remained sparse in the decades that followed. It was not until the phenomenon itself gained new momentum in the 1970s that social scientists started exploring it again (Arias and Durand 2008: 20). Among the of an urban sociology, which focused on the researcher’s direct involvement in the groups examined and emphasized process and transformation instead of assuming static social structures. It is known as the first Chicago School today (Bulmer 1984; Van Maanen 2011: 18). Robert Redfield conducted his fieldwork as part of this group and was supervised by Ernest Burgess (Arias and Durand 2008: 15). 14 | For details on the Bracero program see chapter 4.1.

Research on Mexican migration to the United States

first to do so during this second wave was the historian Louise Año Nuevo de Kerr who, in line with the dominant scientific paradigm of that time, ethnic pluralism (see chapter 2.1), addressed the development of Mexican structures in Chicago over the course of 50 years, from 1920 to 1970 (Kerr 1976; Kerr 1975). A few years after Kerr’s research and reflecting the same differentialist orientation, Felix Padilla explored the emergence of a common Latino ethnic consciousness among Chicago’s Mexican and Puerto Rican population (Padilla 1985). Since the two immigrant groups displayed cultural similarities and experienced the same social inequality in Chicago, Padilla argued, they developed a shared Latino identity exceeding national affiliations. More recently, the historian Gabriela Arredondo has analyzed an earlier stage of Mexican community building in Chicago, the period between 1916 and 1939 and thus the beginnings of a notable Mexican presence in the Midwest (Arredondo 2008). Arredondo traces the establishment of Mexican immigrants in Chicago at that time. She stresses how the revolutionary context the immigrants had left behind in Mexico contributed to a specifically strong common identity formation ultimately creating a distinct notion of what it meant to be Mexican in Chicago.

Current research on Mexican Chicago As to research on Mexican migrants and Mexican life in Chicago today, two anthropologists who contributed notable ethnographies on the topic are Nicholas de Genova and Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz. Both apply a transnational perspective and put labor relations and living conditions of Mexican migrants in Chicago at the core of their investigations. Nonetheless, they capture very distinct aspects of reality in their ethnographies, which are also based on different fieldwork settings. Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz looks at a group of undocumented Mexican migrants working in an Italian restaurant in Chicago as busboys. She explores the network linking these migrants in Chicago as well as their hometown in Guanajuato (Gomberg-Muñoz 2010; Gomberg-Muñoz 2011). In a 2010 article, Gomberg-Muñoz analyzes how the busboys consciously perpetuate and confirm the stereotype of hard workers frequently attributed to Mexican migrants in the United States in order to expand their scope of action (agency) within their confined undocumented status, thereby heightening their self-esteem and ultimately improving their situation. Gomberg-Muñoz’s work is noteworthy in that it focuses on the agency the busboys have despite their undocumented status. It thus diverges from the more common perspective portraying undocumented migrants as victims whose legal status deprives them of any power and means to shape their life. The work of Nicholas De Genova by contrast represents this second perspective, stressing structural forces rather than agency. De Genova worked as an English teacher in several factories in Chicago and conducted fieldwork in those industrial workplaces as well as in the Mexican workers’ communities. Portraying Mexican Chicago as a transnational

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space linking Chicago with communities in Mexico, De Genova examines how structural inequalities have produced ‘Mexican’ as a racial category in Chicago (De Genova 2004; De Genova 2005; De Genova 2008; De Genova and RamosZayas 2003a; De Genova and Ramos-Zayas 2003b). This racialization, which has to be seen in the context of a prevalent black-white binary characterizing U.S. society, and Chicago in particular, De Genova argues, has resulted in the image of Mexicans as the United States’ quintessential ‘illegal aliens’. Another contribution to research on contemporary Mexican life in Chicago stems from the field of linguistics. Like both Gomberg-Muñoz and de Genova, linguistic anthropologist Marcia Farr in her book Rancheros in Chicagoacán (Farr 2007) explores identity formation of Mexican migrants in Chicago, albeit from a different angle. Analyzing the styles of speaking of a group of Mexican ranchero families from Michoacán living in Chicago, Farr seeks to comprehend what the use of language tells us about the construction of local identities characterizing the migration process.15 This study explores an aspect of Mexican migration to Chicago previously not considered in that it examines the city’s older population of Mexican migrants and their altered return considerations, taking the future residence plans as a lens to grasp their migratory trajectories and peculiarities. Among the studies published on Mexican migration to Chicago only one of the early ones, Paul Taylor’s research on the deportation in 1930, is concerned with return migration, albeit of the involuntary kind. In what follows, I will give an overview of the state of the art in the field of return migration in general and that concerning Mexico-U.S. migration in particular.

2.2

R e turn migr ation

In 1945 the German sociologist Alfred Schütz wrote an article addressing the act of returning home and the consequences of having been away from home (Schütz 1945). Since the 1940s, when Schütz published the article, were less influenced by international migration than by the Second World War, Schütz did not primarily refer to migrants when sketching the profile of ‘the homecomer’ but had returning soldiers in mind. Schütz ponders upon how both home and homecomer change during the time of absence and how this creates a feeling of estrangement when the return home is realized: “To the homecomer home shows – at least in the beginning – an unaccustomed face”, Schütz concludes 15 | There is also some literature describing and analyzing Mexican life in Chicago that stems from the politically active part of the Mexican community in Pilsen (Ramirez 2011), as well as a mainly photography-based account of Mexicans in Chicago (Jirasek and Tortolero 2001).

Return migration

(Schütz 1945: 369). While ‘the homecomer’ has preserved memories of home and unconsciously altered these memories by integrating new experiences during his time away, the environment he calls home – both in terms of places and people – has also transformed and will be different from the one he left. Schütz equals leaving home and being away from home with tasting “the magic fruit of strangeness, be it sweet or bitter” (Schütz 1945: 374), which makes it hard to arrive at home again and overcome the feeling of alienation. With these reflections, Alfred Schütz was among the first social scientists to investigate the topic of return. Much that has been written about return migration and the consequences of return builds on Schütz’s ideas.

2.2.1 Return migration – universe of cases Voluntary return migration was hardly a topic of interest until the 1980s, when worldwide migration movements had gained new momentum and migration processes started to be viewed in transnational terms (Sinatti 2011: 154). With this shift in perspective the question of return also came into focus; sustained linkages to the home country implied a likelihood of going back. For the first half of the 20th century, for example, Jasso and Rosenzweig found that the number of U.S. immigrants (15.7 million) was offset by a significant numer of emigrants from the U.S., most of them probably returning migrants (Jasso and Rosenzweig 1982, in Dustmann and Weiss 2007: 4). A similar and sometimes higher percentage of returning migrants was found for other periods in U.S. history as well as for migration to Central Europe (Dustmann and Weiss 2007: 4). It became clear then that the migration project did not always end upon arrival in the host society, but that most migrants planned to return and often did so after a while. In fact, some authors have argued, the aspiration to return might be the primary reason inducing migrants to maintain close ties with their countries of origin and to build transnational social fields (Cassarino 2010: 271; Sinatti 2011: 154). Prompted by this insight, the social sciences16 began exploring (1) how migrants experienced the return home (Cerase 1974; Ghosh 2000; Guarnizo 1997; Potter, et al. 2005; Wong, et al. 2007), (2) what kind of impact the returnees had on their country of origin (Gitter, et al. 2008) (3) why they chose or intended to go back or not (Christou 2013; Constant and Massey 2002; Jensen and Pedersen 2007; Olsson 2013) and (4) how the idea of return influenced their daily life, attitudes to and attachments in the country they had migrated to, possibly reinforcing transnational practices (Brettell 1979; MoranTaylor and Menjívar 2005). The debate on return migration thus touches upon 16 | Disciplines studying return migration include sociology, economics, human geography, social anthropology and history.

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a broad range of issues and does not only address actual return. It also includes cases of ‘partial’ return in the form of back and forth movements as well as the phenomenon of what sociologist Muhammad Anwar, when exploring the lives of Pakistani migrants in Britain, called the “myth of return” (Anwar 1979).17 The ‘myth of return’, designating the phenomenon of envisaged return that is never realized but accompanies the migration process as a permanent goal, is well documented in the literature for various migratory contexts (Bolognani 2007; Brettell 1979; Senyürekli and Menjívar 2012; Zetter 1999). Other expressions denoting the same phenomenon include ‘unsettled return’ (Sinatti 2011) or ‘imagined return’ (Serrano 2008). Over the course of the past 40 years, both a number of empirical studies (some of them cited above) and theoretical works have been published on return migration (Cassarino 2010; Gmelch 1980; Jeffery and Murison 2011; King 2000; Salaff 2013). Scholars of transnationalism, explicitly or implicitly, often include the migrants’ ideology of return in their research since the planned return matters for maintaining transnational engagements and attachments (Conway 2005: 276; Sinatti 2011: 154). Drotbohm, for example, in her study on Cape Verdean returnees, concludes that the idea of return and actual returns are crucial for confirming “transnational relatedness” (Drotbohm 2012: 133). In a similar vein, Conway characterizes the intention to return as “essential ingredient in transnational migrant’s strategic praxis” (Conway 2005: 276). In addition to studies on current examples of return migration, historians, too, have investigated the issue, acknowledging that already in the era of European migration to the United States in the 19th and early 20th century approximately one third of the migrants eventually returned to Europe (Morawska 1991: 277f.; Wyman 2005: 16). Despite the insight that many migratory movements are temporary and return thus forms an inherent part of the process, return migration remains a topic that has been given relatively little academic attention, especially when it comes to theory building (King 2000: 40; Moran-Taylor and Menjívar 2005: 91; Senyürekli and Menjívar 2012: 3). Constant and Massey suspect that this state of research might have to do with the problem of acquiring reliable quantitative data on return migration since many countries do not keep statistics on emigration (Constant and Massey 2002: 7). King additionally points to the scarce records on returning migrants kept by their countries of origin (King 2000: 9). Regarding studies of the economics of migration, Dustmann and Weiss report that much of the literature still treats migration as if it always was permanent and therefore does not include return in the equations (Dustmann 17 | Muhammad Anwar studied Pakistani migrants in Britain and observed that most of them wished to go back to Pakistan but due to economic circumstances most stayed in Britain, albeit maintaining the ‘myth of return’ (Anwar 1979).

Return migration

and Weiss 2007: 1). Additionally, one could guess, the same challenge Alejandro Portes has identified for migration research in general might also be true when seeking to develop theories on return migration: Both migration and return migration are such multilayered and cumulative processes comprising so many different aspects and areas that research often stays on a very empirical, data-driven level, addressing specific cases and avoiding higher levels of systematization and abstraction (Portes 1999: 27).18 Although still fairly modest in scope, the body of empirical studies on return migration has been growing constantly since the 1980s.19 The following pages present a more detailed look at this literature. I will only discuss insights derived on the topics this study is concerned with – intentions of return and the reasons behind those aspirations – and leave aside the issue of actual return experiences and consequences. Research on the reasons for returning tends to be tightly linked with international migration theories explaining the causes for migration. At the same time, studies investigating return migration usually reflect, albeit often implicitly, certain assumptions on the migrants’ (changing) incorporation into both home and host society and emerging or maintained transnational spaces. Thus return, too, is sometimes interpreted in economic terms, focusing on individual or household calculations and migration experiences, sometimes set in a structural framework, stressing contexts and structures in both societies, sometimes, in the transnational perspective, seen as part of the migration cycle, and sometimes framed by social network theory (Cassarino 2010: 262). Due to these widely varying approaches and the lack of a comprehensive focus on the one hand, and the heterogeneous nature of return migrations on the other, the characteristics identified as leading to permanent return differ extensively and are sometimes contradictory. The individual’s economic situation, the larger economic context in both countries, political events, the institutional framework, ties to relatives and friends, cultural norms and values, safety issues, personal experiences of exclusion and inclusion and many more – the range of 18 | Portes discards endeavors to formulate ‘grand’ migration theories as futile and vacuous since he deems it impossible to conflate the micro- and macrostructural elements addressed in the field. Despite rejecting overarching theories as too highly generalized and therefore useless he calls for greater efforts to systematically relate the large amount of empirical data collected with existing theoretical statements on a meso-level (Portes 1999: 27). 19 | This in turn prompted the formulation of various typologies of return migration. The anthropologist George Gmelch for instance, based on a 1980 literature review, developed a typology of return migrations, distinguishing between returnees who had migrated with a temporary intention and those who had aspired to migrate permanently and were either forced to return or chose to do so (Gmelch 1980: 137f.).

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factors interpreted as key motivations is vast. Sometimes aspects in the country of origin (so called pull factors) are highlighted, and sometimes circumstances in the host country are identified as more influential. Lindström for example puts an emphasis on the economic dynamics in Mexican areas of origin to explain how long migrants stay in the United States before returning (Lindstrom 1996: 1996). Jensen and Pedersen in contrast take primarily the host country’s (in their case Denmark’s) labor market structure and its welfare system into account when searching for the motives impacting return intentions (Jensen and Pedersen 2007). This emphasis on economic aspects is also evident in an article by Dustmann and Weiss, who try to explain return among different immigrant groups in the UK despite higher earnings potential in the host country (Dustmann and Weiss 2007). In contrast, Moran Taylor and Menjívar do not find evidence for economic motives when examining the varying intentions to return home among Guatemalan and Salvadoran migrants in the United States (Moran-Taylor and Menjívar 2005). They stress the location of one’s immediate family as the most important factor for return decisions. The relevance of social ties for return aspirations is corroborated in Menjívar and Senyürekli’s analysis of the desire to return among Turkish migrants in Minnesota (Senyürekli and Menjívar 2012). In this case, however, relationships with family and friends are just one factor among numerous others the authors identify, concluding that a multiplicity of factors, both on the micro and the macro level, both in Turkey and the U.S., intertwine and impact the aspiration to return. Senyürekli and Menjívar view this interaction of factors as a dynamic process that is constantly changing and tips “the scales towards or away from return migration” (Senyürekli and Menjívar 2012: 14). The variety of concurring reasons which sway the idea of returning is also stressed for the case of Iranian refugees living in Sweden. Here, Graham and Koshravi report that safety issues, economic aspects, conditions in Iran and an altered understanding of gender roles figure prominently (Graham and Koshravi 1997). In view of these heterogeneous insights, it becomes clear why arriving at systematic patterns or theoretical statements on return intentions is a challenging task. Constant and Massey, too, in their analysis of factors influencing the return decisions of Turks from Germany, conclude that return migration constitutes a “complicated socio-economic process” and therefore varies considerably depending on what group one observes. After having tested contrasting hypothesis about return migration which they derived from two classical migration theories (Neoclassical Economics and the New Economics of Labor Migration), they suggest that the decision to return hinges upon a range of different attachments – social, political, psychological and economic ones – to both home and host country (Constant and Massey 2002: 32). Even if the research on return migration has produced extremely heterogeneous results, it is possible to identify some common patterns and central

Return migration

themes providing fruitful links for this study. The four overarching themes are (1) the recurring question of choices and constraints, (2) the meaning of social and cultural embeddedness, (3) temporality (intentions of return change over time and are connected to the meaning of past experiences and time spent at a place) and (4) a tendency to identify singular motives rather then exploring how these are interrelated. First of all, the role of both micro level factors, such as migrants’ social ties, and macro level factors, such as the economic and legal situation in the two countries, is addressed in many of the studies. Both levels constitute choices and constraints for the migrant. How the two are linked ties in with the question of how structure and agency are related that keeps challenging the social sciences.20 In how far are migrants free to choose where they want to live after retirement and in how far is this step restricted by external structures? This question is inherent in the works on return migration, but a perspective that integrates this duality of structure and agency, of micro and macro level, is still missing. A second recurring theme in the research is the location of “meaningful others”, such as family and friends (Salaff 2013: 466), and other attachments as a central factor influencing return intentions. Janet Salaff, following sociologist James March (1994), identifies two dominant frameworks of decision-making concerning return migration: The perspective of rational decision-making postulates that all choices are economically grounded, whereas the opposing framework highlights the meaning of relationships and the social and cultural embeddedness of actors (Salaff 2013: 460f.). The articles by Jensen and Pedersen and Dustmann and Weiss referred to above belong to the framework of rational decision-making, while Moran-Taylor and Menjívar, Senyürekli and Menjívar and to a certain extent also Constant and Massey focus more on the socio-cultural factors. Even when studies apply an economically rooted framework and do not include the role of social ties in their models, they often come to the conclusion that family and friends, too, matter (Jensen and Pedersen 2007). A third element running through much of the research relates to the multifacted role temporal aspects might play for return considerations. First, intentions of return are not static, but constitute highly dynamic processes, changing according to different conditions and individual attitudes, (e.g. Senyürekli and Menjívar 2012: 5). Second, temporality sometimes implicitly informs investigations of return considerations when past events, contexts or time spans are 20 | Among the scholars who have addressed this question are Pierre Bourdieu, (e.g. Bourdieu 1979; Bourdieu 1987), Anthony Giddens (Giddens 1984), William Sewell (Sewell 1992; Sewell 2005) and Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Mische (Emirbayer and Mische 1998).

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identified as decisive factors. Cassarino, in his review of conceptual approaches on returnees, points to the duration of stay as a central element (Cassarino 2010). Constant and Massey find that the original context of migration constitutes one of the elements influencing return intentions (Constant and Massey 2002: 9). Consequently, memories of past circumstances feature as prominently for return intentions as the present situation. Return migration is frequently linked with a number of experiences characterizing the migration project, not least with “internally formed and externally imposed understandings of ethnic identity, home and belonging” (Salaff 2013: 463). I will return to the role of belonging for return migration later in this chapter. Fourth, it is striking that much research on return migration identifies a variety of factors but does not investigate how these factors are interrelated and interact. Do some factors depend on or are more important then others? If so why? Is there some kind of chronological order? These kinds of questions remain unanswered. Salaff, when identifying the two different frameworks of decision-making mentioned above, calls for exploring the ways in which economic motives and socio-cultural motives interact in affecting return migration (Salaff 2013: 461). In this study, I will seize on the four aspects by (1) taking the interplay of macro and micro level and structure and agency into account, (2) putting social and cultural embeddedness at the center of the analysis, (3) including the role of past experiences and progression over time and (4) combining these perspectives in order to establish an integrated framework which does not only shed light on transformations of return intentions but also illuminates how the aspects motivating the migrants’ future considerations are related.

2.2.2 Return migration – the U.S.-Mexico case Most Mexican migrants do not intend to settle permanently in the United States (Massey, et al. 2002: 62ff.; Reyes 1997: 11; Waldinger 2008a: 24). Although their idea of return, just as in other migration contexts, often turns into a myth over time (Anwar 1979), a significant number of migrants actually do move back to Mexico permanently. Several studies indicate what factors might influence the likelihood of return. Among the ones identified are the length of time the migrants have spent in the United States, their experiences in and ideas about both settings, structural conditions, the migrants’ legal status, gender and stage in the life course (Massey, et al. 2002: 62f.; Mendoza 2006: 550ff.; Passel, et al. 2012: 6ff.; Reyes 1997: 67). Examining a group of undocumented Mexican migrants living in Texas, California and Illinois between the 1970s and the 1990s, Reyes and Mameesh reported in 2002 that half of the sample returned to Mexico after less than one year (Reyes and Mameesh 2002:

Return migration

591).21 Similarly, for return migration to Western Mexico, Reyes found in 1997 that less than a third of the sample she examined – comprising both documented and undocumented migrants – remained in the U.S. for more than ten years (Reyes 1997: 46). Data from the Mexican Migration Project for the period between 1965 to 1985, analyzed by Massey, Durand and Malone (2002), confirm the high propensity to return within a few years, albeit only for certain parts of the population. Undocumented males were likely (the probability ranging from 55 to 60 percent) to return to Mexico within two years, while both undocumented women (30 to 40 percent) and documented migrants in general (20 to 30 percent) displayed a lower propensity to return within the same time (Massey, et al. 2002: 62f.). In this case, the length of time spent in the United States mattered for return but was strongly linked with gender and legal status. Since 2007 return migration to Mexico seems to equal or even outnumber immigration from Mexico. A recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project attributes this development to a number of changing structural factors, more precisely a weakened U.S labor market, slowly but steadily improving economic conditions in Mexico and heightened border enforcement (Passel, et al. 2012: 6ff.). Despite the frequency of return migration from the United States to Mexico, research on the topic is rather sparse. Some ethnographic studies address the issue (Adler Hellman 2008; Massey, et al. 1987; Mendoza 2006; Smith 2006) but do not explore it in depth. Research investigating return migration to Mexico in detail includes Belinda Reyes’ article Dynamics of Immigration (Reyes 1997) and Javier Serrano’s study on the ‘imagined return’ (Serrano 2008).22 Reyes, looking at migrants from Western Mexico, seeks to understand what characteristics and experiences render return migration to this region more likely. She starts by reviewing several migration theories applied to the context of return migration and conducts a multivariate analysis to determine the characteristics that distinguish the stayers from the returners. Her main results are that legal documentation, higher education and working in a skilled job tip the scale towards remaining in the United States (Reyes 1997: 67). Social networks in the U.S., too, made it more likely that the migrant would stay in the United States. Interestingly, this finding proved robust irrespective of what the economic outcomes for the individual were. Serrano’s study differs from Reyes’ research in that he does not address actual return migration. Instead, he 21 | The data Reyes’ and Mameesh’s study is based on are not confined to permanent returns but include temporary or circular migrations, that is people who migrate, stay in the United States for a few years and go back, migrate again and again return after some time, living in a permanent migration circuit. 22 | Paul Taylor in his 1933 study examined a case of return migation to Mexico, but this return took place in the context of mass deportation and was not voluntary.

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explores how the idea and hope of returning sometime in the future, which he finds present among all migrants, constitutes the decisive element enabling the migrant to dare and undertake the migration project in the first place (Serrano 2008: 4ff.). Gathering the strength to cross the border, Serrano argues, would not be possible if the migrants did not have return and a better future in Mexico as their ultimate goal.

2.2.3 Return migration upon retirement Several studies have shown that migrants tend to return to their country of origin at specific times of their life course. The likelihood of returning is highest within a few years after migrating (Dustmann and Weiss 2007: 2) and after retirement (King 2000: 41; Klinthäll 2006: 173; Massey, et al. 1987: 310; Percival 2013a: 8). As Jeffrey and Murison highlight, the motives for returning differ significantly depending on what stage of the life course the individual is at (Jeffery and Murison 2011: 134). Following a life course perspective on migration (Baykara-Krumme, et al. 2012: 21; Gardner 2009) and drawing on Gardner’s observation that the “decisions concerning movement between places […] are […] often guided by the stages that men and women have reached in their lives” (Gardner 2002: 17), return migration upon retirement constitutes a particular type of return migration and requires specific consideration. This is not only the case because retirement usually represents a turning point in life where the statuses and roles of a person change considerably and future goals often become the subject of reevaluation (Percival 2013b: 127). Additionally, in the context of migration, the economic reasons that might have prompted people to stay in the country they migrated to lose importance after the end of the working life (Bolzman 2013: 68; Hunter 2011: 179). The migrants are ‘free’ to move again. Thus, the framework of factors fueling a possible return is reorganized, other aspects like medical care, retirement benefits and the location of social ties might gain weight and migrants might be inclined to consider return as a realistic option again. A number of academic findings corroborate these assumptions (Bolzman, et al. 2006: 1360; Hunter 2011: 179; Yahirun 2009: 2). Return considerations upon retirement also differ from return intentions earlier in life since individuals have usually spent many years in the host country, and over time most likely reconfigured their attachments to places, people and culture more substantially (Percival 2013a: 8).23 In what follows, I will examine 23 | This builds upon the premises that, when moving to a new country, people tend to adapt to a certain degree, as well as to keep in contact with the context they left behind (see chapter 2.1 for implications of transnationalism and neo assimilationism). The experiences of becoming attached and detached this entails do not consti-

Return migration

return migration upon retirement by addressing the universe of cases first and focusing on the Mexico-U.S. case subsequently.

Return migration upon retirement – universe of cases Despite a constantly growing population of aging migrants, the amount of research concerned with the issue of return migration upon retirement remains limited (Laubenthal and Pries 2012: 393; Percival 2013a: 2). Existing research comes from the disciplines of economics (Coulon and Wolff 2005) (Klinthäll 2006), political science (Hunter 2011), cultural and human geography (Blunt, et al. 2013; Christou 2013; Conway, et al. 2013; Ganga 2006), social work (Percival 2013b), sociology (Bolzman, et al. 2006; Krumme 2004; Yahirun 2009) and social anthropology (Olsson 2013). All these studies explicitly or implicitly agree on three possible scenarios migrants opt for after retiring (returning, staying, going back and forth) and explore in some way or other the motivations behind the range of return considerations upon retirement. Some of the articles base their analysis on a qualitative approach, while others have a quantitative basis, using survey data. Whereas Ganga (2006) in her study of Italian migrants in Nottingham, Hunter (2011), who studies migrant hostel workers in France, Krumme (2004) exploring Turkish pensioners in Germany as well as Olsson (2013) and Christou (2013), who look into the return motives of Chilean migrants in Sweden and Greek migrants in Denmark, chose to conduct loosely structured or semi-structured interviews, Bolzman (2013) combines qualitative interviews and survey data. Several other studies operate with medium to large scale survey data. Coulon and Wolff, investigating the “va-et-vient” strategy of retired immigrants in France, draw on a survey of 6000 immigrants (Coulon and Wolff 2005). Bolzman, Fibbi and Vial analyze a smaller number of cases in Switzerland (440 individuals) to examine the return intentions and underlying criteria of Spanish and Italian migrants (Bolzman, et al. 2006). Yahirun, in her study of what determines the return migration of foreign born men above the age of 50 in Germany, uses longitudinal data from the German socioeconomic panel (Yahirun 2009). Klinthäll, finally, uses data from the Swedish Longitudinal Immigrant Database to analyze the impact of retirement on return for 100,000 migrants living in Sweden (Klinthäll 2006). Even though the studies share a common topic, the authors differ as to the concrete research questions they seek to answer. While several studies investigate return considerations and underlying motivations at retirement in general (Bolzman 2013; Bolzman, et al. 2006; Christou 2013; Hunter 2011; Yahirun 2009), others focus solely on the decision to go back and forth, or “va-et-vient” tute a linear process, but nevertheless are likely to have a more profound effect after for example 40 years than after two years.

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(Coulon and Wolff 2005; Krumme 2004), to stay (Ganga 2006) or to return (Olsson 2007; Olsson 2013). Regarding the results, the studies first of all aim and arrive at different levels of insights. This is partly related to whether the authors set out to test specific theories, proceed deductively and operationalize their data accordingly or situate their approaches more loosely within specific frameworks or paradigms. Examples of the former approach are Hunter’s (Hunter 2011) and Bolzman’s (Bolzman 2013) works. Both evaluate several alternative theories of migration – in Hunter’s case neoclassical economics, the new economics of labor migration, transnationalism, structural explanations and the social systems theory, in Bolzman’s study the institutional as well as the transnational perspective – against their data. The same is true for Klinthäll (2006), who introduces economic perspectives on labor migration (neoclassical economics and the new economics of labor migration) and regards return as an ingredient in welfare optimization strategies. At the same time, however, he broadens the view and includes other factors in his analysis, such as the role of climate. The majority of the research follows the second approach, drawing on different concepts and lines of thought. The cases are set against the background of certain theoretical frameworks or paradigms, without the explicit aim of corroborating or discarding those. Krumme (2004) does not link her data to a theoretical background in a narrow sense but concludes that her results should be interpreted as an expression of continued transnational behavior, thereby applying a perspective clearly guided by the transnational framework. Similarly, Bolzman et al.’s (2006), Olsson’s (2013) and Christou’s (2013) research is informed by a transnational vantage point, while at the same time, in the cases of Olsson and Christou, involving further concepts such as storytelling and narrativity. On the other hand, Coulon and Wolff (2005) and Yahirun (2009) build on primarily economic research, developing a model on the premise that individuals are rational actors who seek to maximize their utility (Coulon and Wolff 2005) and framing the case in terms of social and economic resources (Yahirun 2009). This primacy of economic motivations is challenged by Ganga, who points to the social aspect (family ties as well as the process of socialization) of non-return (Ganga 2006: 1409). In addition, the research is based on different data sources that can be distinguished methodologically as primarily based on ‘objective’ data on the one hand (Bolzman, et al. 2006; Coulon and Wolff 2005; Klinthäll 2006; Yahirun 2009) and on the migrants’ own statements (explanatory discourses) regarding their return deliberations on the other (Christou 2013; Ganga 2006; Hunter 2011; Krumme 2004; Olsson 2013; Percival 2013b). I will get back to what this methodological difference implies later (chapter 2.2). All authors find a number of different factors that impact future residence plans and choices. Coulon and Wolff conclude that children represent the decisive reason, prompting the parents to apply a va-et-vient strategy to reduce the

Return migration

cost of separation (Coulon and Wolff 2005: 19). Ganga highlights the elderly’s need for care, linked with both the children’s residence location and socialization processes in the host country, in explaining why the Italians she examined stay in England (Ganga 2006: 1401ff.). Hunter identifies the migrants’ family ties in their North African home communities as an incentive to spend part of the year in their home countries, while healthcare and administrative reasons as well as the need for continued remittances at the same time prompt them to continue their life in France (Hunter 2011: 190). For Italian and Spanish migrants living in Switzerland, various interlinked factors including family, health, and economic and cultural aspects motivate, according to Bolzman, Fibbi and Vial, their decision to stay entirely or partly in Switzerland (Bolzman, et al. 2006: 160ff.). Yahirun stresses economic and social resources made available through co-ethnic and family networks as a condition for staying in the U.S. (Yahirun 2009: 23ff.). Klinthäll finds that the intention of return hinges upon quality of life considerations, such as climate and the costs of living, as decisive elements (Klinthäll 2006: 176), while Krumme identifies social and material resources – especially local networks, property and savings – as essential aspects when Turkish migrants choose to back and forth between Germany and Turkey after retirement (Krumme 2004: 147f.). Percival identifies a “myriad of personal, social and cultural factors that impact on older migrants’ return deliberations, involving both practical and emotional challenges” (Percival 2013b: 136). Both Christou and Olsson agree on the multidimensional character of influential aspects, albeit emphasizing notions of ‘home’ and belonging, linked to feelings of exclusion as well as the location of family (Christou 2013: 183f.; Olsson 2013: 228).

Return migration from the U.S. to Mexico upon retirement Several studies on Mexican migration, such as research conducted by Smith (Smith 2006), Sana and Massey (Sana and Massey 2000), Massey (Massey, et al. 1987) and Jarvis et al. (Jarvis, et al. 2009), examine the topic of post-retirement return from the United States to Mexico as one aspect among others. Robert Courtney Smith, in his insightful long-term study of the transnational life of Ticuani migrants linking their hometown Ticuani and New York, addresses different stages of the ‘transnational lifecycle’, including the retirement of first generation migrants. At old age, these migrants often act as caregivers for their grandchildren in the United States but sometimes also move back to Mexico after retiring, occasionally even looking after their U.S. based grandchildren in Mexico during the summer months there (Smith 2006: 196f.). Massey, too, in his analysis of international migration from Western Mexico as a multi-layered, cumulative social process, mentions that many migrants who worked and lived in the U.S. return to Western Mexico when they retire to receive their Social Security payments there (Massey, et al. 1987: 310). The aspect of receiving Social

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Security payments from the United States as an incentive for migrating to the U.S. in the first place is also taken up by Sana and Massey (Sana and Massey 2000). They conceive of international migration as a retirement strategy, but do not pursue the question whether the people who migrated for Social Security reasons actually do go back to Mexico as they intended to. Apart from these works that touch upon retirement return, hardly any work has been done on systematically scrutinizing old age return to Mexico so far. One exception in this respect is an article by the American sociologist Michael Bernabé Aguilera (2004). Aguilera investigates whether and how transnationalism (as indicated by transnational behavior, relationships and context) on the one hand and assimilation to the U.S. on the other hand influence the retirement location of formerly undocumented Mexicans living in the U.S. (Aguilera 2004: 241ff.). The 1992 legalized population survey, covering 4000 Mexicans who became legal residents in 1992, constitutes the basis of Aguilera’s study. Analyzing this dataset leads Aguilera to the conclusion that the migrants’ decision to return hinges upon both assimilation and transnationalism. He finds evidence for both concepts, identifying factors increasing the likelihood to return, such as owning property in Mexico and sending remittances, as well as factors increasing the probability to remain in the United States, such as having children living there and being fluent in the English language. The disparity and range of motivations found in different combinations testifies to the “complexity of the decision-making process” (Bolzman 2013: 83) that characterizes return migration upon retirement. Similar to return migration at other stages of the life course, even the decision to move back to one’s home country in later life seems to hinge upon a variety of conditions, circumstances and attitudes. Three factors, however, seem to appear regularly, indicating a certain pattern: (1) economic and material resources, (2) cultural and symbolic ties and attachments and (3) social relationships, especially children.

2.2.4 Implications for this study Reviewing the literature on both return migration and retirement return reveals one thing very clearly: Return intentions upon retirement differ from return migration at earlier stages of the life course since the elderly migrants’ contexts and circumstances are distinct. The reasons for intending or not intending to return, however, appear multilayered in both cases. Therefore, even if it might be useful to apply a specific theoretical perspective testing the influence of particular factors,24 narrow theoretical frameworks such as economic 24 | Alistair Hunter, for example, demonstrates, how testing different theories illuminates specific aspects that play a role for the return decisions of eldery North and

Return migration

models explaining return migration by reference to economic success or failure do not seem sufficient to grasp the complex reality of the phenomenon and identify the possible spectrum of motives as well as potential relationships between them. Since return deliberations represent people’s conscious plans and desires, I will instead approach the topic by exploring return intentions as based on the migrants’ own reasoning, explanatory discourses and perceptions (for a similar approach see e.g. Christou 2013; Ganga 2006; Hunter 2011; Krumme 2004; Olsson 2013; Percival 2013b). Focusing on how elderly Mexicans in Chicago themselves consciously reflect on their options and explain their choices will allow me to then address those motives featuring prominently (e.g. are particularly frequent, seem contradictory) in the explanatory discourses and explore them in depth. Reasons migrants might state which impact their residence plans include legal status, economic situation, social ties, health, attachments to ways of life and places, experiences and quality of life. As my analysis will show later, the focus on the migrants’ explanatory discourses is valuable since it allows grasping return migration as a “complex process of decision-making, which […] incorporates stages, experiences, thoughts and feelings” (Christou 2013: 180). Although a number of studies emphasize the importance of experience and emotions for the study of retirement return migration and migration in general (e.g. Gardner 2002; Mendoza 2006), the role these factors play is still underexplored. As I will show in the analysis (chapter 7), past experiences shaping the life course are, however, central if one seeks to understand the transformations from people’s initial intention to return at the time of migration and their frequently changed plans upon retirement. Gardner has pointed to the role emotions play in this respect when people narrate their migration experiences, aptly noting that, “movement between places separated by thousands of miles involves a range of emotions, and these feelings […] lie at the heart of the transnational experience” (Gardner 2002: 17). West African migrant worker hostel residence living in France. The lenses of Neoclassical Economics and the New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM) draw attention to return migration as a potentially rational decision of profit maximizing individuals as well as on the household as important decision-making unit. The structural explanation sheds light on social, institutional and contextual factors in the migrants’ places of origin, highlighting the problems of reintegrating in the home country after returning. The transnational view accounts for the maintained travels back home and investments there. Social systems theory as formulated by Niklas Luhmann finally explains how the migrants’ partial staying in France is related to their inclusion in and familiarity with function/ organization systems in the host society. Each theory alone does not fully explain the hostel residents’ decision, but it adds another valuable perspective to the explanation (Hunter 2011).

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Reflecting on the comprehensive themes identified in the literature, my approach is based on the assumption that return intentions upon retirement (1) constitute individual decisions (micro level), which are socially, culturally and institutionally embedded and thus tightly interconnected with the meso- and macrolevel, (2) result from the migrants’ purposive interactions with these contexts, (3) constitute a dynamic process and involve past experiences, (4) centrally involve matters of relatedness (5) and that it is possible to integrate the stated factors figuring prominently into a coherent framework. When exploring the dynamics and social realities in which return intentions are embedded, I will draw upon central concepts and perspectives from migration studies as well as studies on return migration, the transnational and assimilationist perspectives discussed above and the concept of belonging. Factors of social and cultural embeddedness and relatedness mentioned above frequently emerge in studies on return migration but are rarely explored in depth. The concept of belonging is well suited to capture those factors. Notions of belonging are likely to matter for individual return considerations, because, as Janet Salaff has pointed out, when reflecting on a possible return the migrants have, unlike at their time of migration, experienced two settings (Salaff 2013: 460). Hence, connections to various contexts, social groups, cultures and places are likely to exist to varying degrees and exert influence on the decision-making. Therefore, Salaff reminds us, “analyses of this population must include issues of belonging, identity, and emotions” (Salaff 2013: 460). Examining people’s return considerations (chapter 6) will show that issues of belonging figure most prominently as a basis on which Mexicans living in Chicago reflect and decide upon a possible return when retiring.

