understanding transnational processes: modeling migration outcomes in the central valleys of oaxaca,...

10.1177/1525822X03257391 ARTICLEFIELD METHODSCohen et al. / UNDERSTANDING TRANSNATIONAL PROCESSES

Understanding Transnational Processes:Modeling Migration Outcomes in theCentral Valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico

JEFFREY H. COHENPennsylvania State University

ALICIA SYLVIA GIJÓN-CRUZUniversidad Autónoma “Benito Júarez” de Oaxaca

RAFAEL G. REYES-MORALESInstituto Tecnológico de Oaxaca

GARRY CHICKPennsylvania State University

This article reviews a systematic approach to the study of transnational migration inthe central valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico. The authors argue that the investigation oftransnational migration should be more than an exercise in labeling outcomes. Theyshow that it is possible to model and score transnational outcomes for individualmigrants and migrant households and understand variations in sending practices oflocal communities. They illustrate this point using data from the investigation ofeleven communities in Oaxaca.

Keywords: transnationalism; migration; households; Mexico

Over the past several years, we have investigated migration and the use ofremittances in rural communities of the central valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico.Our team of investigators from Pennsylvania State University and theInstituto Tecnológico de Oaxaca had three goals: (1) to understand the his-tory and development of migration in the central valleys, (2) to define the

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Invited Session “Globalizing Methodol-ogies: Research Issues” (AAA Executive Program Committee) at the annual meeting of theAmerican Anthropological Association, San Francisco, Saturday 18 November 2000. Supportfor this project came from the National Science Foundation grant no. 9875539, the Departmentof Anthropology at Pennsylvania State University, the Pennsylvania State University’s Popula-tion Research Institute, and the Instituto Tecnológico de Oaxaca. We thank our many field-workers and the towns that were gracious enough to allow us to complete our work. Thanks alsoto Patricia Johnson, Paul Durrenburger, Russ Bernard, and the reviewers selected for thispiece. Any errors remain the sole responsibility of the authors.

Field Methods, Vol. 15, No. 4, November 2003 366–385DOI: 10.1177/1525822X03257391© 2003 Sage Publications

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variables that contribute to a household member’s decision to migrate, and(3) to understand the effects of migration at the household and the commu-nity level.

The movement of Mexicans back and forth across the border with theUnited States is part of a global phenomenon called transnationalism. Whilethe phenomenon is well known (and applies conceptually to populationmovements in many parts of the world; see Basch, Schiller, and Blanc 1994;Massey et al. 1998), it has so far been used only heuristically rather than as avariable with known properties and relationships to other variables. Thework we report here is a first step in developing a method for measuringtransnationalism at the individual and household levels and for understand-ing patterns of variation at the community level.

TRANSNATIONALISMAND TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION

Transnationalism is rooted in Hannerz’s (1996:7) concept of the “globalecumene,” or the “interactions, exchanges, and related developments, affect-ing not least the organization of culture.” Hannerz argued that an emergingglobal ecumene connects local populations and local cultures to global sys-tems in increasingly intimate ways. The results are complex pluralities thatcross landscapes and boundaries via media, migrants, and commerce as wellas by the interactions of parents and children (Hannerz 1998).

Kearney (1996:112) developed the idea of “freeways” to describe theflow of people, goods, and services in transnational space. He contrasted theemergence of transnational freeways in the late twentieth century with roads.Whereas the former is a “multidirectional means of communication” acrossspace and implicated in “the process of complex differentiation,” the latter isa unidirectional path with definite beginnings and ends, lacking linkages toanything beyond the local system. Unlike roads, freeways integrate socialactors and their households and communities with a nearly infinite number ofnetworks and potential points of access. Transnational migrants follow thesefreeways and are able to articulate or integrate with receiving communitieswhile still participating in the social and cultural life of their sending villages(Kearney 2000). The linkages these migrants develop supersede and some-times even undermine the state and its authority structures (see the discus-sions in Rivera-Salgado [1999] and Rouse [1995]).