2.3

B elonging

In recent years, the term ‘belonging’ has been discussed and conceptualized in a growing body of research concerned with population movements, expressions and consequences of globalization, cultural diversification and the mechanisms of nation building (Dürr 2011a: 238). Belonging in this context commonly implies notions of connectedness and relations to people (individuals and groups), locations and artifacts as well as to cultural ideas and practices (Albiez, et al. 2011b: 13ff.; Dürr 2011a: 238; Pfaff-Czarnecka and Toffin 2011: XII). Questions of belonging become particularly salient when people move from one place to another since this entails changes in ties and memberships – people are faced with the task of building new ties and attachments and possibly, as the transnational perspective suggests, maintaining the ones left behind (Pfaff-Czarnecka and Toffin 2011: XXII).

Belonging

At first glance, belonging shares many characteristics with identity. The differences between the two concepts are, however, frequently addressed in the literature (Anthias 2006: 19f.; Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004: 11; Pfaff-Czarnecka 2011: 201). Whereas ‘identity’ was already so widely used in the social sciences and humanities at the turn of the 21st century that it was criticized for having become a vacuous concept which “tends to mean too much […], too little […] or nothing at all” (Brubaker and Cooper 2000: 1), ‘belonging’ seems to have emerged as one of the substitute concepts employed to specify some of the notions identity used to cover, like connectedness, social location and groupness.25 Notions of belonging are thus always relational, they imply “relationships – not just with people, but with places and things” (Pfaff-Czarnecka and Toffin 2011: XVI). In the context of this study, referring to ‘belonging’ rather than ‘identity’ makes sense since I agree with Brubaker and Cooper that the term identity implies a confusingly wide range of meanings and goes far beyond the notions of membership, connection and situatedness, which I seek to address by applying the term belonging. In the framework of migration studies, belonging has become a key term in two respects.26 It is employed in two distinct contexts. On the one hand, it figures in discussions about and analyses of the politics, effects and developments of formal or informal collective group memberships, such as the nation-state or an ethnic group, (Bibler Coutin 2003; Brubaker 2010; Crowley 1999; Favell 1999; Pries 2013; Rutherford 2011; Yuval-Davis, et al. 2006). On the other hand, it is used as a key term in research that investigates the formation, transformation and expression of individual connections to people, places and artifacts in the context of population movements (Anthias 2006; Anthias 25 | Brubaker and Cooper call for distinguishing specified meanings rather than using the catch-all term identity. They identify three clusters of terms commonly subsumed under ‘identity’: (1) identification and categorization, (2) self-understanding and social location and (3) commonality, connectedness and groupness (Brubaker and Cooper 2000: 14ff.). 26 | The concept has also been used in other contexts than the realm of population movements. The anthropologist John Borneman for instance, in his analysis of two generations’ life constructions in East and West Berlin during the postwar period, writes about Belonging in the two Berlins (Borneman 1992). Jeanette Edwards reflects on how belonging to a place and belonging to a family are related (Edwards 1998). Clemens Kroneberg and Andreas Wimmer discuss the boundaries of belonging in the context of nation building and the emergence of ethnic cleavages (Kroneberg and Wimmer 2012) and Lejla Voloder explores how national belonging in Turkey is strongly tied to religion (Voloder 2013). While I will refer to these studies when ideas developed in them seem helpful to enhance the general understanding of the concept, my focus is on research relating belonging and migration.

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2008; Berg 2009; Bozkurt 2009; Dürr 2011a; Jones and Krzyzanowski 2008; Jüssen and Youkhana 2011; Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). Belonging thus always addresses issues of membership and connectedness, albeit from two divergent perspectives and thus shedding light on different aspects of the same phenomenon: On the one hand, the focus is on collective processes of defining membership (collective belonging), on the other hand it lies on individuals as subjects with different memberships (individual belonging). Underlying this understanding is the assumption that everyone is connected with and thus belongs to a variety of groups, social formations, ways of life, things and places simultaneously (Pfaff-Czarnecka and Toffin 2011: XII).27 An overall sense of individual belonging is constituted at the interface of these different memberships.28 One way to visualize this would be in the form of inter27 | I distinguish between belonging to social groups and other constellations of belonging, since social memberships involve the conscious sharing of meanings, values etc. as well as reciprocal behaviour (this builds on what Pfaff-Czarnecka calls the social practices of belonging: commonality and mutuality (Pfaff-Czarnecka and Toffin 2011: XII) with an identifiable (even if only imagined as in case of the nation) number of persons and can be acquired as well as ascribed. On the contrary, relations to places, things and cultural are not necessarily shared within an identifiable group, neither are they reciprocal. However, they always involve attachments, the third social practice identified by Czarnecka. Belonging to social groups, things, places, and culture often overlaps. 28 | This ties in with the how Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis understand belonging. Anthias introduced the concepts ‘translocational positionality’ and ‘intersectionality’ to move away from the idea of bounded groups and membership in them. She assumes that everyone has not just one location but multiple ones, which comprise various sites and dimensions, such as one’s gender location, one’s class location or one’s national location (Anthias 2008: 15f.). This way of understanding belongings as translocational, according to Anthias, leads to a different interpretation of mobility in that the national dislocation of moving across territorial borders does not necessarily imply a dislocation in terms of e.g. class. Besides calling attention to translocational positionalities Anthias, in line with Yuval-Davis (Yuval-Davis 2011: 6ff.) calls for intersectionality, which she defines as focusing more on how social divisions like race, class, gender or ethnicity interrelate and intersect with each other rather than having a hierarchical order in peoples’ lives (Yuval-Davis 2011: 13f.). Yuval-Davis regards these social divisions as specific to their historical conditions and emphasizes that some social divisions, such as one’s gender or life cycle stage tend to affect everyone’s life while others, such as membership in a particular caste, only regard a limited number of people (Yuval-Davis 2011: 9). Thinking in terms of intersectionality will help to realize, Anthias argues, that belongings are always multiple and context related.

Belonging

secting circles, each circle representing one kind of group and the intersection representing individual memberships forming belonging (see figure 2.1). The image of overlapping circles is inspired by Simmel’s notion of identity. Simmel assumes that social identity is constituted by intersecting social circles (German “die Kreuzung sozialer Kreise”) an individual is part of (Simmel 1908: 403ff.). Pfaff-Czarnecka and Toffin, too, seize the idea of belonging as “covering different circles of attachments [that] provide individual persons with networks of links as well as orientations” (Pfaff-Czarnecka and Toffin 2011: XII). Figure 2.1: Individual belonging at the intersection of multiple memberships

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What memberships form part of this interface of individual belonging and how much weight they have for ideas and practices is not static but changes over time. Depending on the context and situation new memberships might emerge, others might lose meaning and a specific membership might become particularly salient and inform an individual’s actions and ideas more prominently than other dimensions of belonging, as for example in the case of ethnic or national mobilization. Getting back to the distinction between the two

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different perspective on belonging, the focus thus lies on one specific kind of group membership and its conditions of acccess, its meanings and consequences in the case of collective belonging on the one hand (figure 2.3). On the other, the perspective on individual belonging takes the interface of connections to a variety of collectives, artifacts and places into account (figure 2.2). This includes concerns with individual claims to as well as uses of a specific membership, such as ethnicity. Figure 2.2: Perspective on individual belonging

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Examples of the former would be how national membership in the U.S. is defined by naturalization ceremonies (Bibler Coutin 2003), or how everyday processes shape the criteria of belonging for undocumented Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa (Rutherford 2011). Examples of the latter would be how Philippino migrants in Toronto reconcile their different religious attachments (Drotbohm 2008), the self-placements of Turkish migrants in Germany (Bozkurt 2009) or how ethnicity in the case of Yucatecans in Dallas serves as a basis for job recruitment (Adler 2005). These two perspectives on belonging – focusing on collective dynamics on the one hand and individual situatedness on the other – represent two sides of the same coin and often overlap when belonging

Belonging

is discussed.29 On the following pages, I will elaborate on what these two perspectives on belonging entail, in particular with regard to migration studies. Concurrently, I will give a definition of belonging for this study and clarify both why the concept is useful when analyzing return intentions and how I will use it in the analysis. Figure 2.3: Perspective on collective belonging

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29 | This view ties in with the debate on the duality of structure and agency, highlighting the fact that structure and agency always presuppose each other (see e.g. Sewell 1992).

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2.3.1 Collective belonging: criteria, consequences and dynamics of group membership Collective belonging refers to how group membership is politically, legally and informally regulated, a dimension often called the ‘politics of belonging’. As such it constitutes a “key component in the political discussion on integration” (Crowley 1999: 18) and thus also figures prominently in migration studies. Research on the politics of belonging examines processes of inclusion and exclusion, boundary mechanisms and regulatory frameworks of nation-states and other collective institutions (such as a party, the family, an ethnic group) and formal as well as informal processes of group formation in general. The criteria defined for membership in those various contexts are analyzed in order to understand the dynamics involved in the construction of collectivities (YuvalDavis 2011: 20). Although membership and the question “who belongs?” are contested in diverse contexts, the nation-state has historically become a “particular consequential” locus of membership and belonging (Brubaker 2010: 64). Brubaker explains this “increasing importance of the nation-state as a locus of belonging, as development of increasingly direct, intrusive, and centralized forms of rule” (Brubaker 2010: 64).30 Seen from a collective perspective, belonging is always about a specific shared entity and when, how and why access to a specific group is encouraged or curbed (inclusion and exclusion), trespassing sanctioned and opportunities structured. Deborah Golden, for example, explores how the Israeli nation-state fosters national identification and belonging among migrants from the former Soviet Union by encouraging them to embrace and share narratives of an imagined past and future and by this means become members of the nation-state (Golden 2002). In this case, the politics of belonging are not primarily about excluding mechanisms but rather about means of inclusion. Similarly, Susan Bibler Cou30 | Brubaker reflects on the idealized model of the nation-state and identifies a number of congruencies that are central to this model, such as state territory, national culture and citizenry (Brubaker 2010: 63). The lack of congruencies, Brubaker posits, generates internal and external politics of belonging, the internal politics pertaining to the belonging of populations situated in the nation-state ambit but not being full members of the state (example: migrants and their position in the new country), while the external politics concern the membership status of groups living outside the state territory but demanding or being claimed to belong to the nation-state (example: migrants and their relation to their ‘homeland’) (Brubaker 2010: 67). Brubaker’s assumption of the central role of nation-states is challenged by Yuval-Davis, who contests the idea that nationalist politics of belonging still constitute the most important model of belonging in the 21st century and suggests that belonging in e.g. a religious or cosmopolitan sense might be similarly important today (Yuval-Davis 2011: 1).

Belonging

tin investigates politics of belonging in terms of inclusion in her study on how increased naturalization on the one hand and growing transnationalism on the other were interrelated among Salvadoran migrants in Los Angeles in the mid 1990s. She analyzes naturalization ceremonies and finds that the judges performing the rite use a highly inclusive rhetoric, which aims at creating a common sense of being (newly) American (Bibler Coutin 2003). In this study, two aspects of collective belonging feature prominently. First, the politics of belonging (e.g. to the U.S. nation state) form part of the contexts that have been shaping the lives of elderly Mexican migrants over the course of their time in Chicago (chapter 7.3.2). For the analysis of these interactions, it is important to distinguish between formal and informal politics of belonging. I follow Brubaker, who notes that it is possible to belong formally, at the nationstate level by being a legal citizen, without being accepted at the informal level of everyday life, where ordinary people use a “tacit understanding of who belongs and who does not, of us and them” (Brubaker 2010: 65). I will address how both engaging with the legal framework and facing informal politics of belonging in the form of discrimination or appreciation over time form part of how the migrants situate themselves today and how this influences their plans for the future. Second, the transformation of individual belongings, which I will trace in order to understand altered residence intentions, indicates the changing nature and meanings of the migrants’ group memberships.

2.3.2 Individual belonging: affirmative situatedness at the interface of memberships While the concept of collective belonging as referred to in Brubaker’s quote above highlights politics of membership and criteria for access, the term individual belonging refers to self-placements and is linked to personal attachments and detachments. This second meaning of belonging stresses the affective dimension of the concept and considers individual perceptions of situatedness. Belonging in that sense is understood as an individual’s affirmative connections to groups (Jones and Krzyzanowski 2008) or, in a wider sense, also to objects, places, concepts and ways of life (Albiez, et al. 2011a: 13; Pfaff-Czarnecka and Toffin 2011: XII; Tošić 2012: 114; Yuval-Davis 2011: 11). Those commitments and attachments constitute the baseline for migrants’ actions (Tošic 2012: 114). The focus on individual belonging thus also highlights how and when individuals claim, emphasize and use a particular group membership (Geschiere 2005; Geschiere 2009; Geschiere 2011).31 31 | In this respect, analyses of belonging form part of the scholarship on ethnicity and nationalism, investigating the development and effects of the two phenomena

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A number of studies have focused in particular on the creation and transformation of the spatial dimension of belonging – belonging to a place – as the “sense of experience of a particular locale” (Dürr 2011a: 239; Lovell 1998: 1). In line with this perspective on belonging, Jüssen and Youkhana, in their study of Latin Americans living in Madrid, have explored how migrants engage in place-making activities and appropriate localities, thereby demonstrating and molding belonging to these places (Jüssen and Youkhana 2011). Other research has taken different dimensions of attachment into account, such as belonging to religious worlds and thereby to respective places or communities (Drotbohm 2008; Levitt 2004). Haitian migrants in Montreal, Drotbohm observes, maintain their former religious practices and identification, Voodoo, and at the same time embrace Catholicism. By doing so, they integrate two religious belongings side-by-side, without conceiving of them as conflictive (Drotbohm 2008: 47). This dimension of belonging as personal stresses how every individual shapes her or his position and location, albeit without neglecting the impact cultural, social, political, spatial and economic demarcations have on this process (Albiez, et al. 2011b: 13). Belonging, to again seize on the structureagency debate, does not only result from agency and choice but is also shaped by curtailing and facilitating structures, such as the politics of belonging already mentioned above. Economic conditions, the political system, the welfare framework, religious structures, legal regulations, climate, the socio-spatial setup and cultural models all form the context individuals relate to and interact with. Pfaff-Czarneka refers to this framework as “regimes of belonging” (PfaffCzarnecka 2011: 206), Albiez et al. speak about the “environment individuals are part of” (Albiez, et al. 2011b: 13). Individual belonging is thus, as Anthias puts it, situated at the “intersection of social position and positioning” (Anthias

(e.g. Anderson 1983; Brubaker 2009; Hylland Eriksen 2002; Okamura 1981; Wimmer 2004). Questions of individual belonging are among others linked with the discussion of ethnicity as a resource, conceptualized e.g. by Jean and John Comaroff in their analysis of how ethnicity is being commodified when for example Native American identity is sought after and used in order to be able to build casinos in the United States (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009). In earlier research, I have explored how the so called ‘coloureds’ in Namibia during Apartheid switched their identity, ‘playing’ white if they matched the criteria set up by the South African Apartheid administration and their skin color allowed them to, in order to circumvent the confinements set up for ‘coloureds’ and gain access to better resources (Bedorf 2008). The term ‘invention of tradition’, coined by Hobsbawm and Ranger in the 1980s, also ties in with this notion of belonging being created to be able to make claims and gain access to resources (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983).

Belonging

2006: 27), positioning referring to the active and elective dimension and position denoting the structural component. Bozkurt, in her study of Turkish migrants’ concepts of home in Germany, refers to belonging in a similar vein. She equals it with ‘feeling at home’ in the sense of a self-placement that is embedded in socio-economic, institutional, cultural, historical and political contexts (Bozkurt 2009: 213ff.). Migrants’ affiliations and perceptions, she concludes, are always tightly linked with the opportunities and constraints characterizing their situation. Similarly, Erel, when investigating the construction of belonging and its boundaries in the context of a small English town where the local population relates to new migrants, argues that part of people’s social location and attachments are “ethical and political value systems with which people judge their own and others’ belonging” (Erel 2011: 2053). The politics of belonging constitute thus part of the regulatory framework shaping the character of individual belonging. Formal and informal memberships wield (as one part of the regulatory framework) an impact on how individuals locate themselves and what kinds of attachments and detachments they form. In the migration process, both formal membership and meaning socially ascribed to this formal membership, according to Crowley, strongly inform someone’s self-definition (Crowley 1999: 138). The literature differs on whether membership, be it formal or informal, and the right to belong to a group constitute a necessary precondition for developing affective attachments and thus individual feelings of belonging. For Anthias, the feeling of belonging presupposes being accepted as a full member of a group (Anthias 2006: 19) and is strongly linked with access and the possibility of participation (Anthias 2008: 8). Jones and Krzyzanowski agree that membership influences to a certain degree whether belonging is possible. Besides these ‘thresholds’ of belonging put up by someone else (e.g. citizenship regulations) it is, however, equally important, they argue, how an individual situates herself or himself and in how far she or he aggress with the values and goals of a group (Jones and Krzyzanowski 2008: 44ff.). For Albiez et al., Bozkurt and Pfaff-Czarneka formal membership represents merely one factor among others in the regulatory frameworks, demarcations and structures constituting ‘regimes of belonging’ (Pfaff-Czarnecka 2011: 205), which an individual constantly engages with and is influenced by in the process of constructing and reconstructing connections (Albiez, et al. 2011a: 13f.; Bozkurt 2009: 2131; Pfaff-Czarnecka and Toffin 2011: 206). I follow this perspective by investigating formal and informal belonging as one part of the contexts Mexicans living in Chicago face and engage with (chapter 7.3).

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2.3.3 Formations and transformations of individual belonging The preceding reflections on the different notions of belonging and their intersections have already touched upon some aspects central to the emergence and transformations of individual belonging – elective elements and external facilitating or constraining influences. But other than that, how does individual belonging come about and when does it change? The transformation of individual belonging will be crucial when investigating if and how the people this study is about have revised their original plans to return to Mexico. I identify five aspects that indicate how belonging evolves and changes and that recur throughout much of the research presented above: The formation of belonging is assumed to (1) be a constant and ongoing process, shaped by (2) interaction and relations. It entails (3) acts of inclusion and sharing as well as exclusion (boundary drawing) and involves (4) both practices and (5) experiences and how people recall, reimagine and narrate them. I will now examine those principles in further detail. Before doing so, it is important to recall that transformations of individual belonging always indicate a change (i.e. an increase or decrease) in the meaning of one or several of the various memberships a person has, as expressed in figure 2.1. First of all, as already indicated above, the literature agrees upon the (1) processual and (2) relational character of belonging. When Albiez et al. refer to belonging as an “interaction between individuals and the environment they are part of” (Albiez, et al. 2011a: 13), and Pfaff-Czarneka defines the term as a “relational property of human experience” (Pfaff-Czarnecka 2011: 199), they both regard its emergence as a continuous process that is related to external elements such as places, people or artifacts. As the third aspect concerning individual belongings to a group, Anthias stresses how (3) sharing “networks, values, practices” (Anthias 2006: 21) conveys a sense of inclusion for the individual and thus takes a central role in the emergence of belonging. Similarly, Dürr identifies the formation of relationships and awareness of similarities and emotional closeness as being central to the process (Dürr 2011a: 240). Crowley and Favell, by contrast, stress the other side of the coin and argue that creating and maintaining boundaries between groups and thus forging definable entities represents an inherent part of developing a collective sense of belonging (Crowley 1999: 38; Favell 1999: 215).32 Boundary drawing as well as inclusion 32 | The discussion about the meaning of drawing and maintaining boundaries in processes of group formation builds on research on the construction of cultural, particularly ethnic, identities. Very influential in this respect was Fredrik Barth’s work on Ethnic Groups and Boundaries in 1969. Barth argues that ethnic group membership is not based on primordial criteria but constructed in the interaction between groups and the active process of boundary drawing between them (Barth 1969).

Belonging

and exclusion and emerging attachments and bonds form part of the (4) practices shaping and expressing one’s personal location. According to Albiez et al., practices and experiences constitute the central element belonging results from (Albiez, et al. 2011b: 13f.). In the concept of ‘transnational ways of belonging’ Levitt and Glick Schiller have developed, it is also practices that help to consciously perform a certain identity and demonstrate the connection with a group (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004: 11). Dürr illustrates the meaning social practices take in creating sentiments of belonging by investigating the celebration of the Day of the Dead in Mitla, Oaxaca. People participating in the fiesta, both the ones living in the village and the ones who have migrated to the United States and return for the event, she argues, revive a common set of traditions and link themselves to the same imagined historical continuity. Thereby they create a new spatial – transnational – dimension of belonging (Dürr 2011a: 253). All these elements would not be constitutive for the construction of belonging without them being (5) experienced as well as remembered and narrated. Anthias and Albiez et al. consequently emphasize how belonging is always the result of experiences (Albiez, et al. 2011a: 14; Anthias 2008: 8), while Lovell points to the central role of remembering these experiences and the places related to them (Lovell 1998: 1). Dürr, too, highlights how “belonging is a way of remembering, creating a bond between individuals and a particular locale” (Dürr 2011a: 239). In her article on three generations of Cuban migrants living in Madrid, Berg draws on this dimension in the creation of belonging when she examines migration trajectories, pointing out how three generations of migrants imagine and narrate their experiences in different ways, thereby constructing and articulating alternative diasporic belongings (Berg 2009: 283ff.). Both elements, experiences and memory, indicate the temporal dimension inherent in the construction of belonging, which I already have alluded to above when noting the processual character of the concept. The narrative element figures prominently in this regard. Jones mentions the discursive construction and reconstruction of belonging in general as constitutive (Jones and Krzyzanowski 2008: 43), Anthias refers to belonging as imagined (Anthias 2006: 21) and Albiez et al. similarly emphasize the narrative and invented nature of belonging (Albiez, et al. 2011b: 14). The expression of belonging is tightly linked with and hard to distinguish from its construction. Wimmer, when tracing the meaning of ethnicity for group formation in three Swiss neighborhoods and identifying it as one criteria for belonging among others, concludes that belonging becomes apparent in “discourse (social categories) and practice (networks)”, which he at the same time regards as the two mechanisms producing boundaries and thus belonging (Wimmer 2004: 29). Jüssen and Youkhana in a similar vein argue that place-making activities both create belonging and reveal it (Jüssen and Youkhana 2011: 283). To show that one belongs represents, so it seems, at the

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same time a self-affirmation, which renders the production and expression of belonging a mutually constitutive process.

2.3.4 Narratives, belonging and the life course Remembered and narrated experiences constitute a key to understanding matters of attachment and detachment. They encompass practices of belonging as evolved and transformed over the life course and illuminate how the reconfiguration of belonging represents a socially, politically and culturally shaped process. Following Katy Gardner, I define the life course as “the phases of life that we move through over time” (Gardner 2009: 230). Taking a life course perspective, Gardner points out, highlights “the way that lives are structured by cultural expectations, gender and historical contexts as well as individual choices” (Gardner 2009: 247). As the analysis will show (chapter 6.4), the link between narratives, the life course and belonging is of central importance to this study. This focus draws in its basic assumptions on previous research on belonging in the context of migration highlighting the aspect of remembering and narrating experiences. Berg (2009) assumes a narrative perspective in her study of Cuban diaspora people in Spain, arguing that “focusing on individual’s stories of when and how they left Cuba and arrived in Spain can help us comprehend the larger story about subjectivity, belonging and nation” (Berg 2009). She centers her analysis on the migrants’ different ways of relating back to Cuba, exploring first and foremost memories of the homeland and feelings of belonging to places that become manifest in these reminiscences. Katy Gardner (2002), too, examines narratives when exploring how elderly Bengali migrants living London perceive aging in Britain against the backdrop of their migratory experiences. Gardner argues that narratives are central if one seeks to understand how these people’s movements between Britain and Pakistan are linked with their experiences of growing old and moving across the life course. It is through story telling, Gardner concludes, that “we convey our most personal experiences and memories, […] we build meaning and construct identity” (Gardner 2002: 2). Gardner emphasizes the central meaning of emotions for understanding the migrants’ transnational experiences and argues that these feelings in turn hinge on personal histories (Gardner 2002: 18). This touches upon the relation between belonging and narratives in that belonging can be viewed as both an expression and a consequence of feelings, attachments and detachments that have emerged as a result of affective experiences and are reconstructed in the process of narration. A third scholar who has fruitfully combined the focus on narratives and the formation of belonging is Anne-Marie Fortier in her work on Italian migrants

Belonging

in Great Britain (Fortier 2000). Fortier focuses on the institutional practices which engender shared identity narratives of being Italian in Britain and thus connect the Italian migrant population living there. By deploying these identity narratives charged with cultural and historical meanings, Fortier argues, common Italian migrant belongings are stabilized. Erik Olsson takes a similar approach when he, investigating narratives of Chilean migrants who have returned from Sweden, concludes that narrative accounts are a “form of social positioning and an important aspect in the formation of a social identity” (Olsson 2013: 224).

2.3.5 Implications for this study The explicit link between belonging and return is largely absent in research on return migration. Individual belonging will be one of the central aspects addressed in this study, as my analysis will show that the migrants’ connections, attachments to and detachments from people, places and ways of life represent one of the factors tightly linked with their residence plans (chapter 6.5). Changing notions of belonging provide an explanation for potentially changing return intentions. Accordingly, the focus in this study lies primarily on transformations of belonging, asking how, when and why individuals forge new relations and discard old ones and how when and why the meaning of specific group memberships gains or looses weight, bearing more or less significance for the overall individual belonging of a person. In order to apply the concept in the analysis, I here offer a definition of individual belonging which is based on both the literature and my data analysis. Individual belonging, I suggest, is an affirmative feeling and expression of relational situatedness that is both articulated and practiced. It is constituted by membership in groups and connections to people (social dimension), places (spatial dimension), artifacts (material dimension) and values, norms and ways of life (cultural dimension) and changes over the life course (see the model of individual belonging (figure 2.1 in chapter 2.3). Memberships and thus the character of individual belonging change because of altered connections, attachments and detachments resulting from the migrants’ engagements with their various institutional, social and cultural contexts (such as the labor market, the legal framework, social networks, religious environments). In what follows, I will refer to these processes as context engagements. Context engagements are informed by the migrants’ aims and aspirations as well as by the resulting consequences and achievements. The politics of belonging referred to above constitute part of this structural context in the form of regulations (on the legal, political and cultural level), defining the criteria for formal or informal group membership. Engaging with these different contexts pro-

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duces key experiences charged with emotions, which are perceived as particularly important and influential and shape individual belonging significantly. Attachments and detachments are reinforced when people remember and narrate their emotionally charged key experiences, reflecting on their aims and aspirations on the one hand and on their achievements on the other. Since experiences of attachments and detachments over the life course are linked with specific places, belonging is usually spatially anchored, possibly in several places. In this study, I use belonging as an analytic concept to comprehend why and how the residence intentions of elderly Mexicans living in Chicago diverge from the original intentions they pursued when migrating. The emic concepts my correspondents used when talking about sentiments of belonging included “mi tierra” (my home), “mi casa” (my home), “tener raíces” (to have roots), “mi vida se hizo aquí/ allá” (my life was made here/ there). When investigating my correspondents’ return intentions, their explanatory discourses indicate the importance of social, cultural and spatial memberships for their decision-making (chapter 6). In order to comprehend the meaning and impact of these factors, I take a life course perspective. I examine how the migrants narrate their evolving attachments and detachments over time as embedded in various contexts, linked with specific key experiences and respective emotions and guided by aims and achievements (chapter 7). I interlace the analysis of narrated experiences with manifestations of belonging, such as existing social networks today, desired burial locations and political and religious practices, squaring the level of narrated memories with practices of belonging today. The perspective on collective belonging (politics of belonging) will be central when I discuss the migrants’ engagements with informal as well as formal inclusion and exclusion (chapter 7.3). Besides, I will investigate whether one particular group membership is of shared importance for the migrants’ self-placements and characterizes individual belongings overall, constituting a basis to act upon.

2.4 A concep tual fr ame work for the analysis of re tirement re turn migr ation Having discussed the three fields this study touches upon – migration studies (2.1), return migration (2.2) and belonging (2.3) – and specified the theoretical perspectives I apply in my analysis, I will now build, step by step, a conceptual framework for the study of retirement return migration involving the concepts and perspectives carved out as relevant for my case above. The following framework is based on the previously discussed conceptual and theoretical thinking as well as on insights I have gained ex-post by analyzing my data. It was thus not entirely developed prior to my fieldwork and data analysis but represents

A conceptual framework for the analysis of retirement return migration

a synthesis of conceptual scaffolding33 which guided my data collection and analysis on the one hand and assumptions I draw on the basis of my data analysis on the other.34 35 The puzzle I seek to address in this study is the ‘blackbox’ in between the original intention of return elderly Mexicans in Chicago had when they migrated to the U.S. and their often-divergent residence considerations today (see figure 2.4). What, I ask, are the factors accounting for transformations in return orientations? Figure 2.4: The puzzle of return intentions

Original intention of return

time of migration (1960s to 1980s)

?

Present residence intention

today

33 | I borrow the term ‘conceptual scaffolding’ and the presumptions it entails from Jean and John Comaroff who aptly note that “the way in which we see, what we pay attention to, and how, is not empirically ordained; that […] depends on a prior conceptual scaffolding, which, once the dialectic of discovery is set in motion, is open to reconstruction” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2003: 164, original emphasis). 34 | This process is common in theory building in qualitative empirical research. Previous research conducted on similar phenomena as well as the interest fuelling the study guide the – explicit or implicit – premises the research design is built upon. During the research, however, new and unexpected topics and insights might emerge, which in turn prompt further theoretical investigation and reading, linking evolving ideas with the literature. On this basis, the theoretical scaffolding that existed prior to the data collection and analysis is adapted and reformulated (see e.g. Comaroff and Comaroff 2003: 164ff.). 35 | I will largely refrain from literature references in this part since I have extensively linked the single theoretical perspectives developed with the wider field of research in the preceding chapters.

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For labor migrants who have spent a substantial part of their lives in a country other than the one they were born in, retirement constitutes a significant change of status in that it often brings to the fore long-held considerations to return to one’s country of birth. Upon retirement, work as the major factor originally prompting migration becomes irrelevant and residence preferences are reconsidered. Several factors can have an impact on these considerations. I distinguish between pragmatic factors and relational aspects.36 In terms of more pragmatic reasons, criteria like the migrant’s economic situation (involving retirement benefits, property and other financial assets), their legal status, their location in and access to welfare systems of both countries, their health situation and quality of life considerations (such as climate or the security situation) might play a role. Regarding the relational realm, the nature of connections to people, culture, things and places, which I have defined as individual belonging (chapter 2.3) matters. As previous research has indicated (see chapter 2.2), future residence intentions are potentially contingent on the migrants’ assessments of all those factors (see figure 2.5). Figure 2.5: Dynamics of return intentions I Pragmatic factors

Original intention of return

time of migration (1960s to 1980s)

• Economic situation • Legal status • Health • Climate

Relational aspects

• Social connections • Cultural connections • Connections to things • Connections to places

Present residence intention

today

Migrants might base their consideration on their economic status if the financial situation does not allow them to cover their costs of living in one place 36 | This distinction draws on the works of Janet Salaff, who differentiates between rational considerations and considerations tied to social and cultural embeddedness (Salaff 2013: 460f.) as well as on Anastasia Christou’s research, who distinguished pragmatic from emotional factors with regard to return migration decisions (Christou 2013: 190). I do not assume that the migrants either base their decision on rational factors or on aspects of belonging but that both elements potentially matter for return considerations.

A conceptual framework for the analysis of retirement return migration

or the other. They might prefer one place to the other if their health status requires constant medical attention and the welfare systems differ considerably in the two countries. Legal restrictions might also guide the consideration, if for examples the migrants’ legal status in their country of residence does not entitle them to full rights and benefits. And last but not least, the migrants’ sentiments of belonging might exert a significant influence on their residence considerations. Although return intentions reflect individual decisions, they constitute highly socially, culturally and politically embedded processes. Based on the presumption that migration always engenders cross border links that might transform over time, return intentions accordingly refer to relationships maintained with the home country as well as to dynamics of assimilation. Both transnational connections and processes of assimilation (for a definition see chapter 2.1) thus centrally inform the transformation of residence intentions. Drawing upon what Alba and Nee (2003) view as central for comprehending trajectories of incorporation, I assume that return intentions are an outcome of the “interplay between the purposive action of immigrants and their descendants and contexts – that is institutional structures, cultural beliefs, and social networks – that shape it” (Alba and Nee 2003: 14). I suggest that the overarching aims the migrants pursue and the related achievements (or failures) as well as the environments and contexts (institutional, social and cultural ones) they engage with across the life course interact in influencing the dynamics of return intentions, i.e. what factors play a role for the potential changes in residence plans (see figure 2.6). Figure 2.6: Dynamics of return intentions II Aims & achievements

Contexts – institutional, social and cultural

Pragmatic factors

Original intention of return

time of migration (1960s to 1980s)

• Economic situation • Legal status • Health • Climate

Relational aspects

• Social connections • Cultural connections • Connections to things • Connections to places

Present residence intention

today

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Figure 2.7: Making sense of return intentions I: belonging as key category Aims & achievements

Original intention of return

Contexts – institutional, social and cultural

Belonging as key category

time of migration (1960s to 1980s)

Present residence intention

today

Figure 2.8: Making sense of return intentions II: transformations of belonging

Aims & achievements

Contexts – institutional, social and cultural Key experiences

Attachments & detachments

Original intention of return

time of migration (1960s to 1980s)

Transformations of belonging

Present residence intention

today

A conceptual framework for the analysis of retirement return migration

When I speak of (1) institutional, (2) social and (3) cultural contexts, this includes (1) legal regulations, political, religious and economic structures, (2) social ties and (3) everyday ways of doing things, values, norms and ideologies (see also chapter 2.3). As chapter 6.5 will indicate, this study represents a case where sentiments of social and cultural embeddedness or belonging matter most for the shift from original return intentions at the time of migration to residence intentions today. Transformations of belonging hence primarily account for possible changes in residence intentions (see figure 2.7). Figure 2.9: Making sense of return intentions III: narrating belonging along master narratives

Individual belonging – defined as the intersection of connections to people, places, things and culture – is the result of three factors (see chapter 2.3): (1) Engaging with diverse institutional, social and cultural contexts the migrant’s life is embedded in, (2) aims and achievements informing these interactions as well as being informed by them and (3) key experiences charged with emotions emanating from them. The interplay of these factors generates attachments

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and detachments leading to changes in memberships and thus belonging (see figure 2.8).37 The formation of belonging represents a constant process, but becomes manifest in situations of status change, such as retiring from work and pondering a change of residence. Remembering and narrating experiences (e.g. in interview situations) of the interplay described above renders sentiments of membership explicit. As I will show in the analysis (chapter 7), elderly Mexicans in Chicago narrate their experiences of belonging in retrospect along largely shared (collective) overarching motives expressing their aspirations and achievements. On the narrative level, the individual aims and achievements that influenced the formation and transformation of belonging (depicted in the upper right box in figure 2.8) become what I will call shared master narratives. These master narratives frame the migrants’ narrations of engaging with contexts as well as individual emotionally charged key experiences informing the transformation of belonging (see figure 2.9). I will address the specific master narratives in more detail in chapter 7.

37 | To be sure, not all memberships evolve over time, but individuals are also born into groups, such as families. In how far these ‘automatic’ memberships inform action depends, however, upon experiences and resulting attachments and detachments.