The examples of the ways in which migrants create new opportunities andengage the state while remaining embedded in local cultural processes arecritical to understanding how migration has changed for rural Mexicans over

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the past two decades. Nevertheless, there is littlediscussion of how one mightstudy or approach the analysis of transnational migration. Portes, Guarnizo,and Haller (2002:279) correctly described the situation and noted, “Qualita-tive case studies consistently sample on the dependent variable, that is, theydocument in detail the characteristics of immigrants involved in transna-tional activities, but say little about those who are not [transnational mov-ers].” In other words, we know a good bit about what a transnational migrantis and what he or she looks like once arrived in the United States. What we donot understand as well are the motivations for transnational migration andwhat transnationalism means for the households and sending communitiesthat are left behind.

Our objective is to discover patterns in transnational migration as mani-fest in the decisions made by individual migrants and in their sending house-holds and communities. After reviewing our survey design and data collec-tion, we ask, How can we measure transnational migration outcomes forindividuals in rural Oaxacan households? In response, we develop a measurethat allows us to score outcomes based on a series of variables that define pat-terns of association between migrants and their sending households. In thenext part of the article, we explore ways in which we can measure, predict,and evaluate the transnational status of migrant households. We note rates ofmovement and the circularity of that movement, remittance practices, andthe continued participation of migrants in home life.

We also explore the role that migrant and nonmigrant households play intheir communities through the analysis of traditional reciprocal practices andparticipation in local government. In the case of rural Oaxacan households,these include a household’s participation intequio (communal labor),cooperación(the payment of funds to support community programs andevents), and thecargosystem (a civil and religious hierarchy that managescommunity affairs; see Cohen [1999] for a detailed introduction to theseareas). The third part of our discussion focuses on the variations in migrationthat were manifest among the eleven communities surveyed for this study.Here we use a correspondence analysis to plot both communities and out-comes as defined by four possible migration decisions, the decision not tomigrate, to follow a local commute or circuit to Oaxaca City, to move nation-ally and within Mexico’s boundaries, and to move to the United States.

To move from heuristic models to explanatory frameworks, we make afew basic assumptions concerning migration and transnationalism. First, weframe the decision to migrate as economic. Rural Oaxacans migrate to jobs inthe United States, attracted by the promise of high wages, particularly in rela-tion to what is available locally. Second, if there is transnational migration,then we assume that migrants should not sever kin ties to their natal house-

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holds and social ties to their communities, and we should not find a declinein a migrant households’ community participation. Rather, transnationalmigrants should build on household social networks and traditional patternsof association, and the outcome should be the continued integration of thesending households in their communities (Itzigsohn and Saucedo 2002;Kearney 2000). Finally, we propose that we can measure transnational out-comes by the presence and relative value of familial, friend, and communitynetworks in decisions concerning destinations and remittance rates by therate of community participation among migrant households (and in relationto nonmigrant households) and by the relative importance of transnationalmigration in relation to other kinds of moves.

SURVEY DESIGN

Rural Oaxacan migration is a largely understudied area. With far fewermigrants leaving Oaxaca than Mexico’s traditional sending regions (see, forexample, Durand, Massey, and Charvet 2000), work in the state has focusedlargely on community studies rather than on regional analysis of outcomes(Grimes 1998; Hulshof 1991). Furthermore, much of the work on transna-tional Oaxacans has focused on the U.S. end of the migrant cycle rather thanon sending communities (see Rivera-Salgado 1999). In an effort to correctfor these gaps in our knowledge, we systematically investigated migrationoutcomes and remittance use in the central valley.

We began our investigations by collecting general information on eachcommunity through interviews with local leaders and work in state archives(including INEGI, the National Institute for Statistics, Geography, and Infor-mation) to collect background data. In the next step, we created an inventorythat documents local resources including the presence and prevalence ofinfrastructural features, including utilities (electricity and water), roads thatprovide access to Oaxaca City and to schools, various forms of transporta-tion, and ongoing and completed community development projects. We alsodocumented the features of the local economy, including the numbers andtypes of businesses.