3. Research design and methods

This study is based on twelve months of fieldwork I conducted in San Antonio, Mexico (July and August 2010) and Chicago, USA (September 2010 to July 2011), applying both qualitative and quantitative methods in the data collection. On the following pages, I will elaborate on the original design of my research project, in how far and why I adjusted this design during my fieldwork and on the specific methods I decided to use to collect data. Closely linked to the process of developing and adjustig the research design was my choice of the field sites in Mexico (San Antonio in the Valle de Solís, Estado de México) and the United States (Chicago, Illinois), which I also will discuss in this chapter. Furthermore, I will outline the circumstances of the fieldwork and reflect on the challenges I faced and that had an impact on the research design and the course of the fieldwork. These topics are inextricably linked and in order to avoid repetition I chose to structure the account of the process of designing and conducting my fieldwork chronologically. Starting with the description of the intial study design (3.1), I will then cover central aspects of the first months of fieldwork in Mexico and the three different periods of data collection in Chicago (3.2). In each subchapter, I will touch upon aspects of selecting the field and informants as well as on the methods applied. A more detailed account of the methods of data collection is given in section 3.3, followed by a discussion of my role in the field and personal circumstances of the fieldwork (3.4). A discussion of what tools and methods I used to analyze the data concludes this chapter (3.5).

3.1 I nitial design of the study Where do elderly Mexicans who migrated to the US before 1985 decide to live upon retirement? What factors are pivotal for their decision? These were the questions that originally motivated this research project. They were central in formulating the research design and its operationalization. The aim of the

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study was thus twofold: First, I sought to answer the question where Mexican migrants in the USA chose to live after retiring. Do they re-migrate to Mexico? Do they stay in the U.S.A.? Or do they go back and forth between the two countries, embodying a transnational lifestyle? Second, I wanted to explore the reasons behind this choice and analyze which factors were crucial for the settlement decision. It seemed sensible from the beginning that trying to answer these questions would call for a – to a certain extent - transnational study. I assumed that including both the Mexican and the U.S. context would allow for fully grasping the meaning of both settings for a person’s decision at that turning point of her life. Pursuing this question would require interviewing (1) Mexicans who lived in the U.S., were approaching retirement and in the process of decisionmaking, (2) Mexicans who had already decided to stay in the U.S. and (3) Mexicans who had returned to Mexico after retiring from work. The consequential idea was to start the fieldwork in Mexico, to establish contacts with people who had (elderly) relatives in the United States and to then trace these relatives and follow them to their place of residence in the U.S. Not only did this multi-sited approach1 promise to allow for some first insights on the issue of return migration, but it also seemed crucial to already be in touch with a ‘home community’ in Mexico to facilitate access to potential informants in the United States. Taking into account the increasingly hostile migration policies in the United States – a case in point being the reform of immigration laws in Arizona that was being vividly discussed in the summer of 2010, when I started my fieldwork, which contributed to growing disquiet and discourse of fear among Mexican migrants2 –, I suspected that it might be difficult to find informants in the U.S. without first having established contacts and gained trust in the Mexican home community. Subsequent to this first research period in Mexico I planned to conduct the major part of my fieldwork in the corresponding community in the 1 | Following George Marcus, the approach can be considered multi-sited since it “follows the people”, see Marcus 1995: 106f. 2 | In April 2010, Arizona introduced a legislation aimed against illegal immigrants (SB 1070), which among several measures would have authorized the police to detain migrants who are not able to prove their legal residence in the U.S. The law was strongly criticized and central provisions were blocked by courts even before the legislation went into effect in July 2010 because major provisions conflicted with federal law. A heated debate about the law continued, but in September 2012 a federal judge ruled that the most contentious part of it, enabling the police to arrest immigrants they suspected to reside in the U.S. without documentation, was legal and should come into effect. This process can be traced in the newspaper coverage (e.g. Archibold 2010a; Archibold 2010b; Center 2010; Editorial 2012; Preston 2010; Santos 2012).

Periods of the fieldwork

United States, working with elderly Mexicans there. The aim was to ultimately get a transnational picture of one Mexican community, particularly its elderly members, spanning the border between Mexico and the U.S. Among possible regions to start my fieldwork in Mexico, I chose the Valle de Solís in the Estado de México because one of the project’s supervisors, Julia Pauli, had previously conducted extensive fieldwork in the region and knew many people there.3 Her research had shown that undocumented migration from some of the area’s communities to the United States had started in the 1970s (Pauli 2000: 106ff.). Until the 1960s many villagers went contratados; they had labor contracts and work visas and spent a few months working in the U.S. every year to then come back to Mexico. 4 In 1964 the U.S. government did not extend the Bracero labor contract program and it became harder to legally work in the United States. The difficulty of crossing the border without documentation to a large degree prevented seasonal back-and-forth mobility, turning migration into a more permanent phenomenon. People started to stay in the U.S. for longer periods of time. It seemed safe to assume that the early (upon migrating undocumented) migrants from this area would now be approaching retirement and constitute a useful group to approach with regard to my research question.

3.2 P eriods of the fieldwork In this section, I will provide an account of the different periods of my fieldwork, starting with the two months I spent in Mexico in the summer of 2010 and continuing with my eleven months of research in Chicago.

3.2.1 Fieldwork part I: San Antonio, Mexico, July and August 2010 I arrived in Mexico City in July 2010 and made my way north to Pueblo Nuevo in the Valle de Solís to start my fieldwork there. For the first two weeks, the two project leaders Julia Pauli and Michael Schnegg and their daughter Liliana joined me and introduced me to some of their friends and acquaintances in the 3 | See Pauli 1999; Pauli 2000; Pauli 2002; Pauli 2007a; Pauli 2007b; Pauli 2008. 4 | In 1942 Mexico and the United States agreed on a contract labor program, the Bracero program that allowed American employees to recruit Mexicans as contracted laborers and thus made it easier for Mexicans to legally work in the U.S. The Bracero program was extended several times until migration policy changed in 1964 (see Henderson 2011: 58ff. and chapter 4.1).

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valley. My intention was to find a community in the region that was suited to start the fieldwork in. Becoming acquainted with some of the locals and getting a first impression of the entire valley helped a lot to single out a suitable field site. My criteria for choosing a community were, first, the occurrence of labor migration to the United States at an early point in time (the 1970s) and a subsequent increase in migration and, second, the existence of one main migration destination in the United States. From previous research, I knew that the valley’s inhabitants migrated to several areas in the United States – North and South Carolina, the Chicago area, Virginia and Texas –, but I needed to find a village from which people had migrated to one particular destination both in great numbers and from as early a point in time as possible. After conducting two weeks of preliminary research in the Valle de Solís it became clear that the major wave of migration in the 1970s had started in two neighboring villages, San Antonio and San Nicolás. Martín Chaparro from San Antonio had been among the first migrants to leave the region and cross the border to the U.S. without legal documentation. Later, he also helped many of the valley’s inhabitants cross the border.5 Both due to the village’s comparatively long migration history, the central role of Martín and one main migratory destination for the village’s inhabitants – the city of Chicago and its suburbs – I decided to choose San Antonio as a starting point for my research. I proceeded to spend one month in the community, seeking to get in touch with those families who had relatives in Chicago. During that time, I rented accommodation in the village, and hired an elderly lady, Doña María, as my assistant. I chose to work with Doña María since I was looking for someone who was reliable, had spare time, was respected in the village and knew most of the inhabitants personally, in particular the older ones. All these criteria were true for Doña María. She had been recommended to me by several acquaintances in Pueblo Nuevo, was a lady in her mid 60s and lived at the entrance of the village. Her daughter also ran a little store there, which provided me with excellent opportunity to get in touch with people from San Antonio. Apart from helping out in her daughter’s store, Doña María no longer worked on a regular basis and agreed to become my assitant during my time in the village. Before going into further detail with respect to the first weeks of research in San Antonio, I will briefly introduce my first field site and its central characteristics.

Field site in Mexico: San Antonio in the Valle de Solís San Antonio Solís belongs to the municipality of Temascalcingo. According to the Diagnóstico Sociodemográfico del Municipio de Temascalcingo 6, San Antonio 5 | For more on the process of transporting migrants across the Mexico-U.S. border (coyotaje) see Spener 2009. 6 | Gobierno del Estado de México 2008.

Periods of the fieldwork

Solís had a population of 1055 in 2005. The history of the village dates back to the 1930s. In the course of the land reform of the 1930s, the land in the Valle de Solís, which had previously been claimed by the Hacienda de Solís, was redistributed (Pauli 2008: 178, 2000: 68f.). The government allotted pieces of communal land (éjido) in the region of today’s San Antonio to people living in the villages of Agostadero and La Loma who had worked as peones for the Hacienda de Solís before.7 After the Hacienda had been expropriated and lost its power, the villagers were in need of proper land they could cultivate and live off. In the first years after the land reform, people from La Loma and Agostadero commuted to their plots of land every day in order to reclaim it. Soon the first families started to move to the new area and gradually, with the influx of more and more people, they built the first elements of a communal infrastructure. The elementary school was opened in 1940, the cemetery followed in 1945 and shortly after that the new settlement received its church and was named San Antonio. Today the village at first sight gives an impression of relative wealth and affluence. San Antonio is spread across a fairly vast area and the houses, lying scattered with cornfields in between them, suggest generous space. This notion of prosperity appeared to be confirmed by the style of the buildings, most of which were apparently constructed just a few years ago. They are built in a rather modern style, comprise two floors, are made of brick (Spanish tabique – the traditional and still cheaper building material in the area is adobe) and have ornate window frames and elaborate fences and gates. One element clearly disturbing the picture are San Antonio’s streets. For my first trip to San Antonio from Pueblo Nuevo, which is located ten kilometers away, I was told that our small rental car might not guarantee a safe journey to San Antonio as the roads were rather bumpy and might require a jeep rather than a small car. Although I later saw several more modest vehicles making their way through the village, it was undeniable that the muddy roads full of potholes stood in stark contrast to the well-paved streets of Pueblo Nuevo. Eventually I realized that the state of the buildings in San Antonio corresponded to the condition of the roads. Most of the houses were only halfway finished. The expensive brick stones often framed windows without panes, with plants growing through them, conquering the empty uninhabited spaces. Apparently half of the buildings lacked inhabitants. They belonged, I soon learned, to villagers who had migrated to the United States and had invested their first migradólares in building new homes back home in Mexico, where they intended to return to some

7 | The following information on the history of San Antonio is based on interviews with Don Fernando (12.08.2010) and Doña María (04.08.2010).

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day.8 If the migrants did not return for regular visits home themselves they sent money and building plans from the U.S. and instructed family and friends what they wished the house to look like. But more often than not the money for various reasons some day ceased to arrive and so the buildings remained empty remembrances, keeping their owners’ memories and the hope of their return alive. The houses represented only one of the traces indicating that many of the villagers had migrated and were living in the United States. Another sign were the four-wheel drive cars with U.S. license plates, which I saw rolling through San Antonio’s streets during the U.S. school holidays and for special occasions and fiestas. Among the migrants returning for some weeks, some also came to host their own ceremonies ‘at home’. During my stay in San Antonio I attended two large wedding receptions of couples who lived in the United States and returned for their wedding in order to celebrate with the entire village. Both times the husbands were originally from San Antonio and the wives from a different hometown. In contrast to my first impression of San Antonio, the picture of the potholed roads and ghostly houses actually breathed an aura of tristesse. Over the course of my stay in the community it became clear that the majority of the population in fact was quite poor.9 I found that even the properties surrounding the houses, which without further knowledge seemed like vast fields to me, were often too small to provide sufficient amounts of corn and other crops for a family to live off the land. Although in San Antonio everyone owned a piece of land next to their house, the people had less property than in other villages such as Pueblo Nuevo (where the fields were located outside the village) since access to land around San Antonio was very limited due to the very closely located neighboring villages of San José del Reyes and San Miguel. The lack of land and, related to that, the lack of income opportunities, had prompted a lot of people from San Antonio to move away, often crossing the border to the U.S. in search of work. Until the 1960s many villagers went contratados, as contract workers. After the end of the Bracero program undocumented migration started in San Antonio. Martín Chaparro was among the first ones from the 8 | This fascinating phenomenon of remittance houses has been documented for Mexico by e.g. Lopez (Lopez 2010) and Pauli (Pauli 2008). 9 | The information on the economic situation of San Antonio that I obtained during informal conversations and interviews corresponds to the data of the Diagnóstico Sociodemografico del Municipio de Temascalcingo, which classified the degree of marginalization on a local level (“grado de marginación a nivel localidad” – an index measuring municipal development in terms of access to education, appropriate accommodation and sufficient financial means in San Antonio) as high. The degree of marginalization in Pueblo Nuevo, by contrast, was rated as medium (Gobierno del Estado de México 2008).

Periods of the fieldwork

village to cross the border without documents. By chance he ended up living and working in the Chicago area and, more or less by accident, started a kind of second San Antonio community in Illinois.10

Starting the fieldwork in San Antonio The major aim of my first period of fieldwork in San Antonio was to establish contacts with families in the village whose members had been or were still living in Chicago. I intended to, first, generally become acquainted with the village of San Antonio and get an impression of the way of life people were leading there in order to get a clearer idea of the setting and the background people came from – and maybe later returned to – when they decided to ‘go north’. Second, I sought to both get in touch with individuals who had returned to Mexico, ideally upon retiring from work, and with people who had relatives and friends living in Chicago and were open to providing me with some first contact details. One means of accomplishing this endeavor would have been to conduct a demographic census of all of San Antonio’s households. Since, however, my actual interest concerned only a certain part of the population (people who had connections to Chicago and individuals who had returned after retirement) and time was scarce, I decided to engage in purposive sampling, which in the given situation appeared to be the most feasible alternative.11 As Doña María knew most of the people living in San Antonio and could also, for most cases, tell me about the whereabouts of the family members, I took a walk through the village with her every day. We stopped at all the houses where Doña María knew that someone was or had been living in the United States. She introduced me to the owners, I explained the reason for my presence and what I was doing and tried to find out whether any members of the household or any of their friends and accquaintances were living in the Chicago area. So far the idea. I soon came to realize, however, that things would not work out as planned. The main obstacle during those weeks in Mexico was a lack of confidence and high degree of distrust among many of the village’s inhabitants caused and fuelled by stories about the United States’ ever toughening migration policy, stricter border controls and deportations. Although Doña María and I did our best to explain that I did not have any ties to the United States’ government but was an independent researcher from Germany interested in gaining a better understanding of the phenomenon of migration and the everyday lives of people living in a world strongly impacted by migration, people often remained skeptical. In some cases, they voiced their mistrust openly. Other times I could sense their reluctance to tell me about the whereabouts of their family members between the lines. Often people claimed not to know anything 10 | Informal interviews with Martín Chaparro, September and October 2010. 11 | On purposive sampling see Bernard 2000: 176ff.

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about the place of residence of their relatives. Therefore, the picture of how many people from San Antonio were actually living in Chicago, who they were and how many elderly people were among them remained blurred. However, with the help of Doña María I got the contact details of some individuals and families who had migrated to Chicago area12 and who I figured could serve as a starting point for continuing the fieldwork in the US.

3.2.2 Fieldwork part II: Chicago first phase, September–October 2010 My extended fieldwork in the United States was made possible through my cooperation with the Department of Anthropology at East Carolina University (ECU) in Greenville, North Carolina, who sponsored my visa. I applied for becoming a visiting scholar there for the course of my research period in the U.S. and had completed all the paperwork before I left for Mexico. ECU seemed like a good option because the project supervisors Julia Pauli and Michael Schnegg had prior contacts with the university, and I knew that North Carolina was among my possible field sites in the U.S. since villagers from Valle de Solís had migrated there. Professor Christine Avenarius in particular as well as the other faculty members and the staff both at the department and at the international office offered tremendous support and were extremely helpful both during the application procedure and during my stays there. From San Antonio in Mexico I went straight to Greenville, NC, before I started my fieldwork in Chicago in September 2010. I returned for a week at the beginning of December 2010. During both stays I very much enjoyed the inspiring exchange and discussions with Professor Christine Avenarius, Professor David Griffith and Professor Ricardo Contreras and felt warmly welcomed by the department and the university.

San Antonio in Chicago All in all, around 400 individuals from San Antonio live in the Chicago area today.13 Martín told me that he got to Chicago by chance.14 In the 1970s he left Mexico looking for work, got to California first and heard rumors about wages being higher in Chicago. So he went where the money was supposed to be. He 12 | Altogether, I had a list of 66 individuals from San Antonio who were supposed to be living in Chicago or its suburbs. However, in some cases I did not get the person’s contact details and often the exact age remained unclear. 13 | This number is based on accounts of people from San Antonio and my own observations. 14 | Informal interviews with Martín Chaparro, September and October 2010.

Periods of the fieldwork

brought the image of Chicago back home to San Antonio and thereby prompted more people to leave for Chicago, helping some of them cross the border himself and often also serving as the first contact point in Chicago. Frequently the newly arrived migrants from San Antonio would stay at Martín’s place for the first few days, weeks or months, initiating their life in the new environment from there and getting help with finding an apartment and a job. When I arrived in Chicago in September 2011, Martín was the most important contact I had there since I had lived with his family in San Antonio and he had helped a lot of others migrate. I only got to meet Martín twice, however. He was about to leave for Mexico just when I got to Chicago as he was seriously ill and hoping for more affordable medical treatment in his home country. Nonetheless, Martín’s home came to present a central place for me during my first weeks in Chicago, both in terms of the warmth and friendliness his family welcomed me with and the information I gathered there. Like for so many other migrants before, Martín’s home also served as a point of first contact for me, albeit in a very different sense. His family helped me to get in touch with the Midwestern San Antonio community. They brought me along to different social occasions and put me in touch with their friends and acquaintances from the village. I was invited to weddings and quinceañeras 15, which almost the entire San Antonio population living in the Chicago area attended. By this means I got a fairly complete picture of the San Antonio migrant population living in the Midwest. This impression, complemented by conversations with other relatives of my contacts in from San Antonio, was not at all what I had expected. All the gatherings I attended almost entirely lacked elderly people. Apart from very few exceptions the oldest individuals attending the events were in their late forties. Although I had, based on my observations in Mexico, not expected not to find a huge retirement community from San Antonio in Chicago, I was not prepared not to meet a single individual (except for two elderly ladies visiting their children) in the community who was over the age of 53. After all, migration in San Antonio had started in the 1970s. And although the villagers in Mexico had remained rather vague in their information regarding the age of the ones who had “gone north” they had assured me that, yes, there were retired señores and señoras among the migrants. Reality in Chicago, however, looked very different, and after a first stage of puzzlement I started to inquire about the reasons for this. Could it be that, apart from Martín 15 | Qinceañera is the celebration of a girl’s fifteenth birthday in Mexico and Mexican communities. In Mexico, the fifteenth birthday marks the transition from girl to woman and therefore is regarded as one of the most important days in her life and celebrated accordingly. Usually, a few hundred people (in the case of people from San Antonio in Chicago almost the entire San Antonio community) are invited to attend a quinceañera, which in and around Chicago takes place in huge ballrooms.

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Chapparro, people in fact had not started to move to Chicago in the 1970s? Had emigration from San Antonio to the Midwest actually begun later? This was not the case, but I learnt that the first cohort of migrants in the 1970s had simply been surprisingly young. Martín and his friends headed north when they were merely teenagers, at the age of 13, 14. Accordingly these people are in their 40s and early 50s now and did not consider retirement yet. My research design was severely compromised.

Modifying the research design After two months of interacting with the San Antonio community in Chicago, there remained no doubt that there were hardly any elderly people from San Antonio living in Chicago. Some modification of the research design seemed unavoidable and I was faced with the decision to either stick with the San Antonio population and reformulate my research question entirely or to shift the focus of my research to a different community in order to pursue the original question. I opted for the latter of the two options, accepting the fact that I would discard my San Antonio relations in doing so, for two reasons: First, the thought of dismissing the topic of retirement, belonging and remigration appealed to me even less than leaving the San Antonio connection behind. Second, considering Chicago’s demographic makeup with its large longstanding Mexican population, I supposed that it would be possible to find access to other Mexican communities and to conduct the research there. What followed was a period of reorientation, starting from scratch, building up networks with a variety of institutions and gradually establishing contacts with older firstgeneration Mexicans with a large diversity of backgrounds and home regions. Despite this significant reorientation, my stay in San Antonio remained an important asset. Having experienced daily life in rural Mexico helped me envision the kind of life some of the people I later met had possibly left behind in Mexico. This made it easier to talk about their backgrounds in the interviews. It also lent me higher credibility and trustworthiness. Often when people realized that I at least was a little familiar with what they were talking about– such as the weekly tortilla making, ways of preparing cactus fruits and leafs and the problem of interrupted water supply due to quarrels regarding water management – they opened up and viewed me differently. I became a little less of an ‘outsider’. Besides, having spent the weeks in San Antonio proved extremely valuable in terms of having seen the strong impact of migration on a region in Mexico and the relationship the migrants maintained with their home region. In San Antonio, the effects of migration were visible in the new empty and mostly half-finished buildings as well as in the four-wheel drive cars with U.S. license plates populating San Antonio during the U.S. school holidays and the pictures showing family member in front of the Chicago skyline that decorated people’s living rooms. These traces also witnessed the degree to which many

Periods of the fieldwork

migrants who had gone north stayed connected with San Antonio, sending money home, building houses and returning there to celebrate their wedding in Mexico. While I decided to discard San Antonio as my link between Mexico and the U.S., the main questions I sought to answer stayed the same. However, giving up my hard-earned contacts had several significant implications for my research design. First of all, it meant that I had to find new contacts and think of means of getting in touch with members of the Mexican communities in Chicago. Besides, the study would probably become considerably less transnational by moving away from a distinct link between the migrants in Chicago and their home regions, which I would not have visited. Considering the immediate distrust I had faced when asking questions about migration in the San Antonio community, it seemed unlikely that I would be able to confine my study to a community from a single region in Mexico without having been there before. I could not afford to make this a dominant criterion if I did not want to risk finding enough informants. Finally, the timeline of the research also changed significantly as a longer exploratory period in Chicago became necessary.

3.2.3 Fieldwork part III: Chicago second phase, November 2010– Februar y 2011 The decision to adjust my research design prompted the question which criteria I would apply to select the field site and the informants in Chicago and how I was to find access to the Mexican communities. Most of the people from San Antonio only mingled with other people from the Valle de Solís. Hence the option of getting to know any elderly friends and acquaintances from other parts of Mexico whom I might be able to include in my sample did not seem very promising. I therefore chose to take neighborhoods in Chicago that had a considerable Mexican population as a starting point for my sampling. For practical reasons, I also decided not to limit my sample to people from one specific region in Mexico, but to focus on the criterion of residence in Chicago. These delimitiations, however, did not provide an answer to the question how I would get in touch with elderly immigrants from Mexico in a big city like Chicago, where large parts of the Mexican population did not have a legal residence status and always ran the risk of being deported? This constituted a major challenge – exactly the kind of challenge I had sought to circumvent by starting the research in Mexico. I dedicated the better part of the next three to four months to exploring Mexican communities in Chicago, contacting organizations and institutions that were engaged with these communities, especially its older members, such as churches, neighborhood organizations, language schools and senior clubs. My goal was to find a limited number of neighborhoods that

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would allow me to confine my sample to a particular area of the city. I further aimed at getting access to elderly Mexicans through these various organizations and institutions. I reached the first part of my goal fairly quickly by choosing two community areas in Chicago I wanted to focus on – (1) Pilsen and Little Village and (2) Logan Square. Both areas had a sizable Mexican population but were apart from that marked by quite different charactersitics.

Selecting field sites in Chicago: Pilsen & Little Village and Logan Square Pilsen and adjacent Little Village, or La Villita as most inhabitants usually call the area, are two of Chicago’s ‘traditional’ Mexican neighborhoods, located southwest of the city center.16 Due to the fact that no other population group in Chicago has been growing at an equally fast pace, the Mexican population has recently expanded beyond these two neighborhoods. Today, there are quite a few areas in and around Chicago where Mexicans account for a large part of the population or even form the majority. Since I wanted the sample to include both areas that had been shaped by a large Mexican population for a long time and areas that had not been predominantly Mexican until recently, I decided to focus on Pilsen and Little Village as the “traditional” Mexican parts of the city on the one hand, and on Logan Square on the other. Logan Square is a neighborhood in the northwest of Chicago that was until recently predominantly Polish and Puerto Rican, albeit with a growing Mexican population since the 1970s. The appeal of focusing my research on both Pilsen/ Little Village and Logan Square lay in several factors, both similarities and differences. As to the similarities, Mexicans have been living in both areas for more than forty years. Thus, in both cases there are members of the community who are approaching the decision where to live after retirement. Besides, in Pilsen and Little Village as well as in Logan Square, Mexicans account for more than 50 percent of the neighborhood’s populations today. The total population of Logan Square is 74,000 inhabitants (ca. 53,000 Hispanic or Latino)17 and the total population of Pilsen and Little Village is 9,000 (ca. 80,000 Hispanic or Latino).18 These facts seemed to guarantee a pool of possible informants large enough to provide for the aspired sample size 16 | For more detail on Pilsen and Little Village see chapter 4.3. 17 | Until 2000, the majority of Logan Square’s Hispanic Population was comprised by Puerto Ricans, who started settling in Logan Square in the 1960s. Today, most Hispanics living in Logan Square are of Mexican origin, followed by sizable Puerto Rican, Central American and Mexican communities (De Genova 2005: 19). 18 | The numbers are based on data on the Chicago community areas compiled in 2000 and 2010 by the U.S. Census Bureau and divided into community areas (U.S.Census-Bureau 2000; U.S.-Census-Bureau 2010a). However, as reliable data are only available for the Chicago community areas and not for the Chicago neighbor-

Periods of the fieldwork

of 75 individuals. As to the differences, the neighborhoods differed in terms of demographic characteristics, history and defining features, which promised to allow for a heterogeneous pool of potential informants. Whereas Mexicans settled in Pilsen already in the 1920s19, the Mexican population in Logan Square did not start growing considerably before the 1970s. Additionally, there is also an interesting divergence in the attitude people express towards Mexico depending on where they chose to live in Chicago:20 Residents of Little Village and Pilsen tend to be very proud of their Mexican heritage and express a strong connection with all things related to Mexico, whereas people in Logan Square often deliberately decided to settle outside the traditional Mexican neighborhoods. Many sought to distance themselves from the Mexican community and their children to go to ‘better’ (white) schools. Sometimes they even judged Pilsen and Little Village negatively, associating those parts of town with violence, organized crime and poverty. These divergences regarding the history and images of the neighborhoods combined with a suitable demographic setting and the existence of organizations that might serve as contact points in both neighborhoods seemed to make them promising research locations. By focusing on these areas, it might be possible, I figured, to include people’s living environment as one factor in the puzzle of aspects influencing elderly migrants’ retirement plans. The sample would furthermore comprise individuals with diverging attitudes towards Mexico.

Selecting informants in Chicago After having narrowed down the geographic focus and selected the field sites, the task of finding informants remained. As mentioned previously, my approach entailed getting access on the structural-organizational level as a first step, hoping to then get in touch with the community through diverse organizations, which had some probable link to elderly Mexicans. I adopted this strategy for two reasons. First of all, public gathering places like markets, neighborhood bars or community events that I could attend, in general settings where people simply met and I could meet people, appeared to be fairly scarce. As I later came to realize, this situation was due to (1) the urban setting, especially a big metropolis like Chicago, which by nature is more anonymous than a rural hoods (for the differences between community areas and neighborhoods see chapter 4.2.3), the numbers given above for the neighborhoods are my estimates. 19 | Mexicans did, however, not form the majority population in the area until the 1950s/ 1960s, when urban renewal projects in the Near West Side forced many Mexicans who had settled there to move away and find a new home (De Genova 2005: 118). 20 | This is based on informal conversations, interviews, and observations.

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setting, (2) the Chicago weather conditions that included long and extremely severe winters during which people rarely left their homes, (3) the work load that many people shouldered and that hardly left any time to socialize and use public space and, related to this, (4) an emphasis on and retreat to the private sphere and family during the scarce free time. Consequently – and this factor constitutes the second reason why I pursued the approach via organizations – a lot of people had fairly small social networks that consisted mostly of very close family members, rather than a big circle of friends and acquaintances. Hence the method of snowball sampling21 proved to be quite fruitless. Getting to know one family did not automatically create new relationships with further relatives and friends. Moreover, moving as a European anthropologist in an American urban multicultural setting, I was not the object of curiosity everyone was eager to get to know and have a conversation with, as is often the case in a rural or small-town setting.22 This was all the more the case because, due to the fear of deportation, the mistrust among the Mexican immigrant population towards curious outsiders turned out to be quite strong. Although most of the migrants I aimed to include in my sample had migrated to the United States at a time that enabled them to obtain legal residence status and had no reason to be afraid of deportation, many people had household members, friends and acquaintances who were undocumented. Therefore, a lot of people remained reserved towards a person like me who might constitute a potential risk for members of the community. Last but not least, the age difference between the people I aimed to work with and me also mattered. Similar age facilitates exchange due to potentially shared experiences, which was obviously not true for a young anthropologist in her late 20s and Mexican immigrants in their 60s and 70s. By taking the path via organizations people frequented in their daily lives, I hoped to find a way to deal with and solve these obstacles and in the longer run also establish contacts to some of the elderly members of the Mexican communities who were involved with the organizations. Applying this strategy, I attended church services and festivities, went to meetings of different

21 | For details on the sampling methods, see chapter 3.3. 22 | This part of my role as an anthropologist particularly contrasted with the experiences I had made in Namibia some years earlier, in 2006, when I had conducted research on the construction and implications of ‘being coloured’ in Khomasdal, the so called ‘coloured’ neighborhood of Namibia’s capital Windhoek. Most people there met me with curiosity and openness, expressing delight that someone finally was interested in them and their story. In Chicago’s Mexican communities by contrast, it was distrust towards me and my role that prevailed.

Periods of the fieldwork

church-based groups like guadalupanos23, talked to several priests and members of church boards and volunteered at social events organized by the church, such as a Thanksgiving dinner. I introduced myself to different NGOs, such as educational centers and neighborhood organizations, as well as to language schools and hometown organizations.24 And I approached institutions that addressed seniors in particular, such as senior clubs and retirement homes. This approach required a lot of time. It was often strenuous to find the right people, to persuade them of the value and sense of my endeavor, all the more so because some of the institutions were frequently targeted by researchers from one of Chicago’s numerous universities and research institutions (mostly from the field of social work) and had over time developed an abrasive stance towards researchers. Many times, a trace that had looked promising at first turned out not to lead anywhere after all. But besides these arduous parts of the process I also encountered a lot of overwhelmingly helpful people who were open to supporting my endeavor. They put me in touch with possible informants or people who might know someone meeting my criteria and had an admirable patience in answering my questions. They provided me not only with opportunities to get in touch with people from the communities and contact details but also with valuable information regarding my research topic. Thus, it was a lucky ‘side-effect’ that my strategy to establish contacts with elderly Mexicans from the communities via local organizations at the same time made it possible for me to already interview a number people who were part of the environment of my actual research population, such as social workers, attorneys, health officials and clergymen. Since I had intended to include such people in my research, I could seize the opportunity to conduct expert interviews while a new network in the Mexican communities slowly but surely began to emerge. Besides, I kept exploring Pilsen, Little Village and Logan Square by simply roaming the streets, eating at taquerías and attending events like folklore dance performances and exhibition openings. Based on my observations, informal conversations and the expert interviews I developed an

23 | At quite a number of churches in Chicago there are groups called guadalupanos. These groups consist of Mexican church members who organize church based fundraising events (selling Mexican food after the church service etc.) in order to raise money for e.g. the celebrations around the day of el día de la virgen on December 12th, inviting priests from Mexico or commissioning a particular sacred piece, like a statue of the virgin, from Mexico. 24 | Hometown associations (clubes oriundos in Spanish) are associations that have been founded by Mexicans from one federal state in Mexico with the aim of raising money for projects in their region of origin, see e.g. Fitzgerald 2009: 103-124; Ramakrishnan and Viramontes 2010.

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interview guideline, and at the end of 2010 I was finally able to conduct my first semistructured interview.

3.2.4 Fieldwork part IV: Chicago third phase Februar y–July 2011 Looking back at my fieldwork, whereas the first half can be characterized as a working period that partly implied planned unpredictabilities (such as my choice of my research site in the U.S.) and partly happened to demand great openness to alterations and adjustments, the second half in the field assumed a much straighter shape. Until the beginning of 2011, I had sometimes doubted whether I would succeed in establishing new networks in the Mexican communities. Not least because of the obstacles I had faced, I had also scrutinized my role as an anthropologist and researcher as well as challenged the justification I had for asking for peoples’ time, commitment and stories. In the New Year, however, things began to look brighter. Although parts of the problems persisted throughout the data collection, I had somehow landed in ‘Mexican Chicago’ and was able to start collecting data more systematically. From February to July 2011 I could rely on the contacts I had established during the preceding months and focus on the research question I aimed to answer. As a consequence of having to adjust the research desig at the beginning of the fieldwork in Chicago, Mexicans who had already returned to Mexico after retiring were – contrary to the initial idea – ultimately not included in the research. By moving the research focus away from the San Antonio Solís community for the reasons mentioned earlier, I also had ‘lost’ the distinct transnational link that would otherwise have been part of the study. The new contacts I established in Chicago were with migrants who came from different regions in Mexico. Tracing their contacts to potential family members or friends who had moved back to Mexico after retirement and might form part of the sample proved impossible: Although I always inquired about family members or acqaintances who belonged to a similar age cohort and had actually decided to return to Mexico at around the time of retirement, I hardly found any concrete traces. This led me to suspect – although I cannot confirm this assumption empirically – that the number of retirement returness from this age group who had migrated to Chicago between the 1960s and 1980s might be fairly low. Consequently, since the fieldwork in Chicago did not result in any extensive contacts to people who already had returned and were living in Mexico, another quite extensive stay in Mexico would have been necessary after the research period in Chicago in order to be able to travel to different parts of the country and trace the few returnees I had learnt about in Chicago. This option was not feasible, because of both time and funding constraints. Moreover, even if ‘completing’ the sample by involving returnees in Mexico would have been ideal, I

Methods of data collection in Chicago

suppose that not including them will not substantially distort my results since there seemed to be quite few returnees in proportion to the migrants of this age group who were still living in Chicago.

3.3

M e thods of data collection in C hicago

In the chronological description of my initial approach and the progess of my fieldwork, I have already addressed several aspects regarding my methods of data collection. In this section, I will give a more detailed account of the methods I applied.

Sampling Given the circumstances of my research in Chicago, the method of purposive sampling combined with snowball sampling25 seemed most suitable for several reasons. First, the population I sought to study was difficult to access because of the indocumented status of many Mexican immirats that lead to a common skep towards curious outsiders like me in the Latino communities. Second, the contacts that I had in the beginning and could build upon were very few, the size of the neighborhoods that I chose for the fieldwork precluded a random sample and I could not afford to restrict the pool of possible informants very much geographically. Third, since the research design and question largely determined the criteria the informants were supposed to fulfill, working with a purposive sample was essential. Snowball sampling additionally provided the possibility to start off at several potential “entry points”, both organizations and individuals, and build the sample from there, hoping to create a dynamic that, like a rolling snowball, would lead to further informants through friends and acquaintances of the people I already knew. As mentioned earlier, the method of snowball sampling did not always work very well since a lot of individuals had a rather small social network and could hardly refer me to anyone. As to the organizations, the approach often proved successful once I had made my way through the different administrative levels and found the right contact person in the institution. The choice of informants was governed and restricted by the following criteria: • •

Country of birth: Mexico Age: 55 years and above26

25 | For details on purposive and snowball sampling see Bernard 2000: 176ff. 26 | I decided to include people aged 55 and above in the sample because the age of 55 is a common demarcation line for being considered a senior in several public contexts in Chicago. People are e.g. eligible for senior housing at the age of 55, they

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• •

Migration to Chicago at some stage before retirement27 Place of residence: Pilsen/ Little Village or Logan Square

I chose not to restrict the sample to people from certain regions of birth in Mexico because doing so would have curtailed the pool of possible informants too much. Also, I gave up on my initial approach of drawing a clear-cut line between individuals who were approaching retirement and contemplating remigration on the one hand and the ones who had retired and decided for or against remigration or commuting on the other. It gradually became clear that the idea of dividing my informants into these two groups and including them in equal proportions in my sample, drawing a quota sample28, did not make sense because in many cases both retirement and the decision where to live after it where much more fluid than I had expected. In the end, my sample comprised 66 Informants from Mexico aged 55 and above – the average age was 65.7 years – who had migrated to Chicago between 1957 and 1980. Furthermore, I conducted 16 expert interviews with social workers, English teachers, attorneys, clergymen and politicians and talked to my informants’ family members, friends and acquaintances. The sample is not supposed to be representative for the entire Mexican population of Chicago.