We combined this material with household surveys in rural communitiesto define patterns of work, migration, consumption, and community partici-pation in local populations. We focused on the household because it is thebase from which develop the key social networks, relationships, and culturalbeliefs that define and limit the resources available to individual actors (see,for example, Wiest 1973; Netting, Wilk, and Arnould 1984; Wilk1989,1991; Pennartz and Niehof 1999). Additionally, the actions of any indi-

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vidual (whether rooted in the well-being of the household and community orin escaping a family’s clutches) have ramifications for the maintenance andreproduction of the domestic group and community (see Conway and Cohen1998).

We randomly selected 11municipios, or counties, in Oaxaca’s centralvalleys from a list of the 112 municipios located in the five central valley dis-tricts of the state (Etla, Tlacolula, Ocotlan, Centro, Zimatlan).1 We had toreplace 1 municipio where investigators were pursuing a detailed study ofmigration, 2 that lacked bus service and roads to Oaxaca City, and 1 that hadbecome a suburb of the city. The 4 replacement municipios were selectedrandomly from the remainder of the list. In each community, we surveyed15% of the households, also randomly selected. The survey was a controlled,semistructured questionnaire that fieldworkers administered directly toinformants once we had their oral consent. Across the 11 municipios, weobtained survey and ethnographic data on 590 households.2

The first sections of the survey focused on household membership andorganization (part 1), work (part 2), and migration experience (part 3). Foreach member of the household, we obtained data on age, gender, civil sta-tus, place of birth, current residence, languages spoken, and education. Werecorded work histories for all members involved in household maintenance,paying attention to the nonwage and informal activities (particularly amongwomen) that are typically crucial to the domestic group’s survival. We askedpeople to recount as many labor activities as they could remember and toidentify how they combined various activities (farming and wage labor forexample) to meet the needs of their domestic group.

We identified migrants as we created inventories of a household’s mem-bers and their activities in parts 1 and 2. Part 3 of the survey focused specifi-cally on international and transnational (that is, back-and-forth) migration.In this section, we tried to get a clear count of the number of migrants in ahousehold as well as the number of trips each member made. This was typi-cally where we identified individuals who had left and who no longeractively participated as members of a household. Migrants described theirexperiences. We asked them to list where they go, whom they travel with,how they organize money to cover the expenses of border crossing, theirwork in the United States, whom they stay with once they have settled, andthe history of their remittances.

In parts 4, 5, and 6, we asked about agriculture, household expenses, andhousing. We created an inventory that included animals, goods and appli-ances, construction materials, and access to water and utilities (parts 4 and 5).We asked about weekly expenses for food, utilities, transportation, educa-tion, entertainment and healthcare, and how members cover those expenses

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(part 6). The last part of the survey focused on household members’ partici-pation in the social life of their village (part 7). We noted members’ politicalservice; their participation and sponsorship of local rituals; the reciprocalrelationships they hold with other families; and their investment of time,money, and effort in village projects and programs.

We elicited detailed responses on local social life, migration, and thestructure of community with open-ended questions. After completing thesurveys, we conducted follow-up interviews with community leaders andkey informants (selected because they had responded enthusiastically to oursurveys) to further document experiences. We also collected oral histories ineach community. We asked older members of each village to recount theirchildhoods and their histories of movement and work.

A second survey conducted in 2002 asked informants to respond to aseries of Likert-type scale questions, paired comparisons, and triads. Ques-tions covered motivations for migration, the use of remittances, and who wasa typical migrant given a destination in Mexico or the United States. Pairedcomparisons and triads asked informants to select the best possible responseto a series of work and migration outcomes as well as the impacts of migra-tion and work decisions on family structure. The questions we asked weretaken from a range of responses we had received in the original survey. Weadministered this questionnaire to thirty individuals who had responded toour original survey in three communities.

MIGRATION IN THE CENTRAL VALLEYSAND INDIVIDUAL MOTIVATIONS

Oaxacans do not use terms like “transmigrant” to describe themselveswhen they migrate. Nor do they refer to their sojourns to the United Statesas “transnational.” Instead, they talk about migration, whether the destina-tion is Mexico City (the most likely destination for an internal migrant) orLos Angeles (the destination mentioned most by migrants to the UnitedStates), using the same vocabulary and citing similar motivations. Infor-mants throughout the central valleys chose the support of their household orthe search for work as the most critical motivations for migration, regardlessof destination. In other words, the decision to migrate is economic.

While the responses of native Oaxacans captured the reasons they choseto migrate (and see Massey 1990:13), it did little to help us understand trans-national outcomes and patterns. Thus, our first challenge was to define amodel through which we might differentiate transnational migrants from

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those migrants who chose to leave natal households, remove themselvesfrom social networks, and reject community participation.

To determine the transnational quality of migration outcomes for U.S.-bound Oaxacans, we needed to look beyond statements concerning the moti-vations for migration and develop a tool to measure and score outcomes. Weassumed transnational migrants would rely on kin and community ties tosucceed in their moves and that they would maintain strong ties to their send-ing households over time through their remittance practices. Itzigsohn andSaucedo (2002:771) called these “linear transnational” variables and arguedthat they measure the strength of the attachment between migrants and theirsending households and communities. However, where Itzigsohn andSaucedo focused on outcomes at the time of migration, we also sought tounderstand the cumulative quality of these outcomes following Massey(1990:12), who argued migration is a self-sustaining process over time.Thus, we defined five variables that measure the strength of attachmentbetween sending households and their migrating members who were travel-ing to the United States over time:

1. Migfrien noted the presence or absence of a relationships between the mi-grants and family or friends who had already experienced migration and wasscored 1 or 0 for the presence or absence of these relationships.

2. Uscosts scored a 1 or 0 for the way in which migrants organized funds to covertheir sojourns. A 1 was for those migrants who covered the costs of migrationwith funds from family, friends, or self, and a 0 was for migrants who turned toan employer or for any other possible outcomes.

3. Usstay scored 1 or 0 for whom migrants lived with once at their destination. A1 was for migrants who settled with family, friends, or covillagers; and a 0 wasfor migrants who lived alone, with employers, or in some other situation.

4. Remtot is the total number of years during which migrants remitted fundshome.

5. Totus is the total number of migrants the household had sent to the UnitedStates over time.

Rather than using each of these variables individually, we summed mig-frien and uscosts (per migrant), usstay (per migrant), and remtot divided bytotus to create transtot, a single transnational score for each individualmigrant:

Transtot = migfrien + uscost + usstay + remtot/totus.

Transtotscores for migrants ranged from 0 to 25 (see Table 1, whichincludes scores for both migrants and their households). Null scores were forthose migrants (25% of the total) for whom we had no data beyond knowing

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they were in the United States. These migrants may be important resources insending communities, and certainly some of them open their homes to newmigrants as they leave for sojourns in the United States; nevertheless, indi-viduals who score 0 are not remitting and do not participate in the socialreproduction of their sending households.

The highest score, 25, referenced a migrant who followed a cousin to theUnited States (migfrien = 1). He paid for his sojourn with funds from his fam-ily (uscost = 1), and once in the United States, he lived with a cousin in LosAngeles (usstay = 1). Over twenty-two years of migration, he continued toremit funds to his sending household (remtot = 22).

Scores for all rural Oaxacans averaged just less than 3 (2.999), and 75% ofall migrants scored 4 or less. The scores reflect that most migrants followfamily or friends to the United States and cover the costs of migration withfamily resources and/or stay with family once they settled in the UnitedStates. The scores also tell us that migrants are remitting (remtot/totus) formost of their stays, or 1.25 years of remitting for just less than 2 years ofmigration. These scores suggest that Oaxacans are transnational movers, butthe phenomenon is relatively new for the region.