Participant observation As in all ethnographic fieldwork, in order to understand the nature of the Mexican migrants’ lives in Chicago and to investigate their decision making when being faced with retirement, participant observation constituted an indispensable tool during the entire fieldwork.29 In the exploratory period of my research participant observation was crucial as a “strategy of discovery” (Schnegg 2005: 31) because it allowed me to adjust and correct my, unintended by nevertheless existing, preconceived notions and ideas of Mexican life in Chicago that I entered the field with. Besides, this method of data collection provided valuable information for the operationalization of the topics I sought to address in the interviews on the one hand and constituted an essential framework and background for interpreting the information I obtained in the interviews on the other. Even though my opportunities to participate in my informants’ daily can join specific programs aimed at reintegrating seniors into the job market at 55 and the membership age in senior clubs is 55 years. 27 | I made this restriction since I was interested in the choice of people who might have developed connections and commitments to aspects both of the Mexican and the Chicagoan way of life. This requires a certain amount of time one has spent in both settings. 28 | See Bernard (2000: 175f.) for details on quota sampling. 29 | On participant observation see Hauser-Schäublin 2003; Lamnek 2005: 546.

Methods of data collection in Chicago

lives were limited, events such as church services, hometown association meetings, citizenship and language classes and senior club gatherings allowed me to take a participatory role as well. The urban setting my fieldwork took place in required an event centered kind of participant observation. Since my interactions in the field were often limited and timed, I conducted “anthropology by appointment” (Hannerz 2010: 77; Luhrmann 1996: VII) rather than following the classical ideal of “anthropology by immersion”. Due to the lack of public spaces I already have discussed above and the tight schedules that prevailed in most peoples’ lives, it was impossible to just ‘hang around’ and become an integral part of everyone’s daily environment. The situation hence called for a modified model of participant observation. Taking part in peoples’ lives was only possible in the context of certain events, kinds of ‘scheduled public spaces’. I spent for example a lot of time playing lotería – the Mexican version of Bingo, using images instead of numbers – in three different senior clubs that met once or twice every week and attended church services as well as subsequent fundraising food sales.

Unstructured and semi-structured interviews Apart from participant observation, unstructured and semi-structured interviews were a crucial part of my fieldwork. 30 I conducted interviews with elderly migrants from Mexico (1) who had not retired yet and started thinking about possible options, (2) who were in the process of retiring/ moving and (3) who had already made a decision on where to settle.31 While unstructured interviews prevailed in the first and second period of the Chicago fieldwork (September 2010 – February 2011), I mainly resorted to semi-structured ones during the third period. The interview guideline, which I developed based on my observations and the unstructured interviews, covered the topics migratory history, life in, relation with and attitudes towards Mexico (including friends and family there, emotional attachments, involvement with politics, church, associations, investments, remittances and homeownership), life in, relation with and attitudes towards Chicago (including the aspects named for Mexico), assessment of people’s economic situation, their health, and their ideas and plans for the future. All in all, I conducted 39 semi-structured interviews, 23 with women and 16 with men, which lasted between 40 minutes and five hours (see table 3.1 for an overview of the methods and sample sizes). Except for three interviews

30 | On unstructured interviews see Bernard 2000: 193ff.; Schlehe 2003. On semistructured interviews see Bernard 2000: 191. 31 | As already mentioned, those categories were often not as clearcut in real life as on paper. People who told me that they already had made up their minds at one point of time (category 3) would sometimes experience doubts some months later.

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where the interview partners did not agree to a recording (I took notes instead), I recorded and transcribed all of the interviews. Many of the semi-structured interviews also contained life histories. Already the question “De dónde es usted”? often prompted people to tell me large parts of their life histories, and my question on peoples’ migratory history presented a similar trigger. Since I assumed that, apart from the current situation, individual biographies might also play a major role for the status of personal belonging32 and the question whether to stay or to return, life histories provided an important tool for collecting these kinds of data and being able to identify crucial events in people’s biographies. Table 3.1: Overview of methods and sample sizes Method

Sample

Women

Men

Core questions

66

41

25

Semi-structured interviews

39

24

15

Structured interviews

37

23

14

Freelists

37

23

14

Ego-centered network analysis

33

23

14

Expert interviews

16

Questionnaires / Structured interviews I complemented the open and semi-structured interviews by questionnaires that built upon the information I had gathered from the interviews and during participant observation.33 The topics the questions covered were similar to the semi-structured interviews and included the same core questions but differed in so far as they explored certain aspects in more depths and contained mostly closed questions, the answers being scaled. This allowed for a higher degree of comparability regarding some of the topics I sought to explore and to complement my qualitative data with a quantitative dataset. Elements of social network analysis34 as well as freelist questions35 constituted an integral part of 32 | On the role of biographical narratives for the identity of elderly people see Gardner 2002: 28. 33 | On structured interviews see Sökefeld 2003: 100-105. 34 | On ego-centered network analysis see Jansen 2006; Schnegg and Lang 2002; Schweizer 1996. 35 | On freelists see Schnegg and Lang 2008.

Personal circumstances of the fieldwork

the questionnaire. In order to avoid the risk of misunderstanding the quesions, incomplete questionnaires and people not being able to answer the questions due to poor reading and writing skills, I decided not to distribute the questionnaires and have them answered in written form but to conduct structured interviews where I exactly followed the questionnaire. My sample here included 37 people, 13 men and 24 women (see table 3.1). Ten of the individuals whom I already had interviewed in the semi-structured interviews took part in the structured interviews as well.

Expert interviews Since it seemed crucial to me to understand the mechanisms of the environments and conditions that influenced and shaped the lives of elderly Mexicans living in Chicago, collecting the immigrants’ perspectives only formed one part of answering the puzzle. Interviews with experts such as social workers, lawyers, health professionals and clergymen, constituted another important method of data collection in order to complement the individual migrants’ stories. All in all, I conducted 16 expert interviews: with two clergymen, one immigration lawyer, two English teachers, three social workers, three health officials, two members of hometown organizations and the heads of three senior centers.

3.4 P ersonal circumstances of the fieldwork When conducting ethnographic research, the researcher’s role, personal attributes and biases inevitably have a bearing on the course and outcome of the research. Attributes such as gender, age, ethnicity, language skills and relationship status influence how one is perceived by the people one interacts with. They either help build relationships or prevent them, either contribute to or thwart processes of identification, and lead to certain assumptions and expectations both on the side of the researcher and on part of the informants (Bernard 2000: 155f.). For the data analysis it is therefore important to reflect on how and to what extent certain attributes have affected my understanding of the subject matter and my role in the field. I have already touched upon some of the general circumstances and problems of the fieldwork above. With regard to my role in the field in Chicago, personal characteristics that probably affected the data collection were (1) my age, (2) my language skills and knowledge of Mexico, (3) my ethnic/ national background, (4) my place and type of residence as well as (5) my relationship status. Studying return migration at retirement means interacting with and interviewing mainly elderly people. When I started the fieldwork in Chicago I had just turned 29 and most of the people I spent time with for the study were

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roughly double my age, if not more. To be sure, I also got in touch with younger people, in particular during the second phase of the fieldwork in Chicago, when I began contacting all kinds of organizations, attending church services and volunteering. During the main period of data collection, my interlocutors’ children and grandchildren were sometimes present, but my correspondents often lived alone or with their partners. Spending time with primarily elderly people during the data collection had several consequences. People of the same age share, irrespective of all the other differences in background which might exist, at least the same stage of life, which makes it possible to refer to certain similar experiences and perceptions on the one hand and to share topics of interest and activities on the other. As the anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff has pointed out, when doing research on elderly people, the great challenge consists in trying to comprehend how people might feel, also physically, at the age of 60, 70 or 80. During her research with elderly Jews in California, she therefore sometimes employed what she calls “imaginative identification” (Myerhoff 1980: 19). Myerhoff attempted to simulate what this feeling of being old and moving with an elderly body might entail by “wearing stiff garden gloves to perform ordinary tasks, taking off my glasses and plugging my ears, slowing down my movements and sometimes wearing the heaviest shoes I could find” (Myerhoff 1980: 18). This sense of not really being able to comprehend the stage of life the respective other was at also played a role in my research, and mutually so, I think. It sometimes made it difficult to identify dimensions we both could relate to and challenging to come up with appropriate topics for small talk: Most themes my correspondents chatted about, like their grandchildren, touched issues I could not really relate to, or only from a different perspective (“Oh yes, my mother used to knit sweaters for my niece as well!”). To my correspondents in turn I often, rather implicitly, registered on the same level as their children, which became obvious when people suggested that I should meet their sons and daughters. This fact at times called my authority into question. At the same time, however, I had the impression that it sometimes made people more forthcoming and willing to lend me their time since they wanted to support me. Another challenge posed by the age difference consisted in finding spaces and activities I could share with my correspondents. Since senior clubs and senior centers provided one of the arenas to meet with people outside the realm of arranged interviews, I came to spend considerable time at these institutions, joining hour-long lotería sessions and arts and crafts classes. My presence there was accepted but, being the only person below the age of 55 apart from the occasional social worker sometimes who would sometimes accompany one of the ladies, I could not really blend in and it remained obvious that I did not ‘belong’. While my age might sometimes have undermined my role as a researcher, several other facts made up for this loss. My command of Spanish, including

Personal circumstances of the fieldwork

knowledge of certain Mexican terms, and my ability to switch between Spanish and English obviously helped in the process of data collection. Most people preferred to be interviewed in Spanish, but a few of my correspondents chose English, throwing in Spanish sentences every now and then, or vice versa. I made it a habit to ask which language they preferred at the beginning of the interview and to continue in the respective other language if someone switched for a while. The fact that I had spent two months in Mexico at the beginning of the fieldwork additionally worked in my favor. I could, to some extent, relate to certain habits, places, images and phenomena people referred to when talking about their Mexican homes, such as the typical preparations for a big wedding feast in rural Mexico, the weekly tortilla and cheese making or certain landmarks in Mexico City and around. This enhanced both my ability to understand situations and references and bolstered my credibility. Another personal attribute that might have affected the research was my ethnic and national background. When I talked to people on the phone or met them for the first time, I was frequently taken for a gringa, a white U.S. American woman. This misunderstanding combined with the topic I was interested in, which I initially often referred to as having to do with ‘migración’, occasionally led people to suspect that I was somehow related to the U.S. immigration authority. Being associated with “la migra”, as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is colloquially called among Latinos, was not at all helpful in terms of establishing contacts. Even if most elderly Mexican migrants who migrated at a young age are either legal residents or have become U.S. citizens,36 most people have some relative or friend who is undocumented and therefore seek to avoid any contact with “la migra”. In one situation I had arranged an interview in Pilsen with a gentleman whom I had met in one of the medical groups taking place at the senior center Casa Maravilla. When I rang the bell at his house at the time we had agreed on, no one answered the door and my phone calls were not picked up either. A few hours later, I finally reached him on the phone and he angrily refused any further contact with me, heatedly arguing that he did not want to have any business with “la migra”. Any attempts to explain my role, even supported by a Mexican friend who was with me in this situation, failed. Luckily, in most cases detailed explanations about my background, and highlighting that I was a foreigner from Germany, helped to allay any mistrust. Once I had realized that my choice of words was misleading, I began to frame my research in a way that did not arouse any such suspicions. Finally, some remarks on my residence situation and relationship status during the time of my fieldwork in Chicago are in order since both attributes 36 | As part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, migrants who had lived in the U.S. before 1982 were eligible to apply for permanent residence, see chapter 4.1.

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most likely influenced the way I was perceived in the field. While conducting my research, I rented an apartment in Logan Square, one of my research areas, together with my partner, who had been able to accompany me to the field as a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago. This residence status was double-edged: On the one hand, it might have been favorable to rent a room in someone’s house since this might have allowed me to establish even closer contacts with one family and share their daily life. On the other hand, having a partner in town who sometimes joined me when I was invited to a wedding, a quinceañera or a folklore dance performance and living together with him helped define a suitable and respectable role for myself and rendered my status more similar to my correspondents’ life worlds and thus more comprehensible to them.

3.5 D ata analysis Once collected, my analysis of the data involved both qualitative and quantitative elements, which I will briefly present in this section. It was aimed at detecting patterns, categories and relations between those categories and ultimately at refining my conceptual framework on this basis. This process involved several steps and was characterized by blending inductive and deductive methods of analysis. I view data analysis and theory building as a process where the inductive element of closely examining the data and abstracting from them on the one hand and the deductive element of adding relevant theoretical knowledge on the other can be fruitfully intertwined and cross-fertilize. Theoretical ideas should not preclude the researcher from discovering unsuspected and surprising content in the data and taking new directions in the research but, on the contrary, constitute a stimulating background on the grounds of which new interpretations can emerge. In a first step, I began analyzing my qualitative data, comprising several kinds of interviews and field notes. In order to identify common themes and concepts in these data I used MAXQDA, a software for qualitative data and text analysis, and conducted both a content analysis and a thematic analysis by means of open, axial and theoretical coding (Ezzy 2002: 82ff.). Douglas Ezzy aptly describes the coding process as follows: “Coding is the process of disassembling and reassembling the data. Data are disassembled when they are broken apart into lines, paragraphs or sections. These fragments are then rearranged, through coding, to produce a new understanding that explores similarities, and differences, across a number of different cases. The early part of the coding process should be confusing, with a mass of apparently unrelated material. However, as coding progresses and themes emerge, the analysis becomes

Data analysis

more organized and structured. Careful coding allows the researcher to move beyond preexisting theory to hear new interpretations and understandings present in the data.” (Ezzy 2002: 94) Coding, as Ezzy points out, is not a clear and unilinear process, but at the beginning extremely “confusing”. It takes time and patience, and sometimes the data stop “speaking” until some new idea or theoretical insight emerges. In this respect as well, applying different kinds of data analysis as well as reading more literature on the themes emerging from the data analysis proved very helpful. In a second step, I quantified some of the information found in the interviews. I also derived substantial quantifiable data from my questionnaires and freelists, including information relevant for the analysis of ego-centered networks, which I analyzed using the statistical software Stata. I also employed Stata to run a statistical analysis of factors that the migrants stated as influential for their residence intentions. These independent variables were elicited from the reasons given for residence deliberations in the unstructured interviews as well as from explanatory discourses in the open and semi-structured interviews. Since I sought to explore the dynamics touching upon future residence intentions further, I decided to complement the thematic in-depth analysis and statistics by conducting a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of my entire set of cases, using the software Tosmana. QCA is a recent fruitful method for the comparative analysis of a medium number of cases (Ragin 2008; Schneider and Wagemann 2007). It employs the logic of set relations (multiple combinations of necessary and sufficient conditions for the outcome “return migration”) rather than probabilistic statistics. Applying QCA allowed me to conduct an analysis covering both the corresponding data from the interviews and the questionnaires. In this way I could compare my entire set of cases with regard to return intentions and stated causal factors. Once the statistical analysis and the Qualitative Comparative Analysis were completed, I continued the coding process of the qualitative data, enriched by new insights from the quantitative analysis and QCA, until my theoretical framework was saturated.

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4. Setting: exploring Mexican Chicago

Chicago is located in Cook County, Illinois, in the part of the United States that is called the ‘Midwest’ (although geographically it is part of the eastern half of the country), some 2,300 kilometers away from the Mexican border. Considering this distance and the time and money it takes to cover it, it seems at first glance astonishing that, as of the most recent census in 2010, half a million Mexicans (578,000) live in the city.1 Mexicans account for almost 20 percent of the city’s population of 2.7 million, and ten percent of the population is Mexican-born.2 The metropolitan area of Greater Chicago is home to one million Mexicans. Chicago is thus the city with the second largest Mexican population in the United States after Los Angeles (De Genova 2005: 117; Lowell, et al. 2008: 16). What are the reasons behind those numbers? Why do so many Mexicans live so far up north, what motivated them to come and to stay? How does this shape the city today? In order to locate the study and grasp the context it is set in, understanding the background of Mexican lives in Chicago is essential. In this chapter I intend to provide some answers by introducing Chicago – both its past and its present – with particular regard to the features that are linked to its Mexican population. I will proceed as follows: I will start (4.1) with a brief account of Mexican migration to the United States in general (historical developments, present situation, legal context) since Mexican migration to Chicago is 1 | This number, as well as the following ones, is based on the 2010 U.S. census (U.S.-Census-Bureau 2010a). 2 | I follow the terminology applied by the Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project and use the term ‘Mexican’ when referring to individuals living in the United States and identifying as Mexican (that includes all individuals of Mexican origin, irrespective of their place of birth, that is both individuals born in Mexico and individuals who trace their ancestry to Mexico) and ‘Mexican-born’ when referring to Mexicans who were born in Mexico and live in the U.S. I use the term ‘Mexican migrant’ synonymously with ‘Mexican-born’.

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embedded in this wider context and inextricably linked with it. An introduction to Chicago will follow (4.2), presenting some basic data on the history, geography and political organization of the city. The focus then shifts to (4.3) Mexican Chicago, beginning with a look into the history of Mexican migration to Chicago and tracing the Mexican communities and significant developments of Mexican life in Chicago until recently. After this historical account, I will examine Mexican Chicago today and put a special emphasis on introducing the three neighborhoods – Pilsen, Little Village and Logan Square –, where I conducted the major part of the fieldwork for this study.

4.1

M e xican migr ation to the U nited S tates

The following brief overview of Mexican migration to the United States will address both its history and present situation and discuss immigration laws of the United States and its consequences as well as demographic trends. How did it all start? A particularity regarding the background and conditions of Mexican migration is the peculiar history of the relation between the two countries and its legacy: Until 1848, large parts of what constitutes the U.S. Southwest today (California, Texas, Nevada and Utah as well as parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming, which together formed half of the Mexican territory) belonged to Mexico, which, after having lost a major war (the ‘Mexican War’ in U.S. American terminology) surrendered these regions to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (Gomberg-Muñoz 2011: 27; Gonzales 2009: 80f.; Henderson 2011: 11)3. The roughly 75,000–100,000 Mexican residents in the conquered territory were faced with the choice to either move south and settle in the remaining Mexican territory or to stay in the now so-called American Southwest and become American citizens. Accordingly, some people identifying as Mexican have always lived in the southwestern parts of the United States. Some of them still feel that the territory actually belongs to Mexico (Henderson 2011: 3). The number of Mexican migrants, however, who did not already live in the Southwest but traveled to the United States with the intention of working there, remained moderat at the end of the 19th and well into the 20th century. They represented merely one among many other immigrant groups and came to the U.S. for both economic and political reasons, seeking better wages as the situation for workers in Mexico deteriorated during the presidency of President Porfirio Díaz and fleeing the turmoil of the Mexican revolution in 1910 (Gomberg-Muñoz 2009: 3f.; Henderson 2011: 14ff.). Whereas European immigration to the U.S. was regulated by national quotas 3 | For more detail on the causes and context of the Mexican war see Gonzales 2009: 75ff.

Mexican migration to the United States

introduced in 1921 and 1924, determining how many individuals from one country were allowed to enter the United States annually, Mexican migrants were exempted from this quota system and granted unlimited visas (Calavita 1995: 58f.; Martin 2008: 137f.). Growing industries like the railroad sector, steel mills, auto manufacturing and mining were in need of cheap unskilled labor, and Mexican workers met this demand. As crossing the border and finding work in the United States was fairly easy for people from Mexico, and American employers actively recruited workers there (Gomberg-Muñoz 2009: 3), 4 the numbers of Mexican workers crossing the border northward rose steadily and amounted to roughly one million by the end of the 1920s. The Great Depression of the 1930s, however, caused an abrupt shift in the public attitude and policy towards Mexican immigrants. Due to a dwindling job market (Gomberg-Muñoz 2011: 29f.) and in order to save jobs for ‘the American people’, the government decided to deport around 415,000 Mexicans (no matter whether they were U.S. citizens or not) and another 85,000 individuals were ‘voluntarily repatriated’, that is they were encouraged to leave the country of their own will. Accordingly, after WWII, a comparatively modest total of 500,000 Mexicans remained in the U.S. (Lowell, et al. 2008: 1). The dominant feature of Mexican migration at that time was its seasonal, circular character, with most workers returning home to their families and farms during off-season (Henderson 2011: 6). Curiously and counter-intuitively, migration per se and its circular nature were not rooted in poverty and a lack of work in Mexico but a growing Mexican economy (Gomberg-Muñoz 2011: 30). Between 1940 and 1970 the Mexican economy was thriving and the agricultural sector experienced rapid modernization, especially in the Bajía region. Today’s traditional sending states Guanajuato, Jalisco, Querétaro and Michoacán were known as ‘the breadbasket’ at the time. Most farmers there did not suffer from poverty but sought extra money to remain competitive in the agricultural sector. For these people, temporary wage labor in the United States was attractive because it represented a rather comfortable means of acquiring the necessary capital for further investments. Defined and framed by fairly steady conditions on both sides of the border for several decades, Mexican migration remained stable and moderate in scope until the 1970s, when the numbers of Mexicans coming to the Unites States increased steeply (Massey, et al. 1987: 3; Passel, et al. 2012: 19). What followed then had been unprecedented in the history of migratory movements: Four decades – 1970 until 2010 – brought twelve million current immigrants from Mexico to the United States. In the 1980s, the net mi-

4 | This recruiting system became known as el enganche (English: the hook) because the labor recruiters ‘hooked’ workers by making false promises in terms of labor conditions and wages (Gomberg-Muñoz 2009: 3; Gomberg-Muñoz 2011: 29).

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gration flow5 averaged about 250,000 each year, in the early 1990s it numbered between 300,000 and 370,000 and in the late 1990s between 360,000 and 505,000 (Lowell, et al. 2008: 3f.).6 The factors inducing this sharp trend upward since the 1970s were several. Developments of the preceding decades set a framework for the steep rise in migration that was to follow (Massey, et al. 1987: 3). In sum, the radically changing economic situation both in Mexico and the U.S. as well as major reforms of the legislative framework regarding migration spurred the increase.in cross-border mobility from Mexico to the United States. On the one hand, the situation in Mexico changed drastically, which had a major impact on migration patterns (Gomberg-Muñoz 2011: 31ff.). The boom the country had experienced began to dwindle in the late 1960s. This constant economic downturn reached its peak with two economic crises – a debt crisis beginning 1982 and a financial crisis in 1994 – causing rising unemployment, inflation and poverty. The U.S. economy on the other hand, despite certain setbacks in the 1970s, offered much better work opportunities in those decades, attracting people who were looking for work and promising a better life. Migration in this context was no longer a predominantly selective seasonal strategy agricultural workers applied to maximize their gains. Instead it became a widespread phenomenon as large heterogeneous parts of the Mexican population sought to escape from the dire situation at home (Gomberg-Muñoz 2011: 33). A central key to the changing nature of Mexican migration, on the other hand, was a shifting regulatory framework in the United States. The first significant measure to mention in this respect is the Bracero program, a bilateral agreement between Mexico and the U.S. introduced in 1942 to counteract the agricultural labor shortage in the U.S. that had been created mainly by WWII (García y Griego 1996; Lowell, et al. 2008: 12f.). The agreement allowed U.S. agricultural employers to hire workers from Mexico on annual contracts and was extended after its first year to include other industries. When the Bracero program ended in 1964, a total of almost five million Bracero workers had come to the United States (Calavita 1995: 60; Gomberg-Muñoz 2011: 31). As the demand for low-skilled labor remained strong, the economic situation in Mexico was deteriorating, and the relationship between U.S. employers and Mexican workers had become well established during more than 20 Bracero years, many Bracero workers did not return to Mexico after the program’s expiration but stayed in the United States. While some of them obtained legal status (through 5 | Net migration refers to the growth in the Mexican-born residents of the U.S. each year, that is the number of migrants coming to the United States minus the number of Mexican migrants leaving the U.S. for Mexico in one year. 6 | The Mexican-based and U.S.-based estimates regarding net migration flows differ considerably, with the Mexican sources indicating lower figures and the U.S. data assuming higher estimates.

Mexican migration to the United States

labor certification), most former Bracero workers remained in the U.S. without documentation. The networks they had established prompted and facilitated the migration of relatives and friends, often undocumented as well (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994: 23). This shift in the character of Mexican migration from circular legalized mobility to undocumented, increasingly permanent, migration was underpinned by an overhaul of immigration laws in the mid 1960s. The 1965 amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act, originally passed by Congress in 1952, further restricted legal migration by introducing quotas for Mexican nationals for the first time and augmenting border enforcement (Alba and Nee 2003: 175; Calavita 1995: 62; Martin 2008: 138). As a result of these regulations, it became much harder to enter the United States legally and more people started to stay there permanently in order to avoid having to cross the border every year. Both developments thus led to rising numbers of – mostly undocumented – Mexican migrants residing in the United States (Lowell, et al. 2008: 1f.; Passel, et al. 2012: 20f.). While the numbers of Mexican migrants grew steadily in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, it was not until the 1990s that they increased rapidly, peaking in 2000 with 800,000 migrants from Mexico coming to the U.S. in one year. Within one decade the number of migrants more than doubled from 1.8 million in the 1980s to 4.9 million in the 1990s (Center 2006). The key factors causing this increase were a booming U.S. economy and the second major bust of the Mexican economy in 1994. Besides these conditions, the specificities of another immigration reform in 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) impacted the nature of the migration movement significantly (Alba and Nee 2003: 178; Lowell, et al. 2008: 4f.; Martin 2008: 126). By implementing this reform, the government sought to simultaneously legalize the migrants who were already in the country as well as prevent further immigration. Hence, on the one hand, the IRCA allowed every migrant who had been residing in the U.S. before 1982 to apply for permanent residence, obtain a greencard and, later on, U.S. citizenship.7 Two million Mexicans seized the opportunity and were in turn capable of sponsoring family members and relatives to also come to the U.S. (Passel, et al. 2012: 20). On the other hand, the IRCA entailed tightened immigration policies, making it illegal for employers to hire undocumented workers. It furthermore introduced repressive border control measures that impeded legal immigration and thus contributed – in the long term – further to a growing number of undocumented migrants and an increase in permanent migration (Alba and

7 | Individuals who had worked in U.S. agriculture for periods of three months in certain years were also eligible for legal resident status.

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Nee 2003: 178f.; Calavita 1995: 65f.; Massey, et al. 2002: 1f.).8 With the numbers of Mexican migrants growing at a fast pace, the nature of Mexican migration to the U.S. also changed in three major respects. First, while Mexican settlement had been concentrated in rather few metropolitan conglomerations in California (Los Angeles and Orange County), Texas (Houston and Dallas), the Midwest (Chicago), Arizona (Phoenix) and New York (New York City) earlier, the Mexican immigrant population now began to disperse into rural areas and small cities, where they have visibly reshaped and transformed U.S. society (Durand, et al. 2000: 10ff.; Lowell, et al. 2008: 15f.). This was partly due to the relocation of some industries away from the traditional centers in California and the Midwest and partly because Mexicans started getting employed in agricultural sectors they had not worked in before. Most Mexicans migrants today still live in the Southwestern states. California has the biggest share, followed by Texas, Illinois, Arizona and Georgia (Lowell, et al. 2008: 16). Despite the extension into rural areas, half of the Mexican migrant population lived in just twelve metropolitan areas in 2000.9 Second, new sending regions in Mexico emerged (Lowell, et al. 2008: 17f.). Besides migrants from the Western states, which had always been the traditional emigration areas, people from southern Mexico and a growing number of individuals with an urban rather than a rural background started going north. Third, gender patterns changed as women and children started to migrate to the U.S. in greater numbers (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994: 23ff.; Marcelli and Cornelius 2001: 111).10 While historically men had formed the vast majority among Mexican migrants, women now, according to the 2010 U.S. census, constitute 45 percent of the adult Mexican population living in the U.S. (U.S.Census-Bureau 2010a). As of 2010, the Mexican population in the United States was 32 million, ten percent of the U.S. American population of 310 million (U.S.-Census-Bureau 8 | While the legal provisions introduced in 1965 had curbed legal migration without drastically impeding the circular back and forth movement of undocumented workers, the IRCA in 1986 made it much harder to enter the U.S. undocumented (Massey, et al. 2002: 1f.), but the decrease was short-lived. 9 | According to the 2010 U.S. census, the three metropolises with the most Mexican-born residents were Los Angeles, CA (1.5 million), Chicago, IL (582,000) and Houston-Brazoria, TX (434,000). 10 | The migrants who became legal permanent residents through IRCA were almost exclusively men. After the IRCA was passed, however, the number of undocumented Mexican women may even have exceeded the number of undocumented male migrants coming to the U.S. Hondagneu-Sotelo suggests that this might have to do, among other things, with spouses of men legalized with IRCA coming to the U.S., hoping to also be eligible for naturalization (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994: 26).

Mexican migration to the United States

2010a). One third of Mexicans living in the U.S., twelve million, are Mexican born. These individuals account for about four percent of the U.S. population, comprising almost 30 percent of the foreign born migrant population (Gonzalez- Barrera, et al. 2013: 6; Passel, et al. 2012: 6). As to the legal status of the Mexican population in the U.S. the estimates differ, but according to estimations of the Pew Research Center, roughly half of the Mexican-born individuals residing in the U.S. are undocumented, while the other half are permanent legal residents (32 percent) and naturalized citizens (16 percent) (GonzalezBarrera, et al. 2013: 6f.). In recent years, since 2007, for the first time since the most recent wave of migration from Mexico to the United States started, net migration has come to a standstill and may even have a falling tendency (Passel, et al. 2012: 6, 12). That is, the number of people returning to Mexico equals or slightly exceeds the number of people entering the U.S. from Mexico. The probable factors causing this new development are several ones, rooted in both the situation in the United States and in Mexico (Passel, et al. 2012: 6). Looking at Mexico, the declining birth rates and the slowly improving economic situation in the country are both likely to contribute to a slight decrease in migration numbers and motivate some people to return to their home country.11 Regarding the United States, the unstable economic situation and concurrently a job market in turmoil and with decreasing work opportunities, especially in the construction businesses, have been causing many to leave the country. The growing rigor in border enforcement and deportation measures as well as increasing difficulties to obtain permanent residence permits has added to a rising number of both voluntary and involuntary returnees. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, of the 300,000 people who returned to Mexico between 2005 and 2012, five to 35 percent may have been deported (Passel, et al. 2012: 22). Thus, a population trend, which has been rising exponentially since the end of WWII, may have come to a halt. The general trends characterizing Mexican migration to the United States sketched above are largely mirrored in what migration from Mexico to Chicago looked like over the course of much of the 20th century. On closer examination, however, the Chicago case displays certain peculiarities that are owed to local characteristics and developments.

11 | The ongoing drug war represents, in contrast, an element that prompts a lot of people not to return to Mexico. There are, however, not a lot of detailed data available yet on who is returning and why.

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4.2 C hicago : an introduction to the W indy C it y In order to get a better idea of the study’s setting and its specificities, in what follows, I will give a short account of Chicago’s history and concurrently examine the city’s ethnic composition as well as its political structures.

4.2.1 A brief over view of histor y and populations trends Chicago’s vastly stretching cityscape on Lake Michigan has, in spite of its size, a fairly short history that hardly spans 200 years. Nevertheless, in this comparatively short time span, the city has reinvented itself numerous times. From a modest settlement of fur traders at the beginning of the 19th century, it grew into one of America’s most important industrial hubs and trading centers one hundred years later, and into the modern, multicultural city it is today. Millennium Park, completed in 2004 and the signature project of then mayor Richard M. Dailey, bespeaks this development as it is built on top of the old railroad tracks Chicago’s growth is based on. Together with the renowned Art Institute, free concerts during the summer months and the Cloud Gate sculpture (tenderly called “the Bean” by the locals) the park forms a lively, central space today, drawing locals from all neighborhoods and tourists alike. The city’s development is inextricably linked with the migration flows it attracted and harbored. To get an idea of what kind of city and spirit the first Mexican immigrants encountered when they arrived in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century and how phenomena like immigration and ethnicity have given the city its particular shape, it is helpful to cast a glance back on Chicago’s origins and developments. At the end of the 18th century, a fur trading post was already located in today’s Chicago area and traders as well as missionaries settled in what then still was Native American land, predominantly populated by Potawatomi Indians (Pacyga 2009: 8ff.).12 In 1795 the United States government claimed the land from the Native Americans and subsequently built a fort, Fort Dearborn, on the Chicago River. Only roughly one hundred people lived around Fort Dearborn during the first decades of the 19th century. Yet, around 1830 the municipality was already known as Chicago and seven years later the State of Illinois granted Chicago a city charter. Due to its favorable location between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Inland Basin, which constituted one of the most important access points for inland transportation and trade (all the more so after the Il12 | Unless otherwise indicated the following information on the history of Chicago is based on Pacyga 2009.

Chicago: an introduction to the Windy City

linois& Michigan Canal was built in 1848, connecting Lake Michigan with the Mississippi) and the construction of railroads in the 1850s that turned Chicago into a central hub for the entire transcontinental trade, Chicago’s population exploded from 100 in 1830 to almost 300,000 in 1870. The city’s various industries, most of all the railroads and stockyards, attracted many different migrant groups and turned Chicago into a city of great ethnic diversity. In the second half of the 19th century, it was mostly Irish Catholics, Germans and Scandinavians who settled in Chicago. The city’s boom was drastically interrupted in 1871, when the so-called Great Chicago Fire destroyed huge parts of the city and left a third of the population homeless. Neverthess, Chicago soon returned to growth. The empty lots that the burnt down buildings had left behind provided space for creating new, modern architecture. As a consequence, Chicago is known as the birthplace of the skyscraper. Chicago’s manufacturing sector and its industry kept growing and pulling more and more people to the city. From the end of the 19th century until the 1940s, many Southern and Eastern European migrants (Italians, Greeks, Poles, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians among others) as well as Germans, Irish and Jews from Russia came to the flourishing metropolis in search of work. In 1900 Chicago’s population had risen to 1.7 million and the city was second in size only to New York City. As the city kept growing, its immigrants’ origins, too, kept shifting. Until the 20th century immigration to Chicago had mostly been limited to Europeans. This trend changed drastically in the new century, altering fundamentally both the city’s ethnic composition and its politics. Starting at the turn of the century, many African Americans from the rural South started moving to Chicago – a movement that has been termed the ‘Great Migration” (Manning 2005). In 1910 about 40,000 Africans Americans lived in the city. By 1960, this number had increased to 813,000, making up just under a quarter of the total population (3,500,000). Most African Americans settled on what is called the “South Side”, the vast area south of downtown Chicago. This pattern persists until today, with many neighborhoods in the area being almost completely African American. As a result of both the city’s decline in population that was linked to a deindustrialization process starting in the 1960s and what has been termed ‘white flight’ to the suburbs, African Americans now make up a third of the population within the Chicago city limits. Mexicans started coming to Chicago around 1900 – more about this below. Throughout the 20th century, almost every decade in Chicago witnessed a different immigrant group that would shape a distinct neighborhood and add to Chicago’s diversity but also its segregated character. Chicago consistently ranks among the top ten in indices of ethnic segregation in U.S. metropolitan areas.13

13 | See http://www.s4.brown.edu/us2010/Data/Report/report2.pdf

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Strikingly, among the people who settled in Chicago throughout the decades, the protestant Anglo population always remained a minority, in contrast to most cities on the eastern seaboard. Accordingly, Catholicism dominated religious life in the city and the Mexican immigrants found a home in the Polish and Italian churches that had already existed before their arrival.