To further test for the relationship of migration outcomes and times spentin the United States, we ran a bivariate correlation for transtotscores andindyearsus (total years spent in the United States per migrant). We obtainedan estimate of the total years each migrant spent in the United States by divid-ing the total years of migration by the total number of migrants (indyearsus =totyearsus/totus). Transtot and indyearsus correlated (.4646,p= .000), so wecan argue that Oaxacans who migrated are transnational movers; however,the question of whether transnational practices will continue over time and

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TABLE 1Transnational Scores

Individuals (n = 323) Households (n = 196)

Mean 2.999 4.026Standard error of mean 0.251 0.394Median 2.000 2.000Mode 0.000 0.000Standard deviation 3.509 5.511Variance 12.314 30.374Minimum 0.000 0.000Maximum 25.000 36.000

NOTE: The total number of individuals (n= 323) includes all migrants from the 196 householdsthat reported moving to the United States.

reinforce themselves cannot yet be fully answered by looking at individualmigrants.

TRANSNATIONAL OUTCOMES AND HOUSEHOLDS

Rural Oaxacans do not describe their households in transnational terms.Rather, they describe their households as homes that may include migrants.The number of migrants a household sends to the United States and theactions of those migrants once they are there has an effect on the structure,organization, and relative status of a household.

To score migration outcomes for households, we again used Itzigsohn andSaucedo’s (2002) linear variables and measured the associations betweensending households and the total number of their migrant members (trans-core). We assumed that transnational households would know settledmigrants(migfrien), would be more likely to cover the costs of migrations throughsavings and gifts from friends or family (uscost), and would send members tolive with relatives in destination communities (usstay). Furthermore, weassumed that transnational households would depend on remittances fromthose migrants over time (remtot). Finally, whereas in defining outcomes forindividuals, we divided the total score by the number of migrants in a house-hold, in this case, we totaled all migrants in the household, giving us the fol-lowing equation:

Transcore = migfrien + remtot + totus (uscost + usstay).

The average overall score for households was 4.026 (see Table 1). However,the median score for households remained the same as for individualmigrants, 2.00. Nevertheless, households were “more” transnational, and25% of the households recorded scores of 5 or better. Thus, while migrationoutcomes for households did not differ a great deal from those for individu-als, households showed longer periods of remitting (6.1 versus 1.25 years,although the mode remained 1 year). These findings further support ourassumption that transnational movement is relatively new in the region andthat migration to the United States has not yet matured as it has in central andnorthern Mexico (and see Durand, Massey, and Charvet 2000).

To predict migration outcomes for households, we used a logisticalregression. Because we believe migration decisions are inherently eco-nomic, we chose economic variables from the 259 independent variablesavailable in our data set. We ran bivariate correlations to determine those

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variables that were associated with migration and that would not buildmulticolinearity into our model. The result was a list of 13 variables, of which3 were significant predictors of migration outcomes: the total members in thehousehold (members), ties to individuals with migration experience (migfrien),and the goods and appliances owned by a family (goodssc). Goodssc tabu-lated the total number of key consumer goods and appliances present in thehousehold. The variable included water heater, washing machine, shower,gas/electric stove, refrigerator, television, radio, vehicle, computer, iron, andsewing machine in its count and served as a proxy for the outcomes of remit-tance practices and a household’s disposable income.

We measured outcomes using the dichotomous variable migpres (aremigrants present in the household, where 1 = yes, 0 = no), as the dependentvariable in a logistical regression. With the three independent variablesdescribed above, we were able to correctly predict outcomes in 74% of ourcases, a significant improvement over the 50% to be expected by chancealone (see Table 2).

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TABLE 2Logit Regression Predicting the Likelihood of Migration for Rural Oaxacans

β SE

Members .083 .057Migfrien –2.268 .331Goodssc .097 .036Intercept –.775 .655

χ2 = 100.674–2 log likelihood = 111.882Cox and SnellR2 = .269NagelkerekeR2 = .359n = 321p < .05.