4.2.2 People of Chicago today Until today Chicago has a strong ethnic imprint and encompasses many distinct and quite segregated cultural areas with their respective cuisines, museums, traditions and performances. Andersonville for example, located on the north side of Chicago, was built by Swedish immigrants, Ukrainian village west of the Loop features Ukrainian churches, bars and restaurants, in Edgewater the choice of Pakistani restaurants is overwhelming and in Lincoln Square the German Brauhaus bears witness to the considerable German settler population that shaped the neighborhood at the beginning of the 20th century. Some of the city’s neighborhoods, such as Little Village and Pilsen, are populated predominantly by one ethnic group and remain major ports of entry for new immigrants from the respective country. Others, like Lincoln Square with its German roots, still cherish, conserve and sell one particular heritage that was established a century ago but has since moved on. And still others, like Logan Square, do not feature one specific migrant group but several ones. The diverse nature of Chicago’s neighborhoods represents an enriching and unique element in the composition of the city. At the same time, the very explicit and visible cultural borders, which statically remain or are re-constructed anew (both from the outside and from the inside) when neighborhoods change, also bespeak strong segregational dynamics leading to ethnic and cultural enclaves with extreme differences in e.g. access to education, security and infrastructure (Stier and Tienda 2001: 39; Taub, et al. 1984). This segregation reinforces prejudices, cultural stereotypes and the idea of one’s ‘race’ or culture determining one’s position and opportunities in the world. The most evident and most problematic example of the effects of segregation of Chicago is the city’s South Side. After the ‘white flight’ in the 1950s, the communities in the south became a kind of ‘ghetto’ for African Americans (Pacyga 2005; Pacyga 2009: 291). Both unemployment and crime rates are alarmingly high on the South Side. The only ‘white island’ in the middle of this black ghetto is, quite ironically, the venerable campus of the University of Chicago, which employs large private security force in order to police the borders to a community that is notoriously under-policed – and also to prevent shootings and robberies from spilling over to the campus.

Chicago: an introduction to the Windy City

4.2.3 Chicago government and political entities Speaking about geographic subdivisions in Chicago can sometimes be confusing since there are three terms used in different contexts to refer to areas in the city: wards, neighborhoods and community areas. Chicago’s political structure is not based on the city’s neighborhoods but on the 50 wards that form the city’s municipal legislative districts (Knox 2005).14 Each ward has one elected alderman and the 50 aldermen together make up the City Council, representing Chicago’s legislative body.15 While the wards were created with the purpose of dividing the city into legislative entities with equal population sizes, electoral politics and redistricting has resulted in a ward map of fantastical geometric shapes that has almost nothing to do with objective geographic boundaries. Chicago’s community areas, on the other hand, serve the goal of providing consistent statistic data over time for both social scientists and the U.S. census (Seligman 2005). Since, according to state law, the wards’ boundaries have to be redrawn after each census to guarantee more or less equal representation by population size,16 the wards were not suited as a comparative basis for the census. In the 1920s, the Sociology Department of the University of Chicago therefore collaborated with the Chicago Department of Public Health to create a map that was to separate the city into 75 community areas.17 These were supposed to reflect ‘natural’ areas in the city, divided by natural or artificial barriers such as parks, rivers or railroads. Due to the rationale that they should provide stable entities over time, the community areas’ boundaries have largely

14 | The ward system in Chicago was established in the city’s first municipal charter in 1837. The number of wards increased continuously until the city adopted the current system of 50 wards in 1923 (Knox 2005). 15 | The directly elected Mayor is the head of the city’s administration. Apart from the Mayor there are two other citywide elected officials: The City Clerk and the City Treasurer (Mayfield 2005). 16 | As 1) the wards’ geographical setups apart are flexible as long as the size of the population they represent remains the same and 2) the alderman seeks to to secure a majority in his elective district, the wards’ boundaries are often adjusted according to political criteria. Frequently this has the paradoxical effect of the aldermen choosing their voters, a process also known as ‘gerrymandering’. This process often leads to wards that one ethnic majority and explains why many wards have quite a surprising shape. 17 | The most influential figure here was the sociologist Robert Park.

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remained the same since the 1920s.18 Both the wards and the community areas thus have underlying administrative, political and scientific purposes. In contrast, Chicago’s neighborhoods reflect the “way how Chicagoans think about their city” (Seligman 2005) and their boundaries are in constant flux. Therefore, also the number of neighborhoods in Chicago differs significantly depending on the source one consults. It varies between 77 (the number given on the homepage of the City of Chicago)19 and over 200 (according to the Wikipedia entry)20. Some neighborhoods are identical with certain community areas, while others overlap only partially. In many cases a community area comprises (parts of) several neighborhoods. In this study, I have chosen to mostly refer to neighborhoods – and not community areas or wards21 – when delimiting my sample and speaking about areas in the city for two reasons. First, Chicago’s neighborhoods tend to be the reference points people identify with and allude to in daily life. Second, since the neighborhoods’ boundaries also tend to reflect ethnic boundaries, the Mexican communities I have worked in correspond to certain neighborhoods rather than to community areas or wards.

4.3 Tr acing M e xico in C hicago After having given a basic introduction to both Mexican migration to the United States and migration to Chicago in general, in the subchapter that follows, I intend to elaborate on Mexican migration to Chicago and discuss it in relation to the broader context presented above. To trace Mexico in Chicago requires taking into account the history of Mexican migration to the city as well as examining Mexican life and communities in Chicago today. I will therefore first provide a historical account of the emergence and developments of Mexican Chicago before turning to the present state of affairs.

18 | Their number grew by two from 75 to 77 community areas, because O’Hare was added and Edgewater, which had formerly belonged to Uptown, became a separate entity. 19 | http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/about.html. 20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhoods_in_Chicago. 21 | I will always clearly indicate what entity I am talking about. Sometimes a reference to community areas will be indispensible since the census data and most other statistical data are collected for community areas and there are not always detailed data available for the neighborhoods.

Tracing Mexico in Chicago

4.3.1 The histor y of Mexican Chicago: a journey through the past 100 years Examining the history of Mexican immigration to the city is central to this study since I assume that both the conditions that have shaped Mexican life in the metropolis since its beginnings roughly a hundred years ago and the emergence and change of Mexican communities constitute a basis for understanding the situation of Mexicans living in Chicago today. The people this study is based on migrated to Chicago between the mid 1950s and 1980s. In order to understand their lives today and the ways they are connected to Chicago, it is crucial to take into account the situation they encountered after migrating to the Midwest and the formative elements of their first years in the city.

Beginnings of Mexican migration to Chicago: 1900 to 1940 The first Mexican migrants arrived in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century and during WWI. Between 1900 and the late 1930s, their number rose from a few individuals to roughly 25,000 (Arredondo 2008: 16). What did Chicago look like at that time, what kind of situation did the newcomers from Mexico face? At the beginning of the 20th century, Chicago constituted one of the major manufacturing centers in the country. As an effect of its industrial expansion, it was still at the height of its population growth, which had started after the great Chicago fire in 1871 with mass arrivals of European immigrants and continued into the two first decades of the 20th century (Padilla 1985: 16). Since a lot of different European immigrant groups already resided in Chicago, the biggest groups being Italians, Poles and Irish, a constant struggle for identities and power positions shaped daily life in the metropolis (Arredondo 2008: 7). Regions of origin: The first cohorts of Mexican migrants mostly came from Northern and Central Mexico, most of all Guanajuato, Michoacán and Jalisco (Arredondo 2008: 23; Farr 2007: 86). Between 1916 and 1929, many Mexican workers did not migrate straight to Chicago but went to the American Southwest first, and lived in states like Texas, Arizona and California (Arredondo 2008: 22). Some made their way to Chicago rather quickly; others stayed and worked in the Southwest for a few years before continuing on to the Midwest. Who came? At the beginning it was mostly young men who arrived in Chicago. Young women followed later. The backgrounds of the migrants who came in the 1920s and 1930s were fairly diverse: There were working and middleclass laborers as well as merchants, small landowners and farmers (Arredondo 2008: 15). Yet, two thirds of the Mexican working population in the 1920s were unskilled laborers (De Genova 2005: 114). Reasons for coming to Chicago: Despite the rather long distance from Mexico and the time and effort it took to get to Chicago, the metropolis became a popular destination for Mexican migrants for various reasons. First of all, industry

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was booming in Chicago and the city needed workers and had many jobs to offer (Arredondo 2008: 16ff.; De Genova 2005: 113; Padilla 1985: 22). Chicago constituted both the heart of steel production and railroad industries, since virtually all the railroad lines from East to West led through the city. The first Mexican immigrants worked in the Chicago railroad industries in 1910. Besides work the railroads also provided a means of transportation from and to Mexico. Meatpacking was another major industry that was labor-intensive and needed workers. In the 1910s Mexicans were predominantly hired as strikebreakers (De Genova 2005: 114). Labor contractors recruited Mexican workers both in Mexico and Texas and brought them to the Midwest with the specific purpose of undermining industrial action that had been ongoing at the time (Arredondo 2008: 60). As a consequence, most workers initially only had temporary contracts and were let go after the strikes ended. Many, however, were subsequently rehired because the companies realized that noone would work for wages as low as what Mexican workers were prepared to accept. The need for laborers was not only high due to industrial growth. As many young American men went to war in 1917, WWI created a labor shortage, that the migrant workers from Mexico were supposed to fill (De Genova 2005: 114). Apart from the economic reasons drawing Mexican migrants to Chicago, the political situation in Mexico also played a significant role in motivating people to leave the country. After the Mexican revolution in 1910, people fled the country for political reasons that were intertwined with economic displacement. The revolutionary context did not provide a direct link to Chicago as migration destination. However, it contributed to a growing movement to leave Mexico for the United States, and Chicago, for the reasons mentioned above, figured as one of the main destinations. Finally, immigration legislation in the United States during the 1910s created favorable conditions for immigration from Mexico (Arredondo 2008: 22). The immigration act of 1917, for instance, had a significant accelerating impact on Mexican immigration since it introduced a quota system for migrants from Europe, thereby considerably reducing European migration (Jirasek and Tortolero 2001: 49). Beside these developments that contributed to a growing migratory movement from Mexico to Chicago, it must not be disregarded that the journey north also involved adventure, especially for many young men and was part of their coming of age. Thus, economic or political pressure did not always constitute the (sole) drivers behind migration flows but in some cases, people actively chose to travel to Chicago out of curiosity and adventurous spirit (Arredondo 2008: 26f.). Ultimately, the reasons for coming to Chicago were often a mélange of different motivating bits and pieces, some weighing heavier than others. Once Chicago had been established as a migration destination and a considerable number of Mexicans lived in the city, networks of kinship and friendship started to contribute further to a growing Mexican population. They played a

Tracing Mexico in Chicago

part both in both spreading the knowledge about Chicago and in providing temporary housing and first orientation for newcomers from Mexico. Settlement locations: As most of the Mexican workers tended to settle close to their respective workplace, three major areas with a growing Mexican population emerged, each of them in close proximity to the main industrial areas. Mexicans employed at the meatpacking plants lived in a neighborhood called Back-of-the-Yards (Packington), the Mexican railroad workers concentrated on the Near West Side of Chicago and the ones working in the steel mills settled in South Chicago (Arredondo 2008: 39ff.; Padilla 1985: 22). For five decades, these three areas remained Chicago’s core Mexican settlement regions. However, Mexican immigrants did for a long time not constitute the majority population in these neighborhoods but lived together with Irish, Italian, and Polish immigrants (Padilla 1985: 20). This coexistence was not always easy. Tensions between the different immigrant groups emerged and prejudices linked with racial categories were fueled due to, for instance, differences in wages and rental conditions. As the most recent immigrant group, Mexicans were frequently subject to discriminatory treatment. In the first decades of Mexican migration to the U.S., they received the lowest wages as most were unskilled and accordingly hired for the lowest tasks (Arredondo 2008: 61; Padilla 1985: 25ff.) and were forced to pay more rent then other migrant groups. Their role as strikebreakers in turn did not earn them much credit with their co-workers and often rendered the relationships with other immigrant groups difficult and hostile (Padilla 1985: 24). Anti-Mexican sentiments were widespread in Chicago and had a very palpable impact, among other things on the working conditions Mexicans faced. In contrast to the earlier positive attitude towards Mexican workers that had caused employers to actively recruit in Mexico, many employers in the 1920s were reluctant to hire Mexicans and often issued policies against them (Arredondo 2008: 63). Important institutions providing community services and first orientation in Chicago were religious organizations and so-called settlement houses.22 Identity issues: Questions of identity were tightly linked with how Mexican migrants were treated and perceived on the one hand and how they acted and presented themselves on the other. Two aspects played a crucial role with regard to their perception. First, besides African Americans, Mexicans were 22 | The settlement houses offered basic social services (such as insurance) as well as language classes, childcare and organized community events. The most wellknown settlement house was Hull House, founded in 1889 by the social worker Jane Addams. Hull House aimed to foster community life and the integration of new immigrants, and offered education for children and adults, childcare and several leisure activities. Besides classrooms it included temporary living space for 25 people as well as a gym and a café (Addams 1967).

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among the first non-European migrants in Chicago and differed from previous migration movements in that respect (Padilla 1985: 16ff.). Second, the issue of race at that time figured prominently as a central category to perceive and order the world and society. For the white majority, African Americans appeared as the suspicious “other” that was relegated to an inferior position in society. When the first Mexican migrants arrived in Chicago, they challenged the categories of whiteness and blackness due to their wide ranges of skin color. Most white people saw them as slightly above African Americans but not quite white enough – somewhere in between (Arredondo 2008: 77, 106). These dynamics constituted an important basis for the formation of a specific Mexican identity in Chicago. Mexican migrants felt neglected and discriminated against. Besides, most Mexican migrants did not come to Chicago to stay (Arredondo 2008: 23). Their intention was to return to Mexico after having earned a certain amount of money in the United States. The likelihood of accomplishing this desire of return was higher for them than for European migrants whose home countries were much further away. Therefore, many Mexican workers did not strive to become ‘American’, to adapt to the American way of life and obtain citizenship (Arredondo 2008: 105). On the contrary, the feeling of being discriminated against and treated badly often reinforced the intention to return. Linked with all these factors and shaped by both positive self-ascriptions and negative (racial) ascriptions from the outside, a particular Chicago-Mexican identity took shape. At its core were a strong national pride for Mexico and its traditions (often stronger than in Mexico itself) as well as a feeling of being in-between (Arredondo 2008: 171f.). 1929 as a turning point – repatriation and deportations: The economic crisis in 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression drastically changed U.S. society and led to a dramatic decline in available jobs. As more and more jobs disappeared, Mexican workers were the first to be laid off. The fact that Mexicans were the most recent immigrant group and stood further ‘outside’ of American society that had already had an impact in terms of wages and housing also played a crucial role in this respect. In addition to the layoffs, national, state and community authorities (American immigration officials, welfare agencies from the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago) collaborated in programs to repatriate Mexican migrants, often against their will, in order to save money (Arredondo 2008: 58; Padilla 1985: 27). In the 1930s, 22,000 Mexicans living in Chicago were deported to Mexico, no matter if they had U.S. citizenship or not, and the Mexican population shrank to 16,000 (De Genova 2005: 115).

Mexican Chicago after 1939: resurgence and growth The Mexican community in Chicago started to grow again during the Second World War (De Genova 2005: 115f.). Central to the developments after 1939 was a workers’ agreement between Mexico and the United States, the Bracero pro-

Tracing Mexico in Chicago

gram, which was initiated in 1942 and terminated in 1964 (Padilla 1985: 31). It was introduced because of a war-induced shortage in the agricultural labor force and facilitated seasonal migration from Mexico to the United States. In the first year the Bracero program existed only for agricultural workers, but in 1943 the government decided to extend it to include industrial laborers as well. The intention was for the workers to return to Mexico when their contract expired. However, many Mexican workers stayed longer and settled (semi)permanently in the United States. In contrast to today’s situation where law enforcement agencies strongly target undocumented migrant workers (with jail sentences and a ban on reentering the country legally), officials unofficially accepted these cases of overstaying a visa because the demand for workers was extremely high. It was not until 1954 that the authorities implemented measures to deport ‘illegal aliens’ (again) in a concerted effort under the name ‘operation wetback’ (Padilla 1985: 36). Chicago experienced a stark increase in Mexican migration when the Bracero program was introduced: already between 1943 and 1945 more than 15,000 Bracero workers (eleven percent of all Braceros contracted nationally) came to Chicago to work on the railroads (De Genova 2005: 115f.; Kerr 1975: 25; Padilla 1985: 32). Soon the city had reached and surpassed its pre-depression numbers of Mexican migrants. From this point onwards, the Mexican population in Chicago increased at a fast pace. The most rapid growth occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the Mexican population within the city limits grew more than six-fold, to 352,560 (De Genova 2005: 116). Until 1950, the settlement areas remained roughly the same. One major change was induced by an urban renewal project in West Chicago, which affected the Near West Side where many Mexicans had settled (De Genova 2005: 118). As the rental apartments had to give way to the new campus of the University of Illinois and a new part of the expressway, the Mexican population moved further south and settled in the Pilsen neighborhood, which had formerly had a predominantly Czech population. Over the course of the 1950s, the Mexican population in Pilsen increased rapidly. Pilsen became the first neighborhood with a Mexican majority and the most important port of entry for Mexican immigrants (De Genova 2005: 118; Padilla 1985: 37). During the 1960s and 1970s, the Mexican settlement area started to extend further south and west, into the South Lawndale community area. Rapidly, in the 1970s, Mexicans formed the majority even there and the neighborhood became known as La Villita (Little Village). At the same time, several of Chicago’s Northwestern neighborhoods were also significantly transformed (De Genova 2005: 119). West Town, Logan Square and Humboldt Park had been populated by Puerto Ricans until, in the 1960s, Mexican migrants started to rent and buy there as well. In all of these areas – Pilsen, Little Village and Logan Square – Mexicans have maintained a strong presence until today.

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4.3.2 Mexican Chicago today With these developments in mind, I will now turn to present-day Mexican Chicago. I will give a short tour through the three neighborhoods where I conducted my fieldwork and subsequently give a more detailed introduction to each of these areas.

A tour through Mexican Chicago When you are driving, biking or walking through the south-western parts of Chicago and go west along 26th Street, you will come past a gate towering over the street welcoming you with the words “Bienvenidos a Little Village”. After passing that sign, 26th Street or “La Veintiseis” as it is locally called, transforms itself into a place that could be anywhere in Mexico. Following the street, you will see Mexican supermarkets, countless small Mexican restaurants and taquerías, dressing stores that advertise dresses for quinceañeras, bakeries selling pan and conchas23, and you will hear Spanish in the streets, and Mexican music from the inside of the shops. Street vendors offer elotes (corn on the cob), and, in summer, paletas (ice pops) and nieves (ice cream) from small wagons, and colorful murals stretch over the facades of many buildings. No wonder that La Villita is also referred to as “Little Mexico”. After having indulged yourself in this spectacle for a while, you turn around, heading back downtown, east, towards the Loop, the center of Chicago. If you move a few blocks north it will not take long until a similar scene unfolds in front of your eyes. On 18th Street, again taquerías, again Mexican bakeries, hair dressers, tailors and music shops, but you might notice that in contrast to the scenery in Little Village, this area of Chicago, Pilsen, is sprinkled with quite a few galleries and every now and then you hear some English sentences in the streets. 18th Street, “La dieciocho” is framed by signs saying “Welcome to Pilsen. Centro Cultural de la Comunidad Mexicana”. The National Museum of Mexican Art, on Harrison Park, confirms this announcement. Your third destination is located in the northwest of Chicago. Leaving behind the buzz of Pilsen, you take Western Avenue, one of the central arteries of Chicago’s traffic, and navigate your car through the always-busy lanes. West of Western Ave, Armitage and Fullerton Avenues take you into Logan Square, a neighborhood buffering Chicago’s inner area from the more remote neighborhoods around. Like many areas to the immediate northwest of downtown, Logan Square is in the process gentrification and thus it does not display a personality as distinctive as the neighborhood you just left. Nonetheless, it presents a colorful mix of diverse elements: Polish warehouses and churches 23 | Conchas are a Mexican pastry that belongs to the standard products every Mexican bakery sells.

Tracing Mexico in Chicago

(Poles are one of the dominant minorities in the area) next to Puerto Rican shops and Cuban restaurants next to a Norwegian church. Besides, you will see lots of young people, students and artists on the streets who began moving to Logan Square some years ago, attracted by the cheap leases and the declining crime rates. They started opening coffee houses, record shops, microbreweries, galleries and bike shops. But here, too, if you have a craving for a taco al pastor, you will certainly find a Taquería where you can satisfy your need. There are many Mexican traces in Logan Square, restaurants, supermarkets, churches and people, but they blend in with a lot of different elements and they are subtler, more hushed.

Introducing Little Village, Pilsen and Logan Square Little Village, Pilsen and Logan Square form part of Chicago’s larger Mexican community, which accounts for the majority of the population in several neighborhoods in the City of Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. As mentioned before, the Mexican population is no longer confined to the traditionally ‘Mexican quarters’ Back-of-the-Yards, South Chicago and the Near West side (see figure 4.1). Consequently, one hears Spanish spoken on the bus and on the “L” (Chicago’s elevated train network) almost everywhere and companies respond to this demographic setup by advertising their products in Spanish. Almost half of the 578,000 Mexicans who lived in Chicago in 2010 were born in Mexico (257,000) and are hence first-generation immigrants.24 This fact bears witness to the continuous migration movement that has continued to flow to the Midwest. The networks of kinship and friendship established a hundred years ago have grown and continued to provide a first connection (a place to sleep, an opportunity to work, a social network to feel at home in) for those people who sought and seek work, adventure or a better future in “el norte”. As the number of migrants grew, the number of regions of origin in Mexico diversified. Apart from the traditional sending states of Michoacán, Guanajuato and Jalisco, it includes many more Mexican states today, such as Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, Nuevo León and the State of Mexico (De Genova 2005: 3). Many sending regions have politically active representations in Chicago. People coming from the same state in Mexico unite in these so-called hometown associations (clubes oriundos in Spanish) not just for sentimental reasons but also to both strengthen and advance their interests in U.S. society (by e.g. offering citizenship and English classes, organizing conferences and cultural events) and to support their home communities in Mexico by means of fundraising and small-scale development projects.

24 | The numbers are based on the 2010 American Community Survey and the 2010 Census (U.S.-Census-Bureau 2010a; U.S.-Census-Bureau 2010b).

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Figure 4.1: Distribution of residents of Hispanic ethnicity across Chicago community areas as of the 2000 census

Source: City of Chicago 2007

The biggest and probably best-known hometown association is the Casa Michoacán, situated in the Pilsen neighborhood and head of the FEDECMI (Federación de clubes Michoacanos en Illinois). Apart from hometown associations, there are also various NGOs and grassroots organizations that have taken up

Tracing Mexico in Chicago

community organizing in Chicago’s Mexican communities and dedicate themselves to political and social projects, often based on volunteers. The political impact of the Mexican community, however, is not only visible at the grassroots level but has also started to play an evident role in city politics. Luciana Zuniga, the daughter of Mexican migrants who got to Chicago in the 1960s was elected City Clerk of Chicago in 2011 and thereby holds the second most important political position in Chicago after Mayor Rahm Emmanuel. Among Chicago’s 50 aldermen there are eight Hispanics and one of the candidates running in the 2011 mayoral election, Gerry Chico, was the son of a Mexican-American father and strongly supported by the Mexican community of Chicago.

Pilsen neighborhood The Pilsen neighborhood forms part of the Lower West Side community area and is located in the 25th ward, which in 2010/ 2011 was represented in Chicago’s city council by Alderman Daniel S. Solís. It is located southwest of the city center. Before becoming one of the largest Mexican American communities in the country – the population in Pilsen amounted to around 36,000 people in 2010, whereof 87 percent were Mexican (U.S.-Census-Bureau 2010a) – Pilsen was home to several different immigrant groups. The earliest migrants to settle in the area, shortly after Chicago became a city, were Irish and German immigrants. 30 years later, Czech Bohemians moved into the neighborhood, attracted by thousands of unskilled jobs, and quickly accounted for the majority population. Besides the architectural imprint they left, the Bohemians also gave the neighborhood its present name. Pilsen’s population diversified during the Second World War when many industries in the area suffered from a lack of laborers, which prompted many different immigrant groups to settle in Pilsen. Among these were the first Mexican immigrants. However, Mexicans did not form the majority in the area until the 1970s, when urban renewal projects in the Near West Side had forced many Mexicans who had settled there to move (De Genova 2005: 118). Ever since then Pilsen has remained a primarily Mexican neighborhood and a gateway for Hispanic immigrants coming to the city, with a very active community life. Pilsen is where left-leaning Mexican artists and intellectuals meet and where numerous galleries and institutions like the Casa Aztlán and the Pilsen Neighborhood Organization have been providing space for political debate and artistic expression for decades. Since Pilsen has much to offer in terms of both cultural life (street art, galleries and the National Museum of Mexican Art) and gastronomy (countless both traditional and contemporary Mexican restaurants, taquerías and bakeries), the City of Chicago likes to present and sell the neighborhood in ethnic terms as “our Mexican neighborhood”. But despite community efforts to counteract gentrification and the influx of more affluent white Chicagoans,

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attracted by the low rents and lively cultural life, Pilsen is changing today (Pacyga 2009: 396). During the period of my research in 2010 and 2011, people in Pilsen were lamenting the rising number of students from the nearby campus of the University of Illinois. Indeed, their presence was evident on the streets and in the cafés and my (white) acquaintances from outside the area regarded Pilsen as one of the new emerging neighborhoods, an attractive place to spend a Friday night and gather at one of the numerous art galleries, especially during the monthly Pilsen Art Walk. In 2008 the New York Times, too, observed that “apartments in the area are being fixed up, and higher rents are squeezing out some residents. Anglo newcomers in their 20s and 30s are out and about, jogging and walking their dogs” (Bailey 2008). But in spite of these changes, the “Latin Beat” continues to be omnipresent in Pilsen, people still refer to the neighborhood as “el barrio mexicano” and it remains a major port of entry for newcomers from Mexico.

Little Village neighborhood Right next to Pilsen lies Little Village, or La Villita, which emerged as the Mexican community from Pilsen extended further southward in the 1970s and has since then joined Pilsen as one of the main ports of entry for Latino immigrants (De Genova 2005: 118). In 2010, Little Village had 79,000 inhabitants (U.S.-Census-Bureau 2010a), with Mexicans comprising around 85 percent of the population. Administratively, Little Village belongs to the South Lawndale Community area. Politically, it forms part of the 22nd ward and is represented in the City Council by Alderman Ricardo Muñoz, who was born in Monterrey, Mexico. Like Pilsen, Little Village has undergone a process of neighborhood succession25 and seen many different immigrant groups come and go, among them Germans, Polish and Bohemians. According to several oral accounts, the name Little Village came about when there were people with several backgrounds living in the area. Everyone wanted the neighborhood to bear a name that was associated with his or her own country. A compromise had to be found and people finally settled for a neutral name that did not have any national connotations – Little Village. As the vast majority of the population today is Mexican, the neighborhood’s inhabitants mostly speak of La Villita. Life in Little Village pulsates around La Veintiseis, 26th street, which connects the neighborhood as its main artery from east to west and provides the scene for Chicago’s largest community parade in September. While Pilsen is considered the cultural center of Chicago’s Mexican community, Little Village rather constitutes the entrepreneurial business dis25 | “Neighborhood succession refers to a process by which one previously dominant ethnic, racial, religious, or socioeconomic group abandons a residential area” (Essig 2005).

Tracing Mexico in Chicago

trict. Various community organizations and hometown associations are present in both Pilsen and Little Village. The Pilsen Neighborhood Organization, La Universidad Popular, Alivio Medical and Resurrection Project, to just name a few of the institutions, have made it their goal to build a strong community by e.g. offering language and citizenship classes, providing affordable healthcare services, initiating housing projects and counteracting gang violence in the neighborhoods. The latter issue constitutes a major problem in both neighborhoods, albeit more so in Little Village. Gang related shootings occur regularly and have been one factor spurring the growing trend to move away from Little Village, into the suburbs.

Logan Square neighborhood In contrast to Pilsen and Little Village, Logan Square is both the name of a community area and a neighborhood northwest of the Loop, with the neighborhood forming part of the community area. Logan Square, too, hosts a predominantly Hispanic population today, but although Hispanics comprise two thirds of the 74,000 inhabitants (U.S.-Census-Bureau 2010a), Logan Square is not commonly associated with ‘Mexicanness’ as much as Pilsen and Little Village. This difference in perception is based on both historical differences and the distinct character and population Logan Square has today. Historically, the area, too, has witnessed a lot of different immigrant groups, starting with mainly Scandinavian and Jewish migrants at the end of the 19th century (Logan Square grew rapidly after the Chicago fire in 1871), who were followed by Poles and Russian Jews after WWI (Patterson 2005). In some parts of the area, the Polish influence is still evident, accounting for Polish advertisements in the shop windows and small grocery stores announcing their special offers in Polish. Also traces of the Scandinavian past are scattered throughout the neighborhood, such as a Norwegian church that hosts a Scandinavian Christmas market every year and draws Chicagoans with Norwegian ancestry to celebrate the Norwegian national day on May 17th. Hispanic migrants started settling in Logan Square in the 1960s, and Puerto Ricans for a long time formed the largest Hispanic group. By 2000, Mexicans became the majority in the area (De Genova 2005: 119). Although Mexican migrants have been living in Logan Square for decades, their presence is much less ubiquitous and not as apparent as in the other two neighborhoods (there are for example less taquerías, foodtrucks on the street or Mexican music). One reason for this might be the very mixed history of the area, which has remained quite diverse until today. Another reason might be that Mexicans who moved to Logan Square settled there with the explicit intention of separating themselves from the ‘typical’ Mexican communities, which they thought had a bad reputation. As a result, neighborhood institutions in Logan Square are often not primarily tied to cultural backgrounds but represent the neighborhood in its wider

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variety. One example of an overarching community organization is the Logan Square Neighborhood Organization, which was founded in 1963. In 2011, at the time of my fieldwork, Logan Square conveyed a lot of complementary pictures with often blurred boundaries, including gentrified parts with privately owned townhouses and hipster cafés as well as elements reflecting the various immigrants’ histories.

5. Locating the people: elderly Mexicans in Chicago today

After having approached Mexican Chicago by examining its history and taking a glance at some of its neighborhoods today, this chapter will serve to introduce my correspondents, the people this study is based on. Who are they, where and how do they live, what activities do they engage in and what are the spaces and spheres they move in? Apart from providing information about the sample of my research, the following subchapter will also give a more general idea of what the life of elderly Mexican-born migrants in Chicago looks like.

5.1 P rologue – three scenes , three parts of a mosaic 5.1.1 Lotería A clear voice cuts through the different levels of murmured words, reaching far back across the long table to the other end of the room. “El nopal” it says, stretching each of the syllables, taking care to articulate them clearly. A short break – “el árbol”, another break – “la mano”. The woman who announces these words – cactus, tree, hand – as if she was proclaiming the latest decisions and votes in a city council, stands at the head of a long table. She holds a deck of cards in her hand, the pictures facing down, takes the topmost card, turns it around and declares the image it shows: “la pera” – pear. On both sides of the table, there are chairs, providing space for the two rows of people, mostly women, sitting opposite each other. They are hunched over colorful pieces of cardboard, concentrated, and guarded by their small talismans sitting next to the boards, often not just one but whole groups of small figurines. A golden plastic bunny, a little crochet doll, a glittering stone. Their purpose is to bring good luck for the competition these people are so immersed in: They are playing lotería, which is the Mexican version of Bingo. Instead of numbers, lotería

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is played with 54 images on a deck of cards, each card showing one image. Every player has at least one tabla, a board with a randomly created four by four grid of images, which correspond to the images on the deck of cards. Each time the caller announces an image by calling out its name, the players check whether they have a matching one on their boards and if so, mark it with a coin, a stone, a bean or whatever they use as a marker. The first player to have four markers in a row, horizontal, vertical or diagonal, shouts “lotería” and wins the game, and usually some money. The dedicated lotería players meet at Harrison Park, a public park located in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Harrison Park is one of the numerous public parks in the City of Chicago, part of the Chicago Park District, which the city operates. The park comprises a field house with a gymnasium, an indoor pool and several meeting rooms as well as an outside area featuring a baseball diamond, a basketball court and a playground. Inside the field house is where lotería takes place. At least twice a week, every Tuesday and Thursday, and sometimes on additional days, between 30 and 50 seniors gather in one of the meeting rooms to spend time together. Mirroring Pilsen’s population all of them are Mexican or Mexican American (there is one group of Mexicans who were born in Texas), all of them are seniors, and most of them love to play lotería. Their backgrounds are diverse – they come from all over Mexico and the United States, have migrated to Chicago for various reasons, and live in different neighborhoods – but what unites them is that they have retired or reduced their work to part-time, have leisure time and seek each other’s company. The days at the park start with a swimming session (or gymnastics) at 9am in the morning. This is followed by activities like lotería or arts and crafts, which are interrupted by a shared lunch that can be purchased for one dollar and continue until 3pm or 4pm. With this program Harrison Park is not an exception. All over Chicago, there are Parks providing leisure activities for seniors, but not all of them have a senior club as active as the one in Harrison Park.

5.1.2 A Mexican Burger King experience The Burger King on North Avenue, just south of the Logan Square neighborhood, looks just like any other fast-food restaurant you might encounter anywhere in the United States. Several people are sitting there alone over a cup of coffee, others order meals to go. Behind the counter, the partly Hispanic staff is chatting with the customers. It is a Friday afternoon. The parking lot in front of the restaurant is packed with cars of shoppers who roam the adjoining stores such as Walmart, Staples or TJ Max since this Burger King is located in a huge shopping mall complex. The enormous parking lot is the first thing I see when I am approaching the shopping plaza after successfully having

Prologue – three scenes, three par ts of a mosaic

made my way through the merciless rush hour traffic, asphalt and cars everywhere. Elizabeth, Benjamín and Angélica count eating out at this Burger King among their favorite activities. All three of them have retired from work, or almost so. Angélica, despite her age of 74 years, still has a part time job, which she acquired through the Easter Seals, an organization providing work re-integration programs for people aged 55 and above.1 She works 20 hours a week at a church, where she is in charge of the cleaning and interior decoration according to seasonal events. Angélica would not want to quit her job and retire, even if she economically could afford to do so, since she always feels the need to engage in some kind of activity. Therefore, after having completed her tasks in the church in the morning, she is eager to entertain herself and often does so together with her friends Elizabeth and Benjamín Zavala, a married couple also living in Logan Square, both originally from Ciudad Juárez. The three of them live in the same neighborhood2 and have a regular, almost daily, routine: Elizabeth and Benjamín stop at Angélica’s place in the afternoon and pick her up. The trip then continues either to some kind of restaurant – often Burger King or White Castle, a fastfood place serving Sopa de Broccoli, their favorite meal – or to the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in South Chicago to praise the virgin and pray. This Friday afternoon, I join the three of them for a late lunch at the Burger King on North Avenue. They all order fish burgers because it is Friday and religious customs have to be observed. After having chatted with the Mexican staff member serving the burgers, we start talking about the situation in Mexico. Elizabeth and Angélica know of terrible accounts from friends and acquaintances in Mexico who have witnessed drug related crimes and murders. While recounting these stories, Angélica opens her bag and, to my surprise, produces a bundle of big green chilies, carefully wrapped in napkins. She hands a chili each to Elizabeth and Benjamín and offers one to me as well before serving herself. The Burger, she explains, is excellent. But what is clearly missing is the necessary hint of spiciness. Anticipating this, Angélica has planned ahead and 1 | The Easter Seals are an organization primarily offering services and programs for people with special needs and disabilities. Besides, Easter Seals also participates in the federally-funded Senior Community Service Employment Program, which aims at reintegrating seniors into the workplace by providing a combination of training, such as English or computer classes, and employment. Easter Seals provides the training and collaborates with NGOs and government agencies in finding transitionary employment for the participants (http://www.easterseals.com/our-programs/employment-training/senior-community-service-employment-program-scsep.html). 2 | This changed later since Angélica’s house, unfortunately, was in the process of foreclosure and she had to move into an apartment in her son’s house

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brought the indispensable ingredients along. One bite of fish burger is followed by one bite of chili, the picoso, hot, kind to be sure.

5.1.3 Pilsen by night Mexico City seems to have been transported to Chicago that night. In the art gallery, intellectuals and artists discuss the pictures a young photographer from Mexico has taken of the Pilsen arts scene. The fact that a few steps away, just outside, lies Chicago’s 18th street, all of a sudden becomes dubious. I am more inclined to believe that I will find myself in one of Mexico City’s culturally buzzing areas, like the Roma district, when opening the door. Although I only spent a very limited amount of time in the Mexican capital, the feeling of how much this city consisted of extreme contrasts and was shaped by a young, buzzing, innovative and hungry arts and intellectual scene emerged very clearly. The Pilsen gallery that night conveys a similar sensation, the atmosphere being vibrant and urban, people drinking red wine, nibbling on tapas and talking about art and leftist politics. Quite a few of the opening’s attendants do in fact have a background in Mexico City and thus the situation that night is likely to resemble scenarios that might just as well take place several thousand miles further south. One of the two gallery owners, Len Dominguez, is from Mexico City himself. A former teacher, he now earns a living by holding seminars for teachers and runs the gallery with a friend just for the fun of it. Everyone, except me, knows Len, and Len knows everyone. In general, everyone here is acquainted, one large family. Until a few years ago, I learn from Itzel, a poet working at Universidad Popular,3 there had been a bar called Decima Musa on 18th street, which was very popular among the leftist intellectuals and artists living in Pilsen and Little Village. Unfortunately, the bar had closed some years ago, and without this place, which had not only provided space for discussion and political action, but also for cultural events such as concerts and readings, a comparable institution and gathering space is lacking in Pilsen. People still meet at gallery openings, but the options where to continue the night later are limited. Laura and Itzel, two friends who have taken me along to the opening, both choose to end the night at Casa Aztlán. Casa Aztlán is an educational and social center in Pilsen, which has been promoting Mexican and Latino issues in Chicago and pursued neighborhood organizing in Pilsen since the 1970s. Among 3 | Universidad Popular is a community organization based in Little Village whose mission is to support and strengthen the neighborhood’s Latino community. To this purpose Universidad popular out offers a broad range of educational programs, like English classes, computer classes and health workshops (http://www.universidadpopular.us/).

The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds

the activities Casa Aztlán is involved in are citizenship and English classes, advancing health services for the Pilsen community and organizing the immigrants’ civil rights movement. It also hosts exhibitions and since Decima Musa has closed, Casa Aztlán, in an effort to present a substitute for this space, turns into an unofficial bar every Friday night. In one of the rooms a counter is installed, with wine, beer, Tequila and soft drinks for sale. People flocking in after a gallery opening or just for a late beer find a place at one of the provisionally set up tables, the week’s news are exchanged and eventually the attention shifts to the room’s front, where a makeshift stage is installed. When Antonio enters the stage with his guitar and strikes up a series of revolutionary songs in Spanish, it does not take long before some people join in singing. And once again, the scene might as well unfold somewhere in Mexico City.

5.2 The people in this study : char acteristics , backgrounds and life worlds Playing lotería in one of Chicago’s senior clubs, eating out at a fast food restaurant with the mandatory chili tucked inside the purse, starting the weekend with a stroll to one of the numerous galleries in Pilsen where the intellectualartist crowd gathers. The three scenes are all part of what elderly Mexican residents of Chicago might do and experience in their daily lives. To be sure, not everyone engages in hours of lotería playing, and neither does everyone fancy a fish burger with chili or immerse her- or himself in art and intellectual debates on a Friday night. But all these situations might form part of the everday lives of of elderly Mexicans living in Chicago. They provide a glimpse into the various places, topics, and activities constituting the life of someone who has migrated from Mexico a few decades ago and settled in Chicago. At the same time, they show how these people in their everyday Chicago lives integrate parts of different worlds and geographies. The people I am going to introduce here are 66 individuals who were all born in Mexico and largely, with a few exceptions, migrated to Chicago in the 1960s and the 1970s. The following observations and data are, however, not exclusively based on my core sample. They are informed by many other encounters I made during my research, both with other Mexican migrants of the same age group and younger Mexicans (e.g. my correspondents’ children and grandchildren), and with people who formed part of my correspondents’ life worlds, like priests and social workers. On the following pages, I will introduce my sample by addressing various features characterizing the lives of elderly Mexicans in Chicago. I will also present my correspondents’ backgrounds in Mexico and their reasons for migrating. After an overview of my interlocutors’ basic characteristics, I will explore these backgrounds in terms of (1) regions

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of origin, (2) class, education and professional background, (3) rural/ urban context, and (4) their reasons for leaving Mexico. The subsequent addresses my correspondents’ situation in Chicago today. After (1) introducing the sample in terms of gender, age and time spent in the U.S., I will (2) look at family patterns and structures and (3) discuss people’s legal statuses and backgrounds. This is followed by (4) an overview of residence patterns and (5) people’s professional backgrounds and situations. Finally, I examine (6) religious and (7) political issues and conclude by (8) investigating people’s leisure spaces and activities. An epilogue presenting three further scenes closes the chapter.

5.2.1 Basic characteristics: age, gender, time spent in the United States 38 percent of my informants were men and 62 percent were women. Most of them were between 55 and 75 years of age in 2011, the average age for both men and women being 66 (see table 5.1). Table 5.1: Age 2011, age at migration, years spent in the U.S., proportion of lifetime spent in the U.S., n = 66 Median

Mean

Standard deviation

Min

Max

Age 2011 (all)

66

65,73

6,89

53

83

Age 2011 men

65

65,80

6,23

56

82

Age 2011 women

66

65,68

7,34

53

83

Age at migration

25,50

25,55

9,1

7

62

Years spent in the U.S.

41

40,14

8,3

11

56

Proportion of lifetime spent in the U.S.

62,5%

62,74%

10,64%

33%

89%

They came to Chicago at different ages and different stages of their life (see table 5.2). More than half of them had migrated to the United States when they were in their twenties, another 40 percent in their late teens or in their thirties. The men’s average age at migration was 23 and the women’s 27. At the time of the research, by far most people (80 percent) had been living in Chicago for more than 30 years. 4 The proportion of their lifetime people had spent in the 4 | Most of my correspondents had migrated directly to Chicago or come there shortly after going to the U.S. Therefore, the number of years spent in the U.S. in most cases equals the number of years spent in Chicago.

The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds

United States (number of years spent in the U.S. divided by age) was 63 percent on average, ranging from 33 percent to 89 percent. Men on average tended to have lived a slightly larger proportion of their life in the U.S. (65 percent) than women (62 percent). This also reflects the fact that women followed their husbands a few years later in the cases of some couples. Table 5.2: Time of arrival in Chicago and age at migration, n = 665 Time of arrival in Chicago Age at migration

1954-1965

1965-1986

After 1986

total

0-9 years

1

0

0

1

10-19 years

5

9

1

15

20-29 years

2

32

0

34

30-39 years

0

11

1

12

40-49 years

0

1

1

2

50-59 years

0

0

1

1

60-69 years

0

0

1

1

Total

8

53

5

66

5.2.2 Backgrounds in Mexico My interlocturs’ backgrounds in Mexico were wide-ranging and the circumstances for migration diverse. In what follows, I will examine (1) their different regions of origin, (2) the heterogeneous backgrounds in terms of social class, level of education and professional experience6 and (3) the divergent settings (rural or urban) they came from.

5 | For a periodization of the time of arrival of my correspondents, I chose to take major changes in migration legislation as demarcation lines for the periods, because the conditions for migration remained largely the same in between those changes in legislation. Important cornerstones in this respect were Operation Wetback in 1954, the Migration and Nationality Act in 1965 and the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986. 6 | Level of education, class and professional background are closely interrelated and will also be considered as such.

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Scattered places: regions of origin in Mexico The regions in Mexico my correspondents lived in before migrating are extremely diverse, comprising 18 different federal states (see table 5.3 and figure 5.1). Nevertheless, the distribution shows some notable concentrations. Three areas that clearly stand out are the states Michoacán, Jalisco and the Federal District (D.F.),7 where ten of my correspondents had lived respectively before heading north. The states San Luis Potosí and Guanajuato, too, take a prominent role since they were home to eight (San Luis Potosí) and five (Guanajuato) individuals out of the 66. These concentrations largely correspond to the major regions of origin reported for Mexicans in Chicago in general: Roughly one quarter of Mexicans migrating to Chicago come from the central-western states of Michoacán, Jalisco, Guanajuato and Zacatecas (De Genova 2005: 3; Farr 2007: 86). Apart from those five areas, the distribution of home regions lacks further concentrations. Table 5.3: Regions of origin in Mexico, n = 66 Region of origin

Number

Region of origin

Number

D.F.

10

Nayarit

2

Jalisco

10

Veracruz

2

Michoacán

10

Aguascalientes

1

San Luis Potosí

8

Chiapas

1

Guanajuato

5

Hidalgo

1

Nuevo León

3

Tamaulipas

1

Zacatecas

3

Puebla

1

Coahuila

3

Chihuahua

1

Guerrero

2

Morelos

2

Total

66

7 | The Federal District, Spanish Distrito Federal (D.F.), is equivalent with Mexico City. I refer to it as D.F. since this was the term my correspondents usually used.

The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds

Figure 5.1: Distribution of regions of origin in Mexico (darker shades of gray indicate higher concentrations)

Source: my illustration

Remote villages and metropolises: rural and urban contexts As with the regions of origin, my correspondents’ diversity in background is also visible in rural versus urban settings. Some of them had been leading a very rural life in Mexico, in small villages or remote ranchos, while others, like Luciana or Juán Carlos, grew up and lived in big metropolises such as Mexico City. Gabriel Calderón belongs to the first group and remembers a youth where every day was structured by the tasks that work on a farm entailed. “I was always on the farm”,8 he remembers, “working real hard but, you know, when you’re working on the farm you have no vacations, you have no days off, you got to milk the cows, and feed the cows, you know, 365.” Whether people grew up in the remote countryside or in a big city often also affected their educational and career path. Since many remote rural villages neither had schools (either entirely or on the secondary level) nor the infrastructure (e.g. roads and public transport) for children to go to school in one of the adjacent communities, a ru8 | Interview Gabriel Calderón, 24.01.2011.

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ral living situation tended to imply only primary schooling or none at all. Those among my correspondents who came from bigger cities, by contrast, often had a higher educational degree and had been employed in the administrative or service sector before migrating.

Socioeconomic ranges: class, education and professional background My correspondents’ socioeconomic backgrounds in Mexico were wide-ranging. They belonged to different social classes, had varying degrees of education and were embedded in diverse professional contexts. However, the majority had only received a basic education in Mexico,9 the most common educational level being primaria (30 percent), followed by secundaria (10 percent) and preparatoria (16 percent) (see table 5.4).10 Seven of my correspondents did not go to school at all because there either was none in their vicinity or they were needed at home. Ten of them continued their education in Mexico after High School by attending college or completing vocational training. Luciana’s and Angélica’s examples on the one hand and Gerardo’s on the other represent two opposite ends of the socioeconomic scale and illustrate that the circumstances the migrants came from were manifold. Luciana grew up in an affluent middle-class household in Mexico City. She was used to having servants in the house and enjoyed a good education, which enabled her to work as executive secretary before going to the United States. Angélica’s situation in Mexico was very similar. She, too, led her life in Mexico City in a “família de la clase media, sin carencias más o menos.”11 Gerardo’s situation in Mexico, on the other hand, looked entirely different. “Ahí [en México] pasamos la pobreza, yo desde que yo recuerdo, yo andaba descalzo, nunca usaba zapatos”12, he recalls and adds that the occasions when the family had enough to eat were very rare: “Sufríamos mucho de falta de comida [...] Yo crecí, ya cuando tenía unos 15 años empezé a trabajar, a ganar más dinero.”

9 | Several of my correspondents continued their education in the United States. The following numbers indicate the educational degree obtained in Mexico. 10 | The Mexican school system translates into the U.S. school system as follows: Primaria equals Elementary School comprising grades one to six, secundaria corresponds to Junior High School comprising grades seven to nine, and preparatoria is roughly the same as High School comprising grades ten to twelve. Both primaria and secundaria are mandatory, but at the time my correspondents went to school, many villages and small towns did not have a secondary school and therefore it was not unusual to finish school after primaria, at the age of twelve. 11 | Interview Angélica Cordero, 23.03.2011. 12 | Interview Gerardo Moya, 11.02.2011.

The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds

Table 5.4: Educational background, n = 66 Highest educational level

Number of people

Percentage

No schooling

7

11%

Primaria/ elementary school

21

32%

Secundaria/ Junior High

12

18%

Preparatoria/ High School

10

15%

College

7

11%

Vocational training

3

4%

Not indicated

6

9%

Total

66

100%

Gerardo started working as a mason on building sites, but he never earned enough money to sustain his family in Mexico. A similar distinction applies to Martha and Felipe. While Martha Rivera never went to school, because “en ese pueblo donde estábamos, no había escuelas y cuando hicieron la escuela, yo ya estaba más grande. Entonces tenía que ayudar [...] a los niños”13, Felipe Gayón had the opportunity to pursue studies in engineering in Mexico City like his two older brothers had done before him. Felipe soon decided to drop out of university, though, because he was bored by the studies and attracted by the idea to find a job in the United States. While Gerardo’s and Martha’s cases rather match the stereotypical image of a Mexican migrant, Luciana’s and Angélica’s and Felipe’s examples diverge from this image and demonstrate the diversity of my correspondents’ socioeconomic, educational and professional backgrounds. People came from poverty, little or even no education and correspondingly low jobs on the one hand and relative wealth, a solid or even excellent education and well-paid professions on the other.

Reasons for leaving Mexico My interlocutors’ heterogeneous backgrounds indicate that the reasons they had to leave Mexico for the United States were equally varied. A systematic look at the motivations and plans behind their decisions to migrate reveals that more than half of the people I interviewed pursued, just like Gerardo and Gabriel, the goal of improving their economic situation and finding a better job

13 | Interview Martha Rivera, 07.07.2011.

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in the United States.14 This finding corroborates migration theories stressing the economic impetus behind population movements, namely neoclassical approaches and the refined New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM), both developed in the 1970s but still frequently applied today (Arango 2000: 284ff.; Constant and Massey 2002; Massey 1994: 701ff.). However, economic considerations did not always feature prominently or at all when people recount the driving forces that made them go north. Following the economic motives, the reason stated second most often was family unification, to follow one’s spouse or family members who were migrating to or were already living in the United States. Besides, some people had relatives in the U.S. who constituted a convenient link and thus social capital. Still others wanted to get away from a loss or problems (other than economic ones) they had faced in Mexico, were looking for an adventure or curious to get to know the country everyone was talking about, had political reasons or just came to the U.S. for a visit and ended up staying there.

“Hambre de dinero” – Improving one’s economic situation Taking a closer look at this primary migration motive, the aim of (better) work and money, reveals that various aspects are subsumed under this category. Elizabeth, for example, sums up what made her go north in one sentence “Mi hija, no había que comer! No teníamos trabajo.”15 Elsa Castañera argues in a similar vein: “Somos mucha gente pobre [en México] [...]. Por eso venímos a trabajar porque aquí pudimos sobrevivir más [...] pues allá no hay dinero.”16 Both women had been in a desperate situation in Mexico. While Elsa worked in a shoe factory in Guanajuato, not making enough money to make a living, Elizabeth and her husband did not even have steady jobs in ciudad Juárez and felt forced to leave the country. Diego found himself in a comparable position, which was exacerbated by the death of his father when he was a teenager. Looking for work, he says, was what motivated him to leave Mexico for the United States, “hambre de dinero.”17 “Méxio, para mí pues, era lo máximo, [...] me gustaba mucho para vivir. Más que los años que yo estuve allá eran muy duros, porque viví una vida muy rara, ¿verdad? Muy difícil para mí, porque yo quería siempre salir adelante, porque mi papa se murió. O sea, nosotros vivíamos bien, la vida bien bonita, porque mi 14 | Several people mentioned various reasons when they reflected on their motives for migrating. Therefore, the total number of reasons stated is not 66 but 88. However, when referring to a percentage of people stating one of the reasons, this percentage is related to the number of people, that is 66. 15 | Interview Elizabeth Zavala 19.04.2011. 16 | Interview Elsa Castañera, 21.04.2011. 17 | Interview Diego Díaz, 29.01.2011.

The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds

papa tenía un ranchito. Tenía dos casas, tenía animales, tenía algo. Entonces de repente se enfermó él y todo se gastó, nos quedamos sin casa, nos quedamos sin rancho, sin nada. Y mi mama [antes] tenía una mujer que le ayudaba, ¿entiende? Pues yo me sentí mal, porque se nos acabó todo. Porque [...] mi papa lo trajímos a la frontera, entonces lo trajímos a los Estados Unidos, a San Antonio, gastamos dinero, y luego no se curó y tuvímos que llevarlo para atrás y luego en México otra vez de vuelta a curarlo y todo se acabó, todo. Todo se acabó, con el dinero, todo, la muerte, todo. Todo vendieron, nos quedamos sin nada. Nada, no teniendo nada, teníamos que pagar renta y luego mi mama hasta lloraba, porque tenía que lavar.” Although Diego’s main motive for migrating was economic necessity, he adds a dimension which Elsa and Elizabeth do not refer to in their explanations: “Quería ayudar a mi mamá. Quería ayudarles a mis hermanos.” Diego did not only seek a better future for himself, but for his family as well. Still today, Diego shows his concern for the family he grew up in and rejoices that “todos arreglaron. Todos viven bien, ahora unos mejor viven que yo.” Adela expresses a similar concern when she stresses that she was always striving for her children to have a better future: “Un propósito era que mis hijos crecieron aquí [en Estados Unidos], que se prepararan para un futuro […] que ellos fueron algo aquí, que estudiaron sobre todo […] una vida mejor.”18 Adela was particularly worried about what would become of her daughter in Mexico. She feared that staying in Mexico would entail exposing her to a life “llena de niños y con un hombre machista, golpeador.” In the examples above, economic reasons figure as the overarching motive and main motor to migrate, but they still show a distinction as to the migrants’ goals behind their economic improvement. On the one hand, the aim of relieving one’s individual hardship is in the center (reflecting the Neoclassical Economics approach). On the other hand, the focus is on improving the family’s or household’s situation (reflecting the New Economics of Labor Migration). These two variations, both highlighting migration as a sort of escape strategy from Mexico, mark just one of the dimensions where the main migratory motive “looking for work” becomes more heterogeneous. Another level of differentiation is illustrated by Fernando Mendoza’ and Gabriel Calderón’s statements: “Me hablaban que aquí se ganaban los dólares, todo el mundo, mis amigos decían ‘me voy para Estados Unidos, me voy para Estados Unidos’, pues yo también dije ‘me voy,’”19 Fernando remembers, indicating the importance of socio-cultural habits for the migration decision. He did not undertake the journey north because he was in dire need of money but rather because it was a habit of the time to go to the United States. For Fernando, the trip north was 18 | Interview Adela Orozco, 19.04.2011. 19 | Interview Fernando Mendoza, 18.03.2011.

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not a “necessary decision”, to speak with Iain Walker (Walker 2011: 171), but he followed the “lure” of prosperity. Gabriel confirms this notion of a ‘culture of migration’20 as underlying motivation related with economic purposes. “It was everybody’s dream”, he says, “you know, to come to United States and to sweep the dollars. They told you ‘oh you’re going to United States then you have to bring a big broom to sweep the dollars.’”21 To be sure, the economic aspect spurred the two men as well. But in contrast to Elizabeth, their economic situation in Mexico was not that desperate. Rather than fleeing the situation in Mexico they as well as many others in their social circle felt attracted and enticed by the prospect of the “sueño americano”22 or “la ilusión […] de estar en otro lado”23 as Maricruz put it. This ‘American Dream’ in turn was perpetuated and reinforced by migrants coming back to Mexico for the holidays and showing off the wealth – be it alleged or real – they had acquired in the north. Felipe describes how he was impressed by his relatives who had migrated and brought back the image of a country where everything was possible: “Cuando uno está en México y tiene familiares aquí, ve uno como van allá con ropa bonita, bien vestidos, con dinero, muchos llevan carros nuevos o van manejando, y uno como que se deslumbra por la forma en que llegan ellos allá.”24 Sometimes, striving for the ‘American Dream’ was intertwined with the concrete purpose of making money in order to start a business back home. For Inés González, “juntar un poquito de dinero para poner una tienda en mi tierra”25 did not constitute the primary motive but encouraged her additionally to take that step. Rafaél stresses this aspect, too, and recalls that the idea behind earning money in the United States was to become self-employed in Mexico, selling clothes. He had only worked in temporary jobs in Mexico. “Si venía un tiempo acá”, he thought, “a Estados Unidos, podía juntar yo algún dinero para yo poder comprar ropa para vender.”26 This line of thinking implied the idea 20 | Jeffrey Cohen coined this term in his book The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico, describing migration as an “everyday experience” (Cohen 2004: 148). Wilson, in a recent article (2010) complained about the lack of a concise definition of the term and suggested that “the culture of Mexican migration includes beliefs, norms, attitudes, rituals and values […] that develop to rationalize and ratify social and economic structures and are in turn ratified by social and economic phenomena” (Wilson 2010: 415). Wilson emphasizes in particular the meaning of social networks as one element in the culture of migration. 21 | Interview Gabriel Calderón, 24.01.2011. 22 | Interview Ricardo Ávila, 29.06.2011. 23 | Interview Maricruz Finol, 16.02.2011. 24 | Interview Felipe Gayón, 28.07.2011. 25 | Interview Inés González, 14.07.2011. 26 | Interview Rafaél López, 30.11.2010.

The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds

of return as a self-evident assumption. Economic goals led to the decision to migrate, but people’s economic goals in these cases were intertwined with and aimed at future enterprises in Mexico. They resorted to migration as a temporary solution to achieve improvements at home.

“Adonde te lleva tu marido” – Following one’s spouse or family Being asked what made her leave Mexico for the U.S., Adriana sums it up in one sentence, saying “como me casé, para entones era a donde te lleva tu marido.”27 To follow one’s spouse – in most cases the husband – who went to the United States or had already been living there for some time constituted the second most stated reason among my correspondents.28 Adriana herself would have preferred to keep her life in Aguas Calientes. She was used to living in close touch with her parents and siblings and other relatives and reluctant to leave this life behind in exchange for a future in a city of strangers. Nevertheless, she did not oppose her husband’s decision, who in turn wanted to reunite with his parents in Chicago and felt tempted by the idea to earn good money there himself. This pattern of women and children following husbands and fathers, sometimes reluctantly, also explains Luciana and Angélica’s ways to Chicago. The gas company Luciana’s husband was working for in Mexico City had economic problems and a friend of his who was married to an American citizen suggested he should come and work in Chicago. Since staying behind with her little son did not suit Luciana for long she did not decline her husband’s invitation when he told her “Mijita, pues, creo que yo no me siento a gusto estando solo, los extraño mucho, vente y vemos, a ver que díos dice, a ver si logramos hacer algo positivo.”29 Neither Luciana nor Angélica, however, would have felt the need and decided to migrate themselves. Angélica stresses that if it had not 27 | Interview Adriana Ávila, 29.06.2011. 28 | My sample, in this respect, reflects a common feature in Mexican migration to the United States that prevailed until the end of the 1980s. Until then the majority of labor migrants from Mexico were men who engaged in seasonal migration, working in the United States for parts of the year and spending parts of it in Mexico (HondagneuSotelo 1994: 23ff.). Since migration represented rather a temporary strategy to gain additional income and support the farm or business at home, the migrants often went north without their spouse or family (Henderson 2011: 6). When migration patterns started to change in the 1960s and more Mexicans began establishing themselves for longer periods of time in the U.S., their wives and children started to follow. Female migration however, did not rise significantly until the change in legislation in 1986, when family reunification became possible on a legal basis and more women joined their husbands in the U.S. (Lowell, et al. 2008: 18; Wilson 2009c: 34f.). Subsequently, also independent female migration grew in numbers. 29 | Interview Luciana Zuniga quoting her husband, 02.05.2011.

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been for her husband whose boxing career in Mexico had ended all of a sudden, she would never have left Mexico: “Yo vine por seguir a mi esposo.”30 To be sure, as Patricia Pessar has pointed out, it would be misleading to portray all women who followed their husbands to the U.S. as ‘passive followers.’ Women had been neglected in migration studies for a long time because it was primarily men who went to the U.S. for work (Pessar 2003: 77). However, even when women did not migrate themselves they were in fact often the ones pulling the strings and deciding on migration strategies concerning the household (Pessar 1999). Among my correspondents some of the female migrants ‘just’ followed their husbands,31 while others explicitly seized their husbands’ presence as an opportunity to facilitate their own and their children’s migration. Apart from the spouse, other close family members living in the U.S. also played a major role for the decision to go north. Those among my correspondents who migrated at a younger age followed or reunited with their parents. Victoria, for instance, was only seven years old when her father decided that she and her sisters and brothers should seize the chance to learn English and brought them to Chicago, where he had been working for a few years. Adelaida remembers the stage of life she was at when her family decided to leave Mexico in the following way: “When we moved over here I was 11 years old […], it was in 1956, November, that’s when we came over here. So, when I left over there I had already finished my grammar school in Mexico. I was studying English and typewriting, the shorthand, and I left my friends. I could be around the town, I knew everybody, everybody knew me, I had a lot of friends, and my house, my grandfather’s house.” 32 Fernanda, too, was taken to the U.S. by her parents: “Mi mamá ya estaba en California con mi hermano, mi papá estaba aquí en Chicago, estaban allá separados, y yo como ellos decían ‘tú ya estás grande, ya debes de venirte para acá con nosotros, no debes de estar allá con la abuelita’.”33

“Sabía donde llegar” – origin networks as social capital in the U.S. Whereas some of my correspondents felt that they had no choice but to follow their close family members to the U.S., others remember having relatives in the United States as a form of social capital that would facilitate migration. In these cases, it was the family in the north that made the idea of spending time there seem attractive, irrespective of other factors. Such was the case for Javier 30 | Interview Angélica Cordero, 23.03.2011. 31 | Patricia Pessar refers to this as “family stage migration” (Pessar 1999: 61). 32 | Interview Adelaida Perales, 06.05.2011. 33 | Interview Fernanda Pérez, 30.11.2010.

The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds

who remembers: “Tenía una familia aquí y me invitaron.”34 Sometimes other motives, such as economic incentives, mattered as well, but having family in the north tipped the balance in favor of migration when people would not have considered it an option otherwise. Felipe recalls that he was bored by studying in Mexico. But the idea of moving to Chicago would not have occurred to him if his siblings had not been living there and provided a place of arrival and orientation for him. “Como que acá estaba mi hermano y mi hermana sabía donde llegar.”35 Javier’s and Felipe ’s cases illustrate the role kinship networks played for the decision to go to the U.S., tying in with the findings of other anthropological research that has analyzed the role of networks in the migration process and explored how these social ties facilitate migration (Adler 2005; Wilson 1998; Wilson 2009c).

Culture of migration The reasons for migration other than work, spouse or family encompass a wide range, varying from losses or problems experienced in Mexico, either on a very personal level or related to political issues, to adventure seeking and holiday visits that turned into a permanent stay. In order to complete the picture, it is worth examining some of them closer. Marilu’s story illustrates how widespread a consideration migration to the U.S. was as a solution to personal problems. Her husband had cheated on her with another woman and Marilu feared that he might try and get rid of her. She left home, she said because of this worry and since “me daba coraje [...], por el engaño y me daba sentimiento con la mujer aquella.”36 Migration constituted such a prevalent pattern and was such an ingrained part of accepted behavior and values that it seemed a good solution to even very personal problems. Jeffrey Cohen (Cohen 2004) as well as Diana Wilson (Wilson 2010) and William Kandel and Douglas Massey (Kandel and Massey 2002) have coined the term ‘culture of migration’ to describe this phenomenon. After having been established in a community, migration, they suggest becomes an increasingly common feature of daily life and is uncoupled from the economic motives that originally induced it. Migration becomes part of the everyday culture of a community, and people turn to it for a variety of reasons, be it curiosity, adventure seeking or problems in economic or other terms. Wilson defines the culture of Mexican migration as including “beliefs, norms, attitudes, rituals and values […] that develop to rationalize and ratify social and economic structures and are in turn ratified by social and economic phenomena” (Wilson 2010: 415). This is reflected in how Marilu frames her migration decision. While Marilu sought to escape the context where this pain and embar34 | Interview Javier Álvarez, 14.02.2011. 35 | Interview Felipe Gayón, 28.07.2011. 36 | Interview Marilu Socorro, 21.02.2011.

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rassment had been inflicted on her by her husband, Inés felt betrayed by her workplace, a government institution, which after a change of government had withheld a substantial part of her wage. “Pues no estoy de acuerdo de que me hayan quitado mi dinero, medio año de trabajo, pues duele, entonces opté por venirme. “37 Inés intended to spend one year in the United States: “Lo que yo quería era quitarme de la cabeza de ese problema de que me quitó mi dinero el gobierno.” In addition to wanting to distance herself from this unpleasant experience, she also had in mind that a year in the U.S. would allow her to save money and open her own business in Mexico, a motive already discussed earlier. Inés’ story thus again underlines that it was often a mix of motivations that fuelled the idea to migrate. Both cases do not only point to the idea of a ‘culture of migration’ that had emerged but in a similar vein also confirm Massey’s assumption of cumulative causation. Massey observed that migration had become extremely prevalent in Mexico and concluded that this was the case because “each act of migration alters the social context within which subsequent migration decisions are made, typically in ways that make additional movement more likely” (Massey, et al. 1993: 451). A last example vividly illustrating how entangled the various causes influencing the decision to migrate can be is Francisco Gallardo. One reason behind his idea to go to the U.S. was his passion for languages and his desire to go abroad, not least since he intended to improve his professional qualifications: “Me llamaban la atención los idiomas, entoncas me había invitado mi hermano: Por qué no vas por allá para estudiar el inglés y entonces así te preparas.”38 Although his brother lived in Chicago, Francisco had no peculiar interest in the United States; he was dreaming of going to France. Things changed, though, when his mother died. Francisco was 17 years old at that time and his mother’s death altered his attitude towards moving to the U.S. in two ways. “Estados Unidos no me llamaban a mí la atención. Me gustaron sus películas, su música, pero pensar así par acá, no. Mi idea era Europa, por eso le digo que me llama desde entonces la atención el francés [...], but anyway. So en 1957 murió mi madre. [...] El sentimiento de haber perdido mi madre se me hacía la vida un póco difícil, en el sentido como que me faltaba el espacio, I dont know, [...] y al fin decidí acceptar la invitación de mi hermano.” On the one hand, Francisco’s family’s economic situation deteriorated when his mother, who had financially contributed to the household, had passed away. On the other hand, it was the emotional effect of his mother’s death that prompted Francisco to leave Mexico: He emphasizes this aspect as the most crucial 37 | Interview Inés González, 14.07.2011. 38 | Interview Francisco Gallardo, 07.12.2010.

The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds

among the various factors motivating him to make his way to Chicago. “Mayor parte de la gente que conocí que venían de allá por acá venían por hacer dinero, todos tenían esta illusión: Vamos a ganar dolares. […]. Yo vine por otra cosa. La necesidad económica estaba allí, pero no fue así ‘allá arreglo todas las cosas’. Venía por otra cosa, con el sentimiento de mi mamá.” Examining my correspondents’ backgrounds in Mexico allows the conclusion that these 66 individuals coming to Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s were quite diverse and heterogeneous regarding both their regions of origin, their class, educational and professional background, the environment in Mexico they lived in and their reasons for leaving Mexico. My interlocutors’ life worlds and situations in Chicago today, in contrast, appear to be fairly similar. This will be addressed in the following section.

5.2.3 Life in Chicago today The nearest and dearest: family patterns The majority of my interview partners (77 percent) were married, a quarter of the women and a few men widowed and another few divorced (see table 5.5). Except for one case – Ana, who had married an Anglo American –, the partners were born in Mexico as well. Quite frequently, however, the spouses came from different regions in Mexico and either got to know each other in Chicago or during later visits to Mexico. Francisco Gallardo, for example, fell in love with a girl from his hometown when he was visiting San Luis Potosí, married quickly and brought his wife Martha with him to Chicago. Fernanda and Dionisio, by contrast, got to know each other while working at the same factory in Chicago. And Martha and David had already been married in Mexico and undertook the journey north as a family with their kids. I did not interview a single person who did not have children. While some people had already formed a family in Mexico, crossed the border with the entire family or had the spouse and children follow a few years later, others had children after having settled in Chicago. Overall, most children were born in the U.S. Even when they had come with their family, most people had additional children when they were living in Chicago. The number of children averaged 3.53, ranging from one to nine, the median being three (see table 5.6). This demographic trend contrasts with the parent generation, where the number of children tended to be higher. Among my correspondents, having eight or nine siblings was not exceptional. The majority of the people involved in this study (75 percent) had grandchildren as well. In most cases, people did not share the same household with their – adult – offspring, but only few children had moved away from Chicago (see table 5.5). Almost everyone had at least one child who

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had stayed there. In one third of the cases, people additionally had one or more children living in another U.S. American city, while only 15 percent of them had children who lived in Mexico. As a consequence, most grandchildren also resided in Chicago. My correspondents predominantly lived in relatively small households of one to three persons. The average number of persons in one household was 2.55 (see table 5.6), which is considerably smaller than the average Mexican household in the United States that in 2011 was 3.8 individuals (Gonzalez-Barrera, et al. 2013: 12). When people were widowed, they often resided alone. When the partner was still alive, the couple usually formed the household (45 percent). Households with three members (a married couple plus a child, a sister, a grandchild) also occurred quite frequently, but households with more than three members were rare. Table 5.5: Marital status and children’s place of residence, n = 66 Yes

No

Percentage

Married

51

15

77,3%

Divorced

4

62

6,1%

Widowed

11

55

16,7%

Children in Chicago

64

2

97%

Children in Mexico

10

56

15,2%

Children at a different place

20

46

30%

Table 5.6: Number of children and grandchildren and household size, n = 66 Mean

Median

Standard deviation

Min

Max

Number of children

3.53

3

1.77

1

9

Number of grandchildren

5.44

4.5

4.9

0

21

Household size

2.55

2

1.33

1

8

The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds

Legal status and framework Migration and the question of ‘illegality’, of whom to include in the citizenry, has been an issue vividly discussed and negotiated in the United States since the nation was founded and with particular vigor in the past decades. Sociocultural anthropologist Susan Bibler Coutin characterized the United States as “a nation of immigrants where nativism flourishes” (Bibler Coutin 2003: 508), pointing to the constant tension of both desiring and excluding migrants, which has caused heated debates and transformations in legislative frameworks and political measures over the course of the decades. Since the 1980s, such debates about national membership have particularly affected Mexican migrants, presumably because they have been the biggest migrant group in the country since then. In 2011, Mexicans accounted for six million of the estimated eleven million undocumented migrants living in the United States (GonzalezBarrera, et al. 2013: 5). Both immigration policies and public attitudes towards migration have been influential in allowing or denying formal and informal membership to the people, most of all Mexicans, who came to the United States undocumented. The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986 represented the last major reform in immigration legislation. In addition to aiming at restricting future immigration flows, the IRCA offered an amnesty for undocumented migrants who already resided in the country. It stipulated that everyone who had been in the United States in 1982 should be able to apply for and granted residence status (Bean, et al. 1990: 2; Martin 2008: 138). In total, some 2.3 million Mexicans seized this opportunity to obtain permanent residence under IRCA (Massey, et al. 2002: 49). Among my correspondents, too, many said they were able to apply for permanent residence due to “la amnestía” as it was often called. Since the IRCA was passed in 1986, substantial migration reforms have been fought over vigorously in Congress, but ultimately all have stalled at some stage of the legislation process. As I was writing a first draft of this manuscript in 2013, the most recent proposal to overhaul migration legislation, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act, had been drafted by the so-called Gang of Eight consisting of four democratic and four republican senators. 39 It had been approved by the Senate (which had a Democratic majority) by 68 votes to 32 with support from both parties, but but was not considered by the House of Representatives (where the majority was Republican). If the House had passed the bill, the elven million migrants residing in the U.S. without documents would have been given a path to citizenship, tied to certain conditions, within the next 13 years. 39 | For news coverage of the proposed immigration reform see e.g. The Economist 2013; Leader 2013; Lizza 2013; Parker 2013.

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Table 5.7: Legal status at the time of migration, n = 66 Numbers

Percentage

Permanent residence card

21

31.8%

Tourist/ other temporary visa

30

45.5%

Undocumented

8

12.1%

Not indicated

7

10.6%

Total

66

100%

U.S. migration politics, in particular the IRCA, played a central role for many of my correspondents. Only a third of them had a permanent residence card (a so called greencard) when they decided to cross the border and migrate to the United States (see table 5.7). Hence, a minority was able to enter the U.S. on a permanent legal basis, in most cases because a close relative or an employer sponsored them. Some of my correspondents also came to the United States on a tourist visa and overstayed. For the larger proportion of my sample, the lack of papers had been a crucial issue during their first years in Chicago and shaped their lives considerably. Yet, by the time of the research, all of my 66 interview partners resided legally in the U.S. Predominantly, people had acquired U.S. citizenship (85 percent); the remaining 15 percent had been granted permanent residence and not applied for citizenship (see table 5.8). These naturalization rates differ from the overall Mexican migrant population today, where a major proportion (two thirds) of Mexican migrants eligible for citizenship choose not to apply (Gonzalez-Barrera et al. 2013: 5). Table 5.8: Legal status today, n = 66 Yes

No

Mean (%)

Citizenship U.S.