Predicted

Are Migrants in Percentagethe Households? Correct

Observed 1 0

Step 1: Are migrants in the households? 0 153 29 82.11 54 105 66.0

Overall percentage 74.1

To evaluate the impact of transnational migration for villages, we lookedat the rate of migrant and nonmigrant household participation in communityaffairs (cptot). Cptot scored community service as follows, a 1 or 0 for thepresence or absence of a household’s participation in tequio, a 1 or 0 for thepresence or absence of a household’s participation in cooperación, and ascore for the total number of cargos held by members of the household(totcargo). Scores for cargo participation ranged from 0(no service)to 16(holding sixteen positions in the cargo system over a household’s lifetime).3

We expected to find higher community participation scores fornonmigrant households and that nonmigrant households held more cargosover time, regardless of the destination. To test this assumption, we used two-tailed t-tests to compare the variables cptot and totcargo for migrant andnonmigrant households. We found that for cptot,t = –1.45,df= 588,p= .147;while for totcargo,t = –0.32,df = 384,p = .746. In other words, there was nosignificant difference in scores for community service or the total number ofcargos held for migrant and nonmigrant households. This further supportsthe idea that Oaxacans who migrate are transmigrants. Thus, even as theymigrate to the United States, they continue to participate in the social repro-duction of their communities as well as their households.

TRANSNATIONAL OUTCOMES ANDCOMMUNITY VARIATION

Understanding community variation in patterns of movement and migra-tion patterns was quite difficult. In addition to staying at home, ruralOaxacans talked about three kinds of moves they potentially make as theysearch for wage labor. About 40% of all rural Oaxacan households chose notto migrate and remained in their sending communities. Movers organizedtheir travels around commutes to the state’s capital, Oaxaca City, and to otherregional centers for work and education (13%), to internal destinations(13%) within Mexico (predominantly Mexico City), and finally, to theUnited States, where 35% of all migrants travel. While a majority of ruralOaxacans were involved in local commutes and internal or internationalmigration (61%), there was much variation in the patterns of movement asdefined by community (see Table 3). For example, migration to the UnitedStates ranged from a low of 15% of the households in San Pablo Huitzo to ahigh of 53% of Santa Ines Yatzeche’s households.

To understand community-level variations in commuting and migrationpatterns we used a correspondence analysis.4 Figure 1 plots nonmigrant,commuter, internal migrant, and U.S.-bound migrant household outcomes

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and the relative location of each community surveyed in relation to thoseoutcomes.

First, each quadrant appears to represent a particular outcome. Non-migrant households plot in the upper left, commuters in the lower left.Internally bound migrants (those moving within national borders) plot in the

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TABLE 3Moves and Migrations for Eleven Oaxacan Communities (N = 590)

Internal U.S.Households Nonmigrant Commuter Migrant MigrantSurveyed Households Households Households Households

Guadalupe Etla 66 24 12 12 27Santa Ines Yatzeche 30 12 1 1 16Santa María Guelace 28 11 5 7 5San Juan del Estado 66 17 14 11 24San Juan Guelavia 87 23 10 10 44San Juan del Río 47 26 1 2 18San Lorenzo Albarradas 56 35 4 8 9San Martín Tilcajete 58 26 2 5 25San Pablo Huitzo 41 18 14 3 6San Pedro Ixtlahuaca 50 14 10 8 18Villa Díaz Ordaz 61 31 5 9 16

Total 590 237 78 76 199

-0.5

-0.3

-0.1

0.1

0.3

0.5

-0.5 -0.3 -0.1 0.1 0.3 0.5

Communities

Household types

Non-migrants

Commuters

Internal migrants

U.S. migrants

San Pablo Huitzo

San Lorenzo AlbarradasDiaz Ordaz

San Pedro Ixtlahuaca

Santa Maria Guelace

GuadalupeEtla

Santa Ines YatzecheSan Juan del Rio

San Martin Tilcajete

San Juan del Estado

San Juan Guelavia

FIGURE 1Correspondence Analysis, Migration Outcomes

for Eleven Sending Communities

upper-right quadrant, while international migrants (those bound for theUnited States) plot in the lower-right quadrant. Moving along thex-axis,from left to right, we note an increase in overall number of migrations and thedistance of the destination from a sending community. Nonmigrant house-holds plot farthest left, followed by commuter households, leading to internalmovers on the right and, finally, international movers on the far right.