57

9

86,4%

Permanent residence U.S.

9

57

13,6%

As dual citizenship was not an option until the late 1990s, those among my correspondents who had become U.S. citizens had to relinquish their Mexican citizenship first. The laws changed in 1998 and today Mexico encourages Mexicans living abroad who can prove that they were born in Mexico or have Mexican ancestry to become nationals again (Fitzgerald 2009: 33; Goldring 2002). Most of my interlocutors, however, had not seized the opportunity to acquire dual citizenship and were often not even aware of this possibility.

The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds

Work and money: professional background, retirement and economic situation After coming to Chicago, almost all of the people included in this study, irrespective of their educational and professional backgrounds in Mexico, had started working in factories as blue-collar workers. While some of them maintained a lifelong relationship with the companies that had hired them in the beginning, advancing on the career ladder within the company, others changed their jobs regularly, working in various fields and positions. Common jobs included all kinds of industrial work, both in traditional Chicago industries such as steel manufacturing and meatpacking, and other factories that produced e.g. glass, motors, cornflakes or tortillas. Others held positions as bus drivers, janitors, seamstresses and nurses but also as deacons and computer operators. Roughly half of the people included in the sample had already retired from work at the time of the research, 40 percent were still working either full time or part time and ten percent, all female, had never worked but stayed at home with the children (see table 5.9). Among my correspondents who had reduced their hours to part time, several, like Angélica, were employed via organizations like the Easter Seals, who help people aged 55 years and older to find work. The wages people received when being placed by the Easter Seals were comparatively low (people got paid by the organization and not by the employer) and the jobs part-time. Nevertheless, a number of people I met appreciated the program since they were in their 60s and the program constituted an opportunity for them to find a job and to supplement the retirement benefits they received with an additional income. Table 5.9: Professional status, n = 66 Retired

Working

Never worked

Women

46,3%

39%

14,7%

100%

Men

52%

48%

0%

100%

Total

48,5%

42,4%

9,1%

100%

Examining the professional status of my correspondents proves interesting considering the assumption that retirement is an important point of time when people ponder a return to Mexico. However, because of the character of regulations regarding retirement and retirement benefits in the U.S., people tend to be rather flexible in terms of deciding when to retire and thus when to face return considerations. To contextualize this issue, a look at the retirement regulations in the U.S. is helpful.

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Retirement regulations in the United States First of all, there is no mandatory retirement age in the United States. This contrasts with retirement regulations in most European countries, Germany for example, where public sector workers are not allowed to remain employed after a certain age. As a consequence, in the United States a considerable number of people keep working even at a high age. The official retirement age in the U.S. is 67, 40 meaning that one is entitled to unreduced retirement benefits (Social Security), provided that one has worked for a minimum of ten years in the United States. 41 People can, however, receive Social Security from the age of 62, but the monthly benefit is reduced by a certain percentage. Even with full benefits, Social Security usually only amounts to a fairly moderate sum. In 2012, Social Security benefits for a retired worker averaged $1,230. People therefore often have additional retirement funds provided by their employer or based on private savings. If they do not dispose of additional savings or pensions, working beyond the age of 67 constitutes an opportunity to increase one’s monthly income and is often a necessity. Social Security regulations also differ according to legal status. Citizens do not have to reside in the U.S. in order to be entitled to full their monthly payments, whereas permanent residents have to be lawfully present in the U.S. for at least a full calendar month at least every six months. 42 This regulation is of interest for this study as it might affect permanent residents in their return considerations.

Retirement and financial situation All the 37 correspondents included in the structured interviews were entitled to Social Security (see table 5.10). 43 Only a third of them had, or knew they were

40 | This regulation refers to everyone born after 1937. People who were born before 1937 are entitled to unreduced retirement benefits at age 65. 41 | For more detail on the retirement benefits system in the U.S. see the official website of the United States social security administration, http://www.socialsecurity.gov/retire2/index.htm. 42 | There are some exceptions to which this regulation does not apply. The United States have, for instance, a social security agreement with a number of countries (predominantly European countries). Citizens of the countries included in the agreement who have worked in the U.S. and been permanent residents there but retire in their home country do not have to comply with the formalities and present themselves in the U.S. on a regular basis in order to receive their social security payments. So far, the United States and Mexico do not have such a social security agreement. 43 | The women who had not been employed themselves were entitled to Social Security through their husbands.

The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds

going to have, an additional pension, 44 but 45 percent disposed of savings or alternative sources of income such as renting out real estate or other investments, and 15 percent occasionally received financial help from their children. Besides, most people owned a house in Chicago or Mexico, in one third of the cases even in both locations. A third of the sample depended, or was going to depend, on Social Security alone. These numbers largely conform to what Richman et al. found for Latinos in the United States in general. In their 2008 report, they stated that “for 38 percent of Latino elderly, Social Security is their only source of income, compared to 37 percent of blacks and 18 percent of whites” (Richman and Barboza 2008: 9). With regard to employer-based pension plans, my sample also conforms with the nationwide trends: In 2001 Latinos were least likely to work for employers offering pension plans45 or to participate in them even when they existed (Richman and Barboza 2008: 8). Table 5.10: Sources of retirement income, n = 37 Yes

No

Percentage (%)

Social Security benefits

37

0

100%

Social Security benefits only

11

26

30%

Additional employer-based pension

11

26

30%

Additional savings/ other income (e.g. real estate)

16

21

43%

Additional support children

6

31

16%

Property in Chicago and/ or Mexico

31

6

84%

Although my correspondents’ financial situation at retirement thus tended to correspond to the nationwide trend of elderly Latinos being “more vulnerable than other groups to low income and poverty” (Richman and Barboza 2008: 5), they did not feel particularly economically insecure or dissatisfied. On the contrary, most of them judged their economic situation as relatively satisfying (see table 5.11). Only four regarded their economic situation as bad. These statements were corroborated by the fact that only few of my correspondents who were already entitled to the full amount of Social Security were still working 44 | This information includes data of both individuals who were retired and individuals who were still working. The question to the non-retired ones was which sources of income they were likely to rely on when retiring in the future. 45 | In 2001, 44 percent of Latinos, compared to 64 percent of Whites and 63 percent of Blacks, worked for employers who offered pension plans (Richman and Barboza 2008: 7).

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(five in total) and if so not only for financial reasons but also in order to remain active. Table 5.11: Economic satisfaction, n = 37

Economic satisfaction

Very discontent

Little content

Average

Content

Very content

Total

0

4

12

16

5

37

Places and kinds of residence Most of the people included in this study resided in one of the three areas introduced in the preceding chapter, Pilsen, Little Village or Logan Square (see table 5.12). Table 5.12: Area of residence in Chicago, n = 66 Pilsen

Little Village

Logan Square

Other

Sample total

30.3%

18.2%

28.8%

22,7%

100%

Women

39%

19,5%

34,4%

17,1%

100%

Men

16%

16%

36%

32%

100%

20 percent lived in other neighborhoods and had some relation or other with one of the two areas, such as attending church services, frequenting a senior club or participating in some kind of activity there. The reasons why people had moved to their respective neighborhood involved various aspects. Sometimes networks – knowing someone who lived there and had recommended the area – had motivated their decision. In the case of Logan Square, some people chose the neighborhood because they specifically wanted to establish themselves in an area where Mexican influence was less prevalent. In the case of Little Village and Pilsen, some people, on the contrary, chose the area because they were looking for traces of Mexico in Chicago. Sometimes it was pure coincidence, a “for rent” sign outside the door they saw when passing by, an advertisement in the paper. Often people had lived in other neighborhoods before, eventually moving to the place where they were living now. Most of the individuals included in the sample (80 percent) lived in their own house or apartment, which they often had purchased twenty to thirty years ago. Since the City of Chicago is spread over quite a vast area, space never having been a problem in the Midwest, moderate two or three-story brick or

The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds

wooden-frame houses for one or two families constitute the typical buildings in many neighborhoods. Hence, living in a house is more common than living in an apartment, especially if one is not renting. Most of the homeowners in the sample owned a house rather than an apartment. Only 20 percent rented their place of residence. Among those renting, some, like Angélica Cordero, had owned real estate until recently and lost it in a foreclosure process because they could no longer afford to pay the mortgage. Six other renters had also previously owned real estate but consciously decided to move to Casa Maravilla, a residential building in Pilsen designated for people aged 55 and above. Casa Maravilla is not only a senior residence, but was designed as an integrated institution, containing both apartments (73 units of different sizes, both for singles and couples) and a center for seniors. It was founded as a collaborative project between Alivio Medical Center, a privately-run health-care institution opened in 1988, the Resurrection Project (a non-profit church-based organization in Pilsen, seeking to improve the living conditions of the Latino community by building affordable homes in the area) and the City of Chicago. 46 The idea was to create a space for the older members of Pilsen’s (predominantly Mexican) population providing both subsidized housing and daily activities. Alivio Medical Center owned the land, Resurrection Project suggested the project and the City of Chicago agreed to participate in the financing. This resulted in a partnership where Resurrection Project built the building and maintains it, Alivio Medical Center provides the management and staff and the City of Chicago is responsible for the systems, providing the computer system, meal services, a fitness program and a small budget for computer classes. People living in Casa Maravilla were attracted both by the comparatively cheap rents and the prospect of having a social space in the adjoining senior center where they are able to participate in various activities.

Religious spaces: getting involved in Chicago’s Spanish speaking parishes For many Mexicanskath church and religion take a central position in life and my correspondents are no exception in that respect. Despite the large number of Christian denominations existing in the United States and the relatively high number of Born Again Christians or Evangelicals among Latinos living in the United States, 47 my correspondents have almost exclusively maintained their

46 | Information on Casa Maravilla is based on an interview with the senior center’s director Sue Vega (04.06.2011), and informal conversations with staff at the center. 47 | According to a report published by the Pew Hispanic Center, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center, more than two-thirds (68 percent) of Hispanics living in the United States are Catholics, 24 percent belong to some Protestant denomination (primarily born again and evangelical protestants)

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Catholic faith. 48 Most of them go to mass once a week or more (see table 5.13) and some are also involved in further church-based activities like prayer groups, catechism lessons or assisting during mass. Their comparatively active religious involvement is characteristic of many Mexicans living in the United States. This is reflected in the fact that numerous churches clearly address and court Latino parishioners. It is, for instance, striking how many Catholic churches in Chicago offer church services in Spanish. Depending on the neighborhood, Polish is also a language masses are often held in, but next to English, Spanish clearly dominates the field. This corresponds with a general trend in the United States, where, as the Pew Hispanic Center observed in 2007, “the growth of the Hispanic population is leading to the emergence of Latino-oriented churches” (Center, et al. 2007: 1). As the sociologist David Fitzgerald points out, the Mexican Church takes an active part in this development since it often sends priests to the U.S. to minister to the Spanish speaking population, thereby promoting a kind of “soft nationalism” (Fitzgerald 2009: 96). Table 5.13: Denomination and church attendance, n = 37 Yes

No

Mean (%)

Catholic denomination

37

0

100%

Church attendance at least once a weak

24

13

64,9%

In Logan Square the Parish of Nuestra Señora de Gracia has two church services in Spanish on Sundays and one in English. At St. Aloysius Church, a formerly German Parish, Father Nick also preaches in Spanish twice every Sunday (and twice in English) and St. Sylvester church at the southern border of the neighborhood offers Spanish services as well. At all three churches the pastors do not speak Spanish as their mother tongue but with quite an obvious American accent, which does not diminish their esteem among the parishioners. In Pilsen and Little Village, Spanish sometimes even outweighs English as language for mass, unsurprisingly so because the population in these two neighborhoods is well above 80 percent Spanish speaking. The churches are not only clearly geared toward Latino parishioners when it comes to languages. Since Latinos in Chicago represent an important Catholic base the churches heavily rely on, Latinos in general not only being one of the and eight percent consider themselves atheists or agnostics (Pew Hispanic Center 2007: 6). 48 | Mexico is the country with the second-largest Catholic population in the world. In 2010, 85 percent of the population were Catholic (Pew Research Religion and Public Life Project 2013).

The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds

most religious groups in the U.S. (Mora 2012: 4) but also one of the most Catholic (Murillo 2009: 138), 49 many parishes have also adjusted to the Mexican population by focusing on Mexican religious holidays such as the Fiesta de Guadalupe on December 12th, the highest religious holiday in Mexico. At St. Aloysius Church, for instance, all stages of this holiday are celebrated, beginning with a novena (an evening mass) on December 3rd. Frequently, a padre from Mexico comes for the celebration of the Fiesta de Guadalupe and joins the mañanitas, the morning celebrations on December 12th. At various churches, Mexican church members have formed guadalupano groups who organize the festivities and arrange fundraising activities after the Sunday service several times a year, usually selling homemade food like tamales, quesadillas and tacos, to cover the costs. The guadalupanos at St. Aloysius have by this means even collected money to bring a figure of the virgin of Guadalupe from Mexico, which is adorned and worshipped at this special occasion. Guadalupe Societies that exist all over the U.S., however, do not only organize traditional Mexican festivities but also related U.S. American holidays. Murillo, who has examined a parish in Idaho where the guadalupanos prepared tamales for the Fourth of July celebrations, interprets such activities as proof for the emergence of a complex “Mexican and Mexican American transnational Catholicism” (Murillo 2009: 139).

Political spaces: civic engagement and political participation In her article on Mexican Catholicism in the United States, Cristina Mora observes that religious involvement among first-generation Mexican parishioners in the U.S. often serves to foster civic engagement and political participation in general, because prayer groups provide a context for learning the skills and scripts of civic engagement and the churches have links with secular organizations where those skills learned can be applied (Mora 2012). For the people involved in this study, the connection between church involvement on the one hand and civic engagement and political action on the other hand is hard to confirm. Although many of my correspondents displayed a high degree of religious activity – such as attending mass regularly or going to prayer groups – rather few of them took part in volunteering or political action in one way or another. This was despite the fact that Chicago, or rather certain neighborhoods in Chicago, especially Pilsen, have a long history of Latino community organizing. Institutions such as the Alivio Medical Center, Universidad Popular and the Resurrection Project are all examples of how this particular form of civic engagement in Pilsen has lead to the emergence of successful and influential organizations aimed at improving the situation of Latinos in the neighbor49 | According to a survey the Pew Research Center conducted in 2006, only 22 percent of Whites and four percent of Blacks identified as Catholic, while 68 percent of the Hispanics said their faith was catholic (Pew Hispanic Center 2007: 7).

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hood. The people from these organizations I met, however, mostly belonged to a somewhat younger generation. When related to the broader picture and compared with overall trends and changes in American society, the fairly low level of civic engagement among my correspondents corresponds to a steep decline in engagement in political and civic organizations in general, which Robert Putnam observed in 2000 (Putnam 2000: 46f., 63f.). Regarding Hispanics, the Pew Hispanic Center has, however, found a diverging trend and reported a high rate of civic engagement in 2004 (Pew Hispanic Center and Kaiser Family Foundation 2004: 18f.). For the people included in this study, the truth seems to lie somewhere in the middle between Putnam’s findings and the Pew Hispanic Center’s survey results. Volunteering and political participation may not be pursued by the majority, but there certainly are people who engage in these kinds of activities. Luz Rivera for instance, who worked as a parents’ counselor at an elementary school in Logan Square, organized various initiatives at the school as a volunteer. She had, among other things, created a school library, which was open every Friday. It provided a space for parents to, besides borrowing books, mingle, chat and support to each other. Ricardo and Adriana Ávila, to another example of civic engagement, had taken up a volunteer activity some months ago and were teaching a workshop on health issues every second Saturday at Cara Maravilla. Ricardo, moreover, has rallied for local politicians for many years and now attends the meetings of a Little Village organization working to advance the rights of immigrants in the United States. Mexican hometown associations in Chicago constitute another platform for volunteering and political participation. The focus of their work is not so much on the situation of Latinos in Chicago but on developing projects for one’s respective home region and building networks between the home region in Mexico and Chicago. Very prominent in Chicago in that respect is Casa Michoacán, which in turn belongs to the Federación de Clubes Michoacános en Illinois (FEDECMI). The Chicago branch of the Zacatecan hometown association, Federación de Clubes Unidos Zacatecanos en Illinois y del Medio Oeste, also has numerous active members and publishes a quarterly magazine on Zacatecan matters in the Midwest. Mónica, one of my correspondents who coedits the magazine, enthusiastically devotes much of her time to this task and has been active in the organization for decades. Political interest and action is not only expressed in civic engagement but also in what Robert Putnam in his analysis of disintegrating social structures in U.S. American society calls “the most common act of democratic citizenship” (Putnam 2000: 31), people’s electoral participation. Almost all of my informants included in the structured interviews who had U.S. citizenship also voted in the U.S. elections (see table 5.14). Most people regarded it as their civic duty to cast their vote and did not pursue any explicit political aims by par-

The people in this study: characteristics, backgrounds and lifeworlds

ticipating in the elections. Gloria Sapien, however, became a citizen in 2008 especially “para poder votar para mi Obama.”50 The rate of people voting in the Mexican elections, by contrast, was very low (see table 5.14). This can partly be attributed to the fact that most of my correspondents had relinquished and not regained Mexican citizenship. However, of the eight people who had remained Mexican citizens, only three said they participated in the Mexican elections. The others did not vote in Mexico because they either did not know that it was possible to cast a vote from the United States or lacked detailed knowledge about Mexican politics and did not feel prepared enough to vote. Table 5.14: Voting behavior and membership in associations, n = 37 Yes Voting in the U.S. Voting in Mexico Membership in associations

No

Mean (%)

28

9

75,7%

3

34

8,1%

13

24

35,1%

Regarding the local level of politics, it is interesting that Mexicans have recently started to appear in city politics. When I was conducting my research in 2011, Gery Chico, a Chicago lawyer who had a Mexican-American father, was running for mayor. He was eventually defeated by Rahm Emanuel, but interestingly, during the election campaign his Mexican heritage strongly defined his label – not least because Chico used it to address the Mexican communities – and his candidacy was vividly discussed in the Mexican community. Another example of a high-ranking local politician of Mexican origin is Luciana Zuniga, whose mother Luciana I got acquainted with during my fieldwork. Luciana Zuniga served as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives for ten years before being elected City Clerk of Chicago in 2011.

Leisure activities The previous remarks on civic engagement have already alluded to what kinds of activities people pursued when they were not involved in church activities, did not work and did not spend time with their spouses, children or grandchildren. Although family time took a central place in people’s ideal versions of how they wanted to spend their days, most people, as illustrated in this chapter, did in fact not live in an extended family and hence had time for leisure activities. Among the activities people devoted their free time to, church work as well as, to a minor degree, volunteering figured prominently. Besides, a considerable number of people also participated in regular meetings and activities 50 | Interview Gloria Sapien, 28.06.2011.

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organized by senior clubs or specialized organizations such as folkloric dance clubs. About 35 percent of the people included in the structured interviews were members in other associations besides the church. While participating in specialized organizations was rather unusual‚ many of my correspondents were senior club members and frequently joined the club meetings. Harrison Park Senior Club was one of those.

5.3 E pilogue – four scenes , four parts of a mosaic 5.3.1 The routines of Harrison Park Harrison Park is located in the middle of buzzing Pilsen, on “la dieciocho”, 18th street. It lies adjacent to the National Museum of Mexican Art and there is usually a steady stream of tourists passing by. Taking the bus south from Logan Square on Damen Ave and getting off at 18th street, the first thing that catches the eye is a big park. There are always kids playing soccer or basketball there, and families having picnic at the side. The park building itself: one of these beautiful red brick field houses, very typical of Chicago. In front of Harrison Park, there is usually at least one salesman pushing a cart selling paletas, nieve, fresh mango slices and other Mexican food, and most times someone will sit outside the building consuming one of these products. Harrison Park offers a lot of different programs and sports, ranging from all kinds of sports classes for little kids to activities for seniors. Officially, the Harrison Park Senior Club – which has been around for a few decades – meets twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sometimes, Chris, the senior club coordinator who is a second-generation Hispanic lady, offers some kind of handicraft activity (at one occasion there was a group of women making pottery before Easter) or someone from another institution will come and talk about issues concerning seniors. Most of the time, however, the the people gathering there simply find their place at one of the tables in the two rooms and enjoy themselves chatting, playing lotería (the women) or cards (the men) and eating lunch at midday. On my first day at Harrison Park, I noticed the central rule of the game there: a divide between the tables. In the main room, three long tables were set up next to each other in a parallel position, with a few meters distance between them. What struck me in the beginning before I had any further insights and knowledge about the structures and informal rules of the senior club, were the fragments of English emerging from the table on the left among the predominant buzz of Spanish in the room. The table with the English speakers was also the one where board games (which I later identified as lotería boards) were missing. Although all the seniors attending the club meetings at Harrison Park identified as Mexican, there was a group of persons who were second-

Epilogue – four scenes, four par ts of a mosaic

generation immigrants or had their ancestry in Texas and considered English their native language. In contrast to this group, who usually spent the time chatting or playing cards, the other two thirds of the seniors joining the gatherings were first generation Mexicans migrants who came to the U.S. some decades ago. The two groups remained divided by an invisible but very clear demarcation line, the English-speaking ladies playing their card games and the Spanish speakers dedicating themselves wholeheartedly to lotería. Only rarely did I see anyone seating herself at a different table than the usual one. Everyone had a more or less fixed position at Harrison Park, an expression of the group dynamics.

Pambazos and the Levy Senior Center Pambazos look similar to sandwiches, but this impression, Lucy says, is utterly misleading. The similarity rests upon the fact that a bread bun actually does form the basis of a pambazo, but what is inside cannot possibly be compared to the ingredients of a regular sandwich. Crucial to a pambazo is the red pepper sauce, usually of the picoso, hot, kind, but if you are so inclined you can certainly order a milder version. The pambazo bread is dipped in the red pepper sauce, soaked half through, and then filled with potatoes and chorizo or other ingredients. According to Lucy, who is originally from Mexico City and went north with her daughter in the 1960s, pambazo is the most important dish of the capital, if not of the entire country, and Lucy loves it dearly. P-A-M-B-A-Z-O, she stretches every syllable and entertains everyone who is gathered at the small Mexican restaurant with stories about her favorite food, explaining its history and how to make it the right way. She had been appalled and not believed her ears when I had confessed earlier that I had never tasted pambazos during my stay in Mexico City. I had clearly missed out on the most essential thing to do in the capital. This shortcoming was to be remedied as soon as possible and so Lucy suggested meeting at this particular place in the west of Chicago because the particular Mexican restaurant located there is among the few places in the city to sell pambazos. Lucy therefore frequents the place on a regular basis and has taken today’s public holiday as an occasion to undertake a little excursion there. Apart from me and my partner, there are Lucy, Javier and Elisa convened around the table. The three friends met at Chicago’s Levy Senior Center in Logan Square a few years ago. The Center, just like its equivalents in other parts of town, offers an affordable lunch and a wide range of activities for seniors. Among other things, there is a gymnasium where classes in zumba, yoga and pilates take place. Most importantly, however, Levy Senior Center constitutes a social space, where people can find company and share their time. In contrast to Casa Maravilla or Harrison Park, Levy Senior Center does not have a predominant-

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ly Mexican target group. Although it is located in an area with a fairly large Hispanic population, the part of the neighborhood where Levy Senior Center has been providing activities and meals for the elderly for some decades bears an evident Polish imprint. Thus, Lucy, Elisa and Javier represent part of the Mexican minority at the institution and seek each other’s company. While Lucy spends almost every day at the center, Elisa comes occasionally and Javier still works as a gardener in the summer and only attends the center’s activities during wintertime. However, when all the three of them happen to be at the center, you will always find them at the same table, ‘their’ table, chatting about their families, their lives in Mexico and the struggles and pleasures of everyday life.

5.3.3 Karaoke at Casa Maravilla The sun is burning mercilessly when I drive my black Volvo, the air conditioning of which ceased to work a long time ago, through the streets of Pilsen on a hot summer day in June. Luckily, I find a parking spot right in front of Casa Maravilla, hurry to get in and find relief in the cooled down lobby. Casa Maravilla’s lobby is where the reception desk is situated and thus the place where I spent a considerable amount of time during my fieldwork. Usually there is not only the reception desk, but behind the desk sits Juán Carlos, greeting everyone with a smile. This is where everyone passes and this is also where people stay and talk, telling Juán Carlos about their daily worries, asking for advice in matters of Social Security, medical insurance or unemployment benefits. And Juán Carlos will always listen and give you an understanding smile. Juán Carlos, officially Casa Maravilla’s vice director, is actually employed at the center as a health counselor, but he spends most of his working time at the reception since the center is understaffed. On this particular Tuesday, I arrive early, looking forward to having a chat with Juán Carlos before meeting up with some of the building’s residents. The reception desk, however, is abandoned, and Juán Carlos, I learn, has a meeting. I therefore proceed further inside, hoping to find some of my acquaintances in the communal area. As it is shortly after lunchtime, my guess is that some people will still be sitting around drinking their coffee. Indeed quite a few lunch guests are still gathered there, though not out of pure coincidence. Already before entering the room I notice a difference from the usual scenario. Instead of hearing just a murmur of voices coming from the inside, there is loud music blasting from behind the door, Mexican music without a doubt. The dancing lessons take place on Saturdays and can hardly explain this party-like atmosphere. Besides, I hear people singing along to the music, a fact that does not fit the dancing theme either. When I open the door, I see a karaoke machine placed in the middle of the room, a circle of chairs around it, a song text pro-

Epilogue – four scenes, four par ts of a mosaic

jected onto the wall and next to the machine with a microphone in his hand, Miguel, enthusiastically belting out a song. Whenever the refrain starts, all the others join in the singing. As it turns out, these karaoke sessions take place twice a month and are organized by Miguel and Luís. Luís, born in Guatemala, owns the equipment and Miguel, who is originally from Coahuila, Mexico, organizes the karaoke sessions just for the fun of it. He loves to sing himself, he loves Mexican music and he only works part time. In his free time, he tours several senior centers with Luís and the karaoke machine – a perfect opportunity to sing, meet people and have some fun, Luís says. Most people participate in the event for similar reaons: to spend time together and reminisce about the old times in Mexico by singing the old tunes.

5.3.4 The ladies gathering at Dvorak Park Every Tuesday and Thursday, the stage is transformed into a buffet. Everyone contributes something: quesadillas, tamales, fruit, biscuits, cake. This happens at 10am, when the exercises are finished at Dvorak Park. Almost all the ladies wear bright red T-Shirts, the logo of the Park printed on them. In contrast to Harrison Park, Dvorak Park Senior Club has come to be an exclusively female gathering space. Twice a week, around 30 women, all of them Mexican, start their day with an hour of exercising at the Park, guided by an official sports instructor, who is paid by the Park. For some of the women, this hour of common exercising is the only time of the week where they have official permission from their husbands to leave home alone. In these cases, the activities following the exercises – the shared breakfast and lunch, the chatting, the lotería and rummicub playing – are kept a secret at home. The husbands consider exercises as a necessary activity that benefits their wives’ health, whereas a social get together is seen as superfluous, stealing time that could be devoted to the household and the family. The majority of the ladies regularly attending the senior club, however, have a different background. There is Andrea Velarde, a former seamstress, whose arthritis no longer allows her to work many hours. There is Sofía, who worries about her sick husband and is so proud of her son, making a great effort to improve her English in order to be able to speak with her American daughter in law. There is Dulce, who still displays a kind of teenage love for her husband. He in turn, a politically very outspoken gentleman who has been active in the leftist Mexican movement of Chicago, spends his time building furniture for Dulce with her name carved into them, shelves where she can put her collection of angels and her beloved plants. And there is Mariana, who has lived in Pilsen for almost her entire time in the U.S. and still attends the club although she has recently moved to the suburbs.

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Just like her, the biggest part of the club’s attendants calls Pilsen or Little Village their home or has at least done so for the better part of their lives in Chicago. Quite a few live within walking distance from Dvorak Park and enjoy the opportunity of combining healthy exercising with pleasant socializing. Only few of the ladies have previously known each other or are related through family; Dvorak Park is where they met. Like at Harrison Park, lotería is serious business at Dvorak Park. As soon as the post-sports coffee break is over, the ladies find their seat at the table (just as at Harrison Park, everyone here, too, has her specific place) and the caller starts calling the cards. Only a few people at the far end of the table refuse to join in the lotería playing and devote the park hours to rummicub instead. Although in general everyone at the senior club gets along well, certain frictions between the lotería section and the less numerous rummicub section sometimes emerge when the Rummicubbers dare to chat while they are playing. Since lotería playing is serious business, talking is not allowed. Several times a year, the club routine is swirled up by special events. Pilsen’s alderman knows how to court his potential voters and usually invites the senior club on an outing once a year. He then sends his secretary to the Park, a handsome gentleman in his late 40s, who knows enough Spanish to make an impression and to communicate the basic information (time, place and activity) of the trip. In 2011, the event consisted of a boat tour on the Chicago River, and the excitement was palpable weeks in advance.

6. Expectations: envisaging a place for the future and weighing the idea of return

Following the assumption that most migrants from Mexico cross the border to the United States because they seek better income opportunities, retirement as the exit from working life represents a stage in life where the possibility of return comes into clearer focus. Most Mexicans who take the decision of heading north think of a later return to Mexico as self-evident when migrating (Reyes 1997: 11). This premise of eventually returning to one’s home country is reflected in large parts of the migration literature. The anthropologist George Gmelch referred to return migration as the “natural completion of the migration cycle’’ (Gmelch 1992: 284f.). All of my correspondents, too, said that they, when coming to the U.S., did not imagine that they would stay in Chicago for such a long time. Although not all of them had a clear-cut idea how long they would stay, everyone, when crossing the border some decades ago, anticipated to return to Mexico some day.1 When he got to Chicago in 1969, Rafaél recalls “la idea de nosotros era de volver a México. […] Yo que no vení más por 400 dólares.”2 Gerardo confirms this notion: “Siempre pensamos esto. ‘Yo nada más voy a estar aquí un tiempo y me voy para México.’”3 Despite these initial intentions, my correspondents had evidently not left the city by the time I met them. Although the idea of going back originally constituted an inherent part of their migration plans, they had not realized it so far. There was thus an apparent discrepancy between their 1 | Of the 37 people I conducted structured interviews with, 26 stated that they had intended to go back to Mexico after a few months to a few years. The rest had been uncertain about the intended length of stay but also intended to return some day. This clear tendency of intended return upon migration was mirrored by the rest of my sample. 2 | Interview Rafaél López, 30.11.2011. 3 | Interview Gerardo Moya, 11.02.2011.

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initial aspirations and their current situation. This divergence constituted a puzzle requiring further investigation. What happened to the migrants’ idea of return? Did they still intend to move back to Mexico? Had they abandoned the original plan and shifted their residence to Chicago for good? Or had they modified it, turning a prospective return into a back-and-forth movement at some point of their lives? If so, why had their plans changed? Besides identifying my correspondents’ return intentions, I sought to comprehend how they motivated their plans and made sense of them. What factors, in other words, account for the directions people’s migration projects have taken? And what does this tell us about their migration experiences in general? It should be pointed out at this stage that my sample is not representative of the return considerations of all Mexicans who migrated to Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s since it does not capture the ones who had already gone back to Mexico earlier in life. My correspondents’ return considerations certainly differ from the intentions of those who had returned at an earlier stage of their lives. As I have discussed in chapter 2.2, return migration upon retirement constitutes a particular case for a number of reasons: First, work, in most cases the factor originally motivating migration, ceases to play a central role when people retire. Second, people who have stayed in Chicago until retirement have usually spent 30 to 40 years in the U.S. and are more likely to have reconfigured their relationships and attachments to both places more fundamentally than migrants returning after a shorter period of time. And third, elderly migrants might take factors into account that tend play a less important role at a younger age, such as health issues and medical care. I do assume, however, that my sample is fairly representative of Mexican migrants in Chicago who have been living in Chicago since the 1960s to 1980s and are close to or past retirement (see chapter 3.2). In this chapter, I set out to first describe where those 66 people from Mexico, who have been living in Chicago for some decades and whose worlds I was able to catch a glimpse of over the course of one year, intend to live in the near future, after their retirement (6.1). Second, I will systematically survey what factors they express in order to justify and make sense of their decisions. Based on interview and questionnaire data, I distill categories of reasons my respondents offered when discussing their residence considerations. I will present those reasons as descriptive statistics. I then analyze systematic relations between the reasons offered and the stated residence intention (6.2). I first use logistic regression analysis in order to estimate if an emphasis on certain categories of reasons will systematically increase the likelihood of one residence decision over the other. In a second analysis, I then employ a set theoretic logic by conducting a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Doing so can reveal patterns in the data as to whether there are combinations of criteria jointly acting as a sufficient or necessary condition for the stated return intentions.

Residence intentions identified: the array of decision outcomes

Third, in order to deepen and expand my understanding of the reasons my correspondents gave for their residence intentions, I subject my data to an in-depth qualitative analysis (6.3). It is important to delve into the stories revealing the contexts and concepts the migrants’ considerations concerning the future are embedded in. For every residence intention, I will choose one case that illustrates the line of reasoning of one of my correspondents, describe and analyze these cases in depth, including comparative parts. Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches will allow for both identifying possible patterns in the reasons for future residence intentions and making sense of these patterns by contextualizing them and identifying underlying meanings and linkages.

6.1

R esidence intentions identified : the arr ay of decision outcomes

Over the course of my research, it quickly became clear that the majority of my correspondents did no longer entertain the idea of completely returning to Mexico. What was once taken for given had apparently changed over the course of the years and decades. Table 6.1: Intended future places of residence, n = 66 Intended residence

Frequency

Percentage

8

12.1%

Return

Mexico

Nonreturn

Chicago

29

Chicago and Mexico

20

58

43.9% 30.3%

Other Chicago& U.S.

4

Mexico& U.S.

1

1.5%

No plans

4

6.1%

Total

87.9%

9

66

6.1%

13.7%

100%

Instead of going back to Mexico, almost half of the people involved in this study seek to stay in Chicago (see table 6.1). This means that they envision Chicago to be the center of their life for a variety of reasons, which include both arguments for Chicago and against Mexico. Another third of the sample pursues the idea of going back and forth between Mexico and Chicago. This category of residence intentions subsumes various plans for the future, which all include both Mexico and Chicago as places of residence. However, while some of the migrants seek to maintain their main basis in Chicago and just spend a few months (often the cold win-

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ter) in Mexico, others aspire to do it exactly the other way around, living most of the year in Mexico and only coming back to Chicago for a few months every year. Still others remain vague about how exactly they intend to split their time between the two countries. As to the reasons the commuters referred to when reflecting about where they intended to live in the future, the aspects accounting for people’s orientations were always a mix of factors in favor of Chicago/ against Mexico and in favor of Mexico/ against Chicago. Only slightly more than 10 percent, eight people, plan to move back to Mexico for good. The motive behind seeking a future in Mexico is not always a decision for Mexico, but sometimes also a decision against Chicago. The remaining 14 percent have yet different residence intentions. Among those with different plans, four individuals seek to reside in Chicago and some other place in the United States, and one person wants to commute between Mexico and a U.S. city close to the Mexican border. Four people had not made specific plans yet, either because a third potential place was involved in their considerations or because the different factors they considered contradicted each other and impeded a final resoluation. Looking at these numbers from a different angle, adding up the individuals who seek to include Mexico (returning either completely or partially) or Chicago (staying there completely or partially) in their future plans, reveals an interesting trend as well: Roughly 80 percent of my correspondents seek to involve Chicago in their residence plans, while only slightly more than 40 percent intend to involve Mexico (see table 6.2). 4 Table 6.2: Intended future place of residence, Chicago and Mexico included, n=66 Intended residence

Frequency

Percentage

Chicago included

53

80,3%

Mexico included

29

43,9%

These tendencies for the most part do not change significantly when distinguishing along gender lines (see table 6.3). 80 percent of both women and men intend to include Chicago in their residence intentions, while 52 percent of men intend to include Mexico in their residence intentions as compared to 39 percent of women. This difference in means is not statistically significant (using a 4 | Except for the category ‘no plans’, the two merged categories encompass all residence intentions. The merged category [Mexico included] comprises all future plans involving Mexico, that is [return to Mexico], [Mexico& Chicago], and [Mexico& U.S.]. Correspondingly [Chicago included] encompasses [staying in Chicago], [Chicago& Mexico and [Chicago& U.S.].

Residence intentions identified: the array of decision outcomes

two-sample t-test). Similarly, permanent return represents a rare consideration among both men and women (see table 6.3). Table 6.3: Intended future places of residence and gender differences Intended residence

Women, n = 41

Men, n = 25

Frequency

Percentage

Frequency

Percentage

Mexico

6

14.6%

2

8%

Chicago

22

53.7%

7

28%

Chicago and Mexico

9

22.0%

11

44%

Other

Chicago & U.S.

2

Mexico & U.S. No plans Total

4

4.9% 9.7%

2

1

2.4%

0

0%

1

2.4%

3

12%

41

100%

5

25

8%

20%

100%

The only statistically significant difference in means between men and women concerns the intention to exclusively stay in Chicago (53 precent of women versus 28 percent of the men). This is noteworthy and ties in with previous research highlighting women’s intentions to care for grandchildren who live at the current place of residence (Pauli, et al. 2013: 42, 51). However, as it is not my primary aim to explore how and why return considerations are gender specific, I will in the following largely refrain from systematically distinguishing between men and women. Regarding the original puzzle of return intentions introduced in the conceptual framework (chapter 2.4), people’s future plans today can thus be specified and largely subsumed under the category of non-return, as 88 percent of my correspondents do not plan to return to Mexico for good (see figure 6.1). These tendencies in residence considerations concur with numbers reported by earlier research addressing return intentions upon retirement for different migration contexts. In his quantitative study on intended retirement location choices of formerly undocumented Mexicans, Aguilera found that the majority (62 percent) planned to retire in the United States, whereas only 38 percent sought to return to Mexico (Aguilera 2004: 350).5

5 | It is important to note that Aguilera’s study differs in that he investigated the issue of returning upon retirement for individuals of all ages who considered a possible return upon their – in some cases quite distant – retirement.

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Figure 6.1: The puzzle of return intentions: from return to non-return

Original intention of return

time of migration (1960s to 1980s)

?

Present intention of non-return

today

Also Bolzman, Fibbi and Vial conclude that most Italian and Spanish migrants living in Switzerland and approaching retirement opt for staying in Switzerland entirely or at least part of the year (Bolzman, et al. 2006: 1371f.). Both Hunter’s and Coulon and Wolff’s results mirror this finding for migrants in France in general on the one hand, and for North and West African migrants in France in particular on the other, with 60 percent of the migrants preferring to remain in France, 25 percent choosing the ‘va-et-vient’ option and merely six percent intending to go back to their home country (Coulon and Wolff 2005: 7; Hunter 2011: 180). What accounts for these largely changed return intentions and the distribution of preferences? Do people have comparable motives, or even patterns of combined motives, inducing them to opt for one place or the other? Are the decision processes steered by conflicting motives and if so, how do the migrants resolve such conflicts and reach a resolution? How do they themselves make sense of the fact that their visions for the future diverge from their initial intentions? What concepts do they invoke, what discourses do they refer to? In other words, what does the blackbox between the original intention of return upon migration and people’s considerations today contain? In order to fully grasp the issue of altered return considerations in this chapter, I want to approach the questions stated above from different methodological angels. I will start by applying a quantitative perspective informed by sociological, demographic and economic approaches to the study of return migration and complement this analysis by a qualitative approach focusing on the interpretation of individual cases, people’s narratives and the identification of central concepts and linkages between them.

Factors influencing return considerations upon retirement

6.2 F actors influencing re turn consider ations upon re tirement For both the quantitative and the qualitative analysis of the motives influencing the migrants’ future plans, the first step was to operationalize the information from both the interviews and the questionnaires and to identify categories of stated reasons which, to different extents and possibly in various combinations, bear a systematic relation to the residence plans. As discussed in chapter 2.2.4, I focus on my correspondents’ own reflections on their future place of residence. Since particularly intentions of return represent people’s conscious plans and desires, I was interested in the migrants’ own perceptions and reasoning, revealing how they assess their current situation and migratory experiences. The categories of reasons that I constructed from the interview and questionnaire data are therefore not inferred from theories and developed deductively, but distilled from my correspondents’ explanatory discourses, based on statements they made thinking about where they were going to live in the future. Following Jeffrey and Murison’s suggestion (2011: 136), I chose to focus my analysis on these subjective perspectives and people’s articulated plans and to not include external context variables (such as health or legal status) that my interview partners did not refer to (for similar approaches see Christou 2013; Hunter 2011; Moran-Taylor and Menjívar 2005; Olsson 2013). However, when exploring the individual cases, I will contextualize the explanatory discourses (chapter 6.4). At a later stage of the study, when analyzing the contexts of return considerations, external data will play a more prominent role. In coding my interview data, I developed twelve categories reflecting the reasons my informants stated when they talked about their decision to remigrate or not. Based on the literature and the first open and semistructured interviews I had conducted, I identified several aspects that might influence peoples’ decisions on their future places of residence: Climate, friends, family, economic reasons, feeling at ease, security, and health. Both in my semistructured interviews and in the questionnaire for my structured interviews I explored these factors in depth and included the question “For what reasons do you plan to live in [given place]”? The answers to this question served as a basis to develop further categories and by doing so thoroughly refine and extend the seven presupposed factors. The coding process was influenced by my prior conceptual scaffolding, taking into account the transnational as well as the assimilationist perspective and bearing in mind the factors identified in studies on return migration. Examining the reasons my correspondents expressed when referring to their future place of residence in the end yielded the following twelve categories:

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Social ties in Chicago [Chicago social]6 Welfare system U.S. [Chicago system] Attachment to Chicago [Chicago attachment] Security situation in Mexico [Mexico security] Detachment from Mexico [Detachment Mexico] Economic advantages Mexico [Mexico economic] Social ties in Mexico [Mexico social] Attachment to Mexico [Mexico attachment] Property in Mexico [Mexico property] Chicago climate [Chicago climate Detachment from Chicago [Chicago detachment] Conflicting ideas among spouses [Conflict spouses]

In most cases, my correspondents did not just give one reason motivating their residence intention but several ones. The total number of reasons given is 185, the average number stated by one person 2.8.7 It is noteworthy that the twelve categories I identified as influencing return did not only include reasons for choosing one residence alternative but also reasons against choosing the other one. People wanting to remain in Chicago might for instance base this intention on both positive aspects tying them to Chicago, such as close family members residing in the city, and negative factors repelling them from Mexico, such as concerns about the security situation there. People seeking to commute between the two places might want to do so not necessarily because of reasons drawing them to Mexico but because of the severe winter climate in Chicago. It is important to note that I have coded the statements of my correspodents so that they do not include contradictions. Some categories are therefore mutually exclusive. People who plan to stay in Chicago, for example, do not mention reasons for returning to Mexico. In this respect it is helpful to cluster the identified categories and distinguish between (1) reasons given for residence intentions that include Chicago (both for Chicago and against Mexico) and (2) motives given for residence intentions that include Mexico (both for Mexico and against Chicago). These clusters are mutually exclusive, except for people who plan to go back and forth. Only one category – conflict among spouses – has unclear implications with regard to residence intention (see table 6.4). My correspondents referred to the factors subsumed under those twelve categories as impacting their future plans to various degrees and in various combinations. In the following paragraph, I will briefly elaborate on each of the twelve categories in order to clarify what is subsumed under them. 6 | The abbreviations later used in the analysis are indicated in brackets. 7 | This number refers to the reasons given in the structured interviews as well as in the semi-structured interviews.

Factors influencing return considerations upon retirement

Table 6.4: Categories of reasons stated in relation to return intentions Residence intention includes Chicago

Residence intention includes Mexico

For Chicago

Against Mexico

For Mexico

Against Chicago

Social ties

Security situation

Economic advantages

Climate

Welfare system

Emotional detachment

Social ties

Emotional detachment

Emotional attachment

Unclear implications Conflict among spouses

Emotional attachment Property

6.2.1 Reasons leading to a residence plan including Chicago Social ties in Chicago [Chicago social] The category of social ties in Chicago refers in most cases to people’s children, occasionally also their grandchildren. Many of my correspondents expressed their wish to stay close to their immediate family because they could not imagine a life without children and grandchildren and assumed that their children, too, appreciated their presence in Chicago. Although considerations of mutual support and care sometimes also played a role in that respect (people looking after their grandchildren or counting on their children’s support at old age), most people stated emotional aspects as the main factor accounting for the importance of social ties. Apart from children, [Chicago social] also includes other relationships with family and friends, albeit to a lesser extent.8

Welfare system and institutional involvement U.S. [Chicago system] This category subsumes all the reasons my informants stated that relate to welfare benefits and institutional involvement in the United States. This might be welfare benefits like retirement benefits (Social Security) or health insurance for the elderly (Medicare), which a lot of people appreciate and wish to remain entitled to. People do not only stress the economic benefits, but their familiarity with how the system works.

8 | For an analysis of my correspondents’ social networks see chapter 8.

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Attachment to Chicago [Chicago attachment] Attachments are not necessarily tied to people,9 but can also be related to places or ways of life. People often referred to how they were attached to Chicago and related these feelings to the time they had spent in the city and the experiences they had had there, the process of adaptation they had gone through or simply their – individual – appreciation of and bonds with the city and the way of life there.

Security situation in Mexico [Mexico security] My correspondents frequently discussed how drug-related crimes and assassinations in Mexico had increased during recent years and how spending time in the country had become more and more dangerous. Some people felt that this also affected their relationship with Mexico, curbing their freedom of travel and making them feel unsafe while being in the country. Hence in some cases the security situation in Mexico also constituted one of the reasons why my correspondents dismissed the idea of (partly) moving back to Mexico.

Detachment from Mexico [Mexico detachment] As with the attachment mentioned for Chicago, also detachment from a place can occur. This, too, is not necessarily related to social factors. For some of my correspondents, becoming emotionally detached from Mexico was rather a question of growing apart over time. In this context, the time they had spent away from the country figured as a major explanatory motive.

6.2.2 Reasons leading to a residence plan including Mexico Economic advantages Mexico [Mexico economic] For some people the possibility of spending (part of) their post retirement life in Mexico constituted an attractive option not least because the cost of living is lower in Mexico than in the United States. “El dinero rinde más”10 and accordingly the same amount of money allows for a higher living standard in Mexico. This option is especially attractive for U.S. citizens since citizens (unlike permanent residents) are able to receive Social Security benefits even if they live outside the U.S.

Social ties in Mexico [Mexico social] Family members, in particular parents, still living in Mexico sometimes represented important bonds fueling the desire to spend at least part of the year 9 | This is covered by the category ‘social ties in Chicago’. 10 | Interview Angélica Cordero, 23.03.2011.

Factors influencing return considerations upon retirement

in Mexico. Mexico in that respect also serves as a projection surface for commonly stated longings for a more tightly knit family life and time shared with the extended family.

Attachment to Mexico [Mexico attachment] Feeling attached to Mexico (or rather to one’s home region, village or town there) is often linked to notions of roots and origin, fond memories of childhood and youth and holiday seasons spent in Mexico.

Property in Mexico [Mexico property] As a consequence of the original intention of return upon leaving Mexico, it is common to build a house in one’s home region or to send money and instruct relatives to do so (see also Lopez 2010; Pauli 2008). Other people buy houses. In both cases, owning a property in Mexico constitutes an opportunity as well as an obligation. It makes it easier to spend time in Mexico every now and then and to keep in touch but at the same time requires time, attention and investments.

Chicago climate [Chicago climate] Already at the very beginning of their time in the U.S., the Chicago winter had left a lasting impression on many of my interlocutors. Some were initially thrilled by the snow and ice, others appalled, but everyone was impressed. Regardless of people’s initial attitudes, however, when it comes to considering return after retirement the city’s climate is often mentioned as a motive for wanting to (partly) reside in Mexico. Especially when people have health issues, possibly related to old age, such as arthritis, they might seek to get away from the cold and spend the winter in a place warmer than Chicago.

Detachment from Chicago [Chicago detachment] Detachment from Chicago is frequently tied to negative experiences and problems people have gone through while living in Chicago. Examples might include the loss of a beloved person or experiences of being discriminated against, which are then associated with life in the city. Such negative incidents may cause alienation and the desire to move away from the place where they occurred.

6.2.3 Motives with unclear implications Conflicting ideas among spouses [Conflict spouses] In the case of couples, considerations regarding a future residence location usually affect both parts. Since the spouses do not always have the same intentions regarding their future place of residence, they sometimes postpone their deci-

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sion indefinitely. Alternatively, one partner might compromise and subordinate his or her actual wish to her/ his partner’s preferences. If spouses come from different regions in Mexico, they might choose to stay in Chicago because they would not be able to agree on where to settle in Mexico. A closer look at the factors the migrants referred to reveals that they differ in character: While some of them appear more pragmatic11 (e.g. considering welfare benefits, economic aspects, the climate, property, the security situation), others seem to rather reflect relational and affective aspects (social ties in Chicago and Mexico, attachments to Chicago and Mexico). Similar distinctions have been drawn in previous research studying return migration (see chapter 2.2). Salaff, for example, differentiates “relationship-based decisions” from “rational decisions” (Salaff 2013: 460), and Christou delineates pragmatic and emotional factors (Christou 2013: 190).

6.3

Q uantitative analysis

Using quantitative methods in an analysis of how elderly Mexicans living in Chicago decide on their future place of residence bears the potential to reveal basic inter-personal patterns among the stated reasons and outcomes.12 Rather than as a means to test existing theories on the motives and dynamics of return migration, I employ the statistical analysis in more of an exploratory way with the aim of looking for patterns in my interview data. This is reasonable particularly because I investigate patterns in statements – at this stage, I consciously exclude context factors that where not mentioned by my interview partners. In the following sections, I seek to analyze whether certain motives that my correspondents stated systematically impact their considerations, in other words, whether the twelve categories identified above are systematically linked to the decision outcomes. I do this in two steps. In the next section, I employ a probabilistic logic and investigate whether mentioning a certain category of reasons increases the likelihood of stating a particular residence intention. To this end I will conduct a regression analysis. In the subsequent section, I employ a

11 | I borrow the term ‘pragmatic factors’ from Anastasia Christou, who distinguished between pragmatic and emotional factors when investigating how elderly Greek migrants in Denmark think about a potential return to Greece (Christou 2013: 189). 12 | For approaches employing quantitative methods see e.g. Aguilera 2004; Bolzman, et al. 2006; Constant and Massey 2002; Jensen and Pedersen 2007; Yahirun 2009.

Quantitative analysis

set-theoretic logic and investigate whether certain sets of reasons can be identified as jointly necessary or sufficient conditions for a particular residence intention. In order to do so, I will conduct a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Applying both approaches – statistical analysis and Qualitative Comparative Analysis – allows for complementary insights and a more nuanced understanding of the reasons my correspondents offered and the complex reality of return migration in later life. Table 6.5: Frequency table, stated reasons for future residence Reason/ independent variable

Frequency

Percentage of total (66=100%)

Chicago social

41

62.0%

Chicago attachment

25

36.4%

Chicago climate

18

27.3%

Chicago system

16

24.2%

Mexico security

16

24.2%

Mexico social

15

22.7%

Mexico detachment

14

21.2%

Mexico attachment

13

19.7%

Conflict spouses

12

18.2%

Mexico economic

6

9.0%

Mexico property

6

9.1%

Chicago detachment

3

4.5%

185

6.3.1 Statistical analysis: identif ying systematic inter-personal patterns of reasoning The goal of applying a statistical perspective to the question of return is ultimately to determine whether any of the twelve categories of stated reasons (independent variables) has a statistically significant influence on the likelihood of stating one particular residence intention (outcome). I proceed in two steps: First, I will present descriptive statistics on all the variables involved in my analysis, including a preliminary contingency table. Second, I conduct a

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multivariate logistic regression in order to assess the statistical significance of some apparent patterns in the data derived from the descriptive statistics.13

Descriptive statistics A frequency table containing the twelve categories of reasons portrayed above reveals that some aspects were mentioned considerably more often than others (see table 6.5). Noteworthy in that respect are the variables ‘social ties in Chicago’, and ‘attachment to Chicago’, which 41 and 24 of my correspondents (62 and 36 percent) stated as influential for their residence intentions respectively. The Chicago climate (19, or 29 percent), the security situation in Mexico (16, or 24 percent) and the U.S. welfare system (16, or 24 percent) constitute references slightly less frequently mentioned. In a next step, I created a merged contingency table14 in order to explore the relations between independent and dependent variables and identify possible patterns affecting the outcome. The residence intentions constitute the dependent variables, the twelve categories motivating the intentions the independent variables. Table 6.6 indicates the respective frequency of the different residence intentions (dependent variables) of my correspondents. Table 6.6: Future residence intentions, n=66 Dependent variable

Frequency

Percentage

Mexico (return)

8

12.1%

Chicago

29

43.9%

Chicago and Mexico

20

30.3%

Chicago included

53

80.3%

Mexico included

29

43.9%

For the purposes of this analysis I have excluded the category [other], since it is internally heterogeneous and only applies to a small part of my sample (nine persons). The outcomes hence comprise the three residence intentions (1) [Chicago only], (2) [Mexico only], (3) [Mexico and Chicago], as well as the two merged categories (4) [Chicago included] (all residence intentions including 13 | For details on interpreting qualitative information by doing a multiple regression analysis see Wooldridge 2009. 14 | Including the contingency table for every combination of independent and dependent variable would yield a total of 60 contingency tables. I therefore subsume all the fields representing positive relationships between the variables (i.e. the fields where both dependent and independent variable apply/ are yes) in one table.

Quantitative analysis

Chicago) and (5) [Mexico included] (all residence intentions including Mexico) introduced above.15 I add the two merged categories in order to learn whether persons including Chicago in their residence plans (and persons including Mexico respectively) share similar motivations and in how far they differ in their motivations from the ones intending to stay exclusively in Chicago or return to Mexico. Note that outcomes (1)– (3) are mutually exclusive, whereas (4) and (5) overlap. The contingency table shows some interesting patterns between dependent and independent variables (see table 6.7). Out of the eight respondents that planned to return completely and reside in [Mexico only], three quarters stated they had attachment to Mexico (6). Slightly less than half stated social ties in Mexico and the Chicago climate (3). For the outcome [staying in Chicago], the most frequently stated factors were social ties in Chicago (21 out of 29, or 72 percent), attachment to Chicago (15, or 51.7 percent) and security in Mexico (11, or 38 percent). Those who seek to go back and forth between Chicago and Mexico overwhelmingly mention social ties in Chicago (17, or 85 percent), followed by social ties in Mexico (11, or 55 percent) and Chicago climate (11, or 55 percent) as reasons. While the table does not display this, it is interesting to note that out of the 20 persons who intend to move between Chicago and Mexico, roughly half (nine) stated that they have both social ties in Chicago and in Mexico. Looking at the merged outcomes, it becomes clear that people who include Chicago in their future residence intention most frequently (by some margin) state social ties in Chicago (39 out of 53, or 74 percent), followed by Chicago attachment (22, or 41.5 percent). This pattern roughly corresponds to the outcome [Chicago only]. For those who include Mexico in their residence intentions, the most frequently stated reasons were Mexico social ties (15 out of 29, or 52 percent), Mexico attachment (12, or 41.4 percent) and Chicago climate (14, or 48 percent). (Social ties in Chicago are actually the most frequently stated reason (17, or 59 percent) in this category, too, but exclusively by commuters.) These clusters reveal some interesting tendencies. Social ties and other attachments figure prominently in people’s consideration. People who intend to commute tend to have ties and attachments to both places. The Chicago climate, finally, appears to tip the balance in favor of Mexico. In order to present a further test for these observations (i.e. whether they are statistically significant), I subsequently ran a logistic regression linking the categories of reasons to the outcomes.

15 | The merged categories 4 and 5 also contain all cases from [Mexico& U.S.] and [Chicago& U.S.] (previously subsumed under [other]), while the variable [no plans] is completely discarded.

173

62% (41)

72% (21)

0%

85% (17)

73.6% (39)

58.6% (17)

70.7% (41)

Chicago (Staying)

Mexico (Returning)

Chicago and Mexico (back& forth)

Chicago included

Mexico included

Non-return

0%

51.7% (15)

37.9% (25)

0%

20.7% (6)

18.2% (12)

0%

37.9% (11)

24.2% (16)

0%

31% (9)

21.2% (14)

25% (2)

0%

9% (6)

Mexico economic

27.6% (16)

27.6% (8)

28.3% (15)

43.1% (25)

20.7% (6)

41.5% (22)

26.4% (14)

24.5% (13)

27.7% (12)

27.6% (16)

24.1% (14)

6.9% (2) 6.9% (2) 6.9% (2)

20.8% (11)

6.9% (4)

17.2% (5)

5.7% (3)

35% (7) 30% (6) 10% (2) 10% (2) 10% (2) 15% (3)

0%

27.6% (8)

24,2% (16)

Chicago Chicago Chicago Conflict Mexico Mexico social system attach. spouses security detach.

Complete sample

Intended residence

Motives

20.7% (12)

51.7% (15)

20.8% (11)

55% (11)

37.5% (3)

0%

22.7% (15)

Mexico social

Table 6.7: Merged contingency table future residence intentions and categories of stated reasons

12.5% (1)

3.4% (1)

9,1% (6)

12.1% (7)

41.4% (12)

8.6% (5)

10.3% (3)

9.4% (5) 5.7% (3)

25% (5) 15% (3)

75% (6)

0%

19.7% (13)

25.9% (15)

48.3% (14)

26.4% (14)

55% (11)

37.5% (3)

0%

27.3% (19)

n

n = 29

n = 53

n = 20

n=8

n = 29

1.7% (1) n =58

10.3% (3)

0%

0%

25% (2)

0%

4.5% (3) n = 66

Mexico Mexico Chicago Chicago attach. property climate detach.

174 E xpectations: envisaging a place for the future and weighing the idea of return

Quantitative analysis

Logistic regression The aim of applying analytical statistics is to add to the descriptive statistics and determine whether any of the stated reasons have a statistically significant effect on the outcome across my sample. By running a logistic regression for each of the possible outcomes (i.e. the dependent variables), I analyze whether the mentioning of individual categories of reasons systematically increases the likelihood of stating a particular residence intention, all else being equal. The independent and dependent variables remain the same as in the descriptive statistics. Some important limitations apply in this context. Since the statements of my correspondents do not include contradictions, it is clear that, for example, stating a reason for Mexico excludes the possibility of staying only in Chicago. In other words, stating a reason for Mexico perfectly predicts that that person will not stay only in Chicago. Hence, I run separate regression models for the dependent variables Chicago only (m1), Mexico only (m2), and going back and forth between Mexico and Chicago, (m3). The independent variables also vary accordingly. In order to see if any of the reasons stated have a systematic impact on outcome 1 [Chicago only] and 2 [Mexico only], I limit the independent variables to those that can potentially lead to the outcome and exclude those that make this outcome necessarily impossible (otherwise, a probabilistic logic does not work). Outcome 3, going back and forth between Chicago and Mexico, can be potentially influenced by all twelve categories. However, since there are mutually exclusive categories, I ran two separate models for outcome 3 (m3a and m3b), with first only the factors in favor of Chicago (plus the neutral one) and then only the factors in favor of Mexico (plus the neutral one). In model 1 for the outcome [Chicago only], only one factor, the security situation in Mexico, proves statistically significant at the .05 level. The positive regression coefficient indicates that, all else being equal, the likelihood of stating an intention to stay in Chicago increases when my correspondents mention the security situation in Mexico as one of the factors influencing their deliberations for the future. Model 2 for the outcome [returning to Mexico] also indicates only one factor to have an impact that is statistically significant at the .05 level (see table 6.8). All else being equal, the likelihood of returning to Mexico for good increases when my correspondents mention attachments to Mexico. The fact that the variable conflict among spouses was omitted from the analysis is due to the fact that in all 12 cases where such conflict existed, the future residence intention was not a complete return to Mexico. This variable therefore perfectly predicts a decision not to return to Mexico completely. Model 3 (m3a and m3b) for the outcome commuting between Chicago and Mexico yielded a number of statistically significant results. First, stating social ties, either to Chicago (p= 310

Sexo de xy (m=01, f = 02)

Fecha de nacimiento de xy

Lugar de nacimiento de xy

Lugar de residencia de xy

303

304

305

306

302 Nivel de educación de xy

Profesión de xy

Estado civil de xy

¿Tiene xy hijos/as?

307

308

309

310

0 1

311

¿Tiene Ud. nietos/as?

Si No

312

¿Cuántos nietos/as tiene?

Número: ____________

313

¿Dónde viven sus nietos/as?

Chicago México Otro lugar (¿cuál?): _________

01 02 03

314

¿Con qué frecuencia ve a sus nietos?

Menos de una vez al mes Al menos una vez al mes Al menos una vez a la semana Varias veces por la semana A diario

01 02 03 04 05

315 ¿Cuida Ud. a sus nietos, por ejemplo: les lleva a la escuela, cocina para ellos etc.?

Si No

0 1

316

Si No

0 1

¿Viven sus padres todavía?

> 312 > 317

> 317 > 318

Structured inter view questionnaire

317

¿Dónde viven sus padres?

Chicago México Otro lugar (¿cuál?): _________

01 02 03

318

¿Tiene Ud. hermanos/as?

Si no

0 1

319

¿Dónde viven sus hermanos?

Chicago México Otro lugar (¿cuál?): _________

01 02 03

320 ¿Podría decirme cuántas personas viven en su casa?

Número: ____________

¿Quienes son las ¿Qué relación tiene personas que viven xy con Ud.? en su casa? 321

Sexo de xy (masc. =01, fem. = 02)

Lugar de nacimiento de xy

323

324

Profesión de xy

Estado civil de xy

327

328

322

Fecha de nacimien- Nivel de educación to de xy de xy 325

> 319 > 320

326

Quisiera hablar un poco de sus relaciones sociales ahora. 329 ¿Con quién sale o se encuentra de vez en cuando, por ejemplo para tomar un café/ una cerveza, pasear,jugar la lottería o cartas, cenar juntos? Persona 1 330 Sexo de xy (m = 01, f = 02) 331 Relación de xy con Ud. 332

Edad de xy

333 País de origen de xy 334

Lugar de nacimiento de xy

1. ______________________ 2. ______________________ 3. ______________________ 4. ______________________

Persona 2

Persona 3

Persona 4

337

338

Appendix

335

Lugar de residencia de xy

336 Profesión de xy 337

Supponemos que Ud. necesita consejo porque hay un cambio grande en su vida, por ejemplo cambio de casa o de trabajo. A quién le preguntaría por consejo para tomar tal decisión? Persona 1

1. ______________________ 2. ______________________ 3. ______________________ 4. ______________________

Persona 2

Persona 3

Persona 4

338 Sexo de xy (m = 01, f = 02) 339 Relación de xy con Ud. 340

Edad de xy

341

País de origen de xy

342

Lugar de nacimiento de xy

343

Lugar de residencia de xy

344 Profesión de xy 345

Supponemos que Ud. necesita una gran cantidad de dinero y no quiere pregunarle al banco. A quién le pediría por dinero? Persona 1

346

Sexo de xy (m = 01, f = 02)

347 Relación de xy con Ud. 348

Edad de xy

349 País de origen de xy

1. _______________________ 2. _______________________ 3. ___s____________________ 4. _______________________

Persona 2

Persona 3

Persona 4

Structured inter view questionnaire

350

Lugar de nacimiento de xy

351

lugar de residencia de xy

352 Profesión de xy 353

¿Dònde viven sus mejores amigos?

354

Chicago México Otro lugar (¿cuál?)

01 02 03

¿De qué países provienen sus mejores amigos?

IV. PARTE La proxima parte es sobre México, su relación y sus experiencias con el país. No. 401

PREGUNTAS Y COMENTARIOS

RESPUESTAS

¿Pensando en México, qué se le ocurre a Ud. espontaneamente?

402

¿Desde que Ud. vive en los Estados Unidos, cuánto tiempo del año ha normalmente pasado en México?

Menos de un mes 1-3 meses Más de 3 meses

01 02 03

403

¿Cuánto tiempo del año pasa Ud. en Méxcio ahora? ¿Por qué más/ menos/ igual?

Menos que antes Más que antes Igual que antes

01 02 03

404 ¿Cuáles son las razónes por las cuales Ud. pasa tiempo en México?

Vacaciones Los amigos allí La familia allí Estar a gusto El trabajo La manera de vivir El clima Las autoridadaes

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

Si no

0 1

405

¿Tiene Ud. familia en México?

> 406 > 407

339

340

Appendix

406

¿Cómo mantiene el contacto con la familia allí?

Teléfono Correos (electrónicos) Envios de dinero Viajes a México Visitas de México

01 02 03 04 05

407

¿Tiene Ud. amigos en México?

Si No

0 1

408

¿Cómo mantiene el contacto con los amigos allí?

Teléfono Correos (electrónicos) Envios de dinero Viajes a México Visitas de México

01 02 03 04 05

409

¿Manda Ud. de vez en cuando dinero a México?

Si No

0 1

410

¿A quien manda dinero?

Padres Hijos/as Hermanos/as Otros familiares Amigos

01 02 03 04 05

411

¿Tiene Ud. una casa en México?

Si No

0 1

412

¿Cómo obtuvo Ud. la casa?

La compró ¿Cúándo? _____________ La construyó ¿Cuándo? ______________ La heredó ¿Cuándo? ______________

01

413

¿Hay alguien que vive en la casa cuando Ud. no está en México?

Si no

414

¿Cuáles son las cosas de México que más le gustan?

415

¿Cuáles son las cosas de México que no le gustan?

02 03 01 02

> 408 > 409

> 410 > 411

> 412 > 414

Structured inter view questionnaire

V. PARTE Ahora voy a preguntarles algunas cosas acerca Chicago y su vida aquí. No. 501

PREGUNTAS Y COMENTARIOS

RESPUESTAS

¿Pensando en Chicago, qué se le ocurre a Ud. espontaneamente?

502 ¿Qué tipo de vivienda tiene Ud. en Chicago?

Departamento alquilado Departamento propio ¿Desde cuándo? _________ Casa alquilada Casa propia ¿Desde cuándo? __________

503

¿En qué barrios/areas ha vivido Ud. desde que llegó en Chicago?

______________________ ______________________ ______________________ ______________________

504

¿En qué barrio vive Ud. ahora?

Nombre: _______________

505

¿Desde cuándo vive Ud. allí?

Desde el año ____________

01 02 03 04

506 ¿Cuáles son las razónes por las que vive Ud. en esa parte de la ciudad? 507

¿Tiene Ud. contacto con la gente que vive en el barrio?

Mucho Regular Poco nunca

508

¿Cuáles son las cosas de Chicago que más le gustan?

509

¿Cuáles son las cosas de Chicago que no le gustan?

01 02 03 04

341

342

Appendix

VI. PARTE La última parte es sobre diferentes aspectos de su vida diária. No.

PREGUNTAS Y COMENTARIOS

601

¿Es Ud. creyente?

602

¿Cuál es su denominación religiosa?

603

RESPUESTAS Si No

0 1

¿Con qué frecuencia va Ud. a la iglesia?

Nunca En ocasiones especiales Una vez al mes Una vez a la semana Más de una vez a la semana

01 02 03 04 05

603

¿Es Ud. miembro de alguna asociación? (por ejemplo asociación política, club de baile, corro etc.)

Si ¿Cuál? _________ No

0 1

604

¿A qué dedica su tiempo libre?

Asociación/ club Iglesia Tiempo con amigos Tiempo con la familia

01 02 03 04

605

¿Participa Ud. en las elecciones mexicanas?

Si no

0 1

Si no

0 1

606

¿Por qué (no) vota en México?

606 ¿Vota Ud. en las elecciones de los Estados Unidos? 607 608

¿Por qué (no) vota en las elecciones aquí? ¿Es Ud. ciudadano o residente permanente de los E.U.?

¿Qué idiomas habla Ud. y en qué nivel?

Lengua materna

Bien

Ciudadano ¿Desde cuándo? _________ Residente permanente ¿Desde cuándo? ________ Regular

Poco

Nada

01 02

> 602 > 603

Structured inter view questionnaire

609

Español

01

02

03

04

05

610

Inglés

01

02

03

04

05

611 Otro: ___

01

02

03

04

05

612 Otro: ___

01

02

03

04

05

613

¿Cómo se considera Ud.? Cómo mexicano/a, estadounidiense, latino/a americano/a, hispano/a? Pueden ser varias cosas.

Mexicano/a Estadounidiense Latino/a Americano/a Hispano/a

01 02 03 04 05

343

List of figures and tables

Figures Figure 1.1: The puzzle of return intentions | 16 Figure 2.1: Individual belonging at the intersection of multiple memberships | 55 Figure 2.2: Perspective on individual belonging | 56 Figure 2.3: Perspective on collective belonging | 57 Figure 2.4: The puzzle of return intentions | 67 Figure 2.5: Dynamics of return intentions I | 68 Figure 2.6: Dynamics of return intentions II | 69 Figure 2.7: Making sense of return intentions I: belonging as key category | 70 Figure 2.8: Making sense of return intentions II: transformations of belonging | 70 Figure 2.9: Making sense of return intentions III: narrating belonging along master narratives | 71 Figure 4.1: Distribution of residents of Hispanic ethnicity across Chicago community areas as of the 2000 census | 118 Figure 5.1: Distribution of regions of origin in Mexico (darker shades of gray indicate higher concentrations) | 131 Figure 6.1: The puzzle of return intentions: from return to nonreturn | 164 Figure 6.2: Dynamics of return intentions II | 206 Figure 6.3: Dynamics of return intentions: belonging at the center | 208

346

List of figures and tables

Figure 6.4: Making sense of return intentions II: transformations of belonging | 209 Figure 7.1: Making sense of return intentions III: narrating belonging along master narratives | 214 Figure 7.2: Making sense of return intentions III: narrating belonging along the three master narratives “seguir adelante”, “volver” and “adaptarse” | 216 Figure 7.3: Making sense of return intentions: developments of the master narraties over time | 284 Figure 9.1: Making sense of return intentions: developments of the master narratives over time | 299 Figure 9.2: A conceptual framework for investigating return intentions | 302

Tables Table 3.1: Overview of methods and sample sizes | 92 Table 5.1: Age 2011, age at migration, years spent in the U.S., proportion of lifetime spent in the U.S. | 128 Table 5.2: Time of arrival in Chicago and age at migration | 129 Table 5.3: Regions of origin in Mexico | 130 Table 5.4: Educational background | 133 Table 5.5: Marital status and children’s place of residence | 142 Table 5.6: Number of children and grandchildren and household size | 142 Table 5.7: Legal status at the time of migration | 144 Table 5.8: Legal status today | 144 Table 5.9: Professional status | 145 Table 5.10: Sources of retirement income | 147 Table 5.11: Economic satisfaction | 148 Table 5.12: Area of residence in Chicago | 148 Table 5.13: Denomination and church attendance | 150 Table 5.14: Voting behavior and membership in associations | 153

List of figures and tables

Table 6.1: Intended future places of residence | 161 Table 6.2: Intended future place of residence, Chicago and Mexico included | 162 Table 6.3: Intended future places of residence and gender differences | 163 Table 6.4: Categories of reasons stated in relation to return intentions | 167 Table 6.5: Frequency table, stated reasons for future residence | 171 Table 6.6: Future residence intentions | 172 Table 6.7: Merged contingency table future residence intentions and categories of stated reasons | 174 Table 6.8: Results of the logistic regression | 176 Table 7.1: Master narratives and context engagements structured by them | 217 Table 7.2: Legal status at migration | 235 Table 7.3: Legal status today | 237 Table 7.4: Intended length of stay in Chicago at the time of migration | 254 Table 7.5: Time annually spent in Mexico in the past | 257 Table 7.6: Time spent in Mexico now | 258 Table 7.7: Sending remittances today | 262 Table 8.1: Intended burial places | 292 Table A.1: QCA analysis “Staying in Chicago” | 307 Table A.2: QCA analysis [returning to Mexico] | 311 Table A.3: QCA analysis [Mexico and Chicago] | 315 Table A.4: QCA analysis “Chicago included” | 319 Table A.5: QCA analysis [Mexico included] | 323

347

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