Second, those communities that plot closer to the center of the chart, SanJuan del Estado, for example, show a more generalized migration pattern. Inother words, those communities closer to the intersection of the four out-comes show more diversity in the moves made by member households. Thesixty-six households surveyed in San Juan del Estado included 26% non-migrants, 21% commuters, 17% internal migrants, and 36% U.S.-boundmigrants. Communities that plot farther from the center show less variationin migration outcomes for member households. For example, in Santa InesYatzeche, 53% of the community’s households are involved in migration tothe United States, while only 3% of households send migrants to internal des-tinations or on local commutes. Thus, the community plots low on they-axisand is relatively farther from the reference points for nonmigrants, localcommuters, and internal migrants.

Third, a community’s relative placement in relation to household out-comes (nonmigrant, commuter, internal migrant, U.S. bound) can be read asone indication of how important migration (or a type of migration) is for acommunity’s households and can capture the diversity of movement withineach village. Thus, San Juan Albarradas, a community where 63% of house-holds do not participate in migration, plots to the left of the nonmigrant point.On the other hand, San Juan Guelavia, a community where 63% of house-holds are involved in internal or international migration, plots to the far righton thex-axis and near the reference point for U.S.-bound migration. Finally,San Martín Tilcajete, a community with nearly identical populations of non-migrant (45%) and U.S.-bound migrant households (43%), plots between thereference points for commuters and U.S.-bound migrant households.

DISCUSSION

In this article, we have developed measures that allow us to talk abouttransnational outcomes for individual migrants, their households, and theircommunities. We scored outcomes for individuals based on linear variables(as defined by Itzigsohn and Saucedo 2002:771) and found that while themajority of decisions are motivated by economic needs, the majority ofOaxacans are acting in a transnational manner—but just barely.

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Oaxacans typically migrate following a relative or close friend, and theygenerally rely on family for the funds necessary to cover their sojourn. Oncein the United States, they settle with family or friends. We found that 65% ofall U.S.-bound migrants knew or were related to an individual who had previ-ously migrated, and 96% of all migrants depended on the funds of their fam-ily to meet the costs of border crossing. Additionally, more than 80% of allrural Oaxacan migrants lived with a family member or close friend in theirdestination. Finally, remitting from the United States to a household in ruralOaxaca was a common practice for the 81% of migrants settled in the UnitedStates. However, transtot scores were low (averaging 3.0) and reflected thepresence of linkages to settled or experienced migrants and the importance offamily to the costs of migration and living arrangements in receiving com-munities but a lack of temporal depth to outcomes. We call this a “nominal”transnationalism.

Migrants traveled only once to the United States, stayed in the UnitedStates for between one and three years, and remitted usually only for abouthalf of their time in the United States. Thus, we did not encounter the kind oflong-term, frequent, and repeated trips between Mexico and the UnitedStates found in other regions. Furthermore, we cannot predict the long-termimplications of transnational actions by Oaxacan migrants because most ofthem move over short periods and return to their sending households even asthey follow kin networks.

The pattern we found among individual migrants was also present as weshifted our focus to households. Average scores increased to 4, reflecting thefact that most households sent only one migrant to the United States at a time,even though he or she followed friends and family in their sojourns and reliedon kin- and community-based networks to cross the border.

The decisions of migrants are not only personal; they reflect decisionsmade by the household as a unit. And although household scores reflectedthe fact that about 25% of all households are not in contact with the migrantmembers, 60% are linked to migrants through remittances and their use offamily networks. Finally, the remaining migrants, about 15%, are involved inlong-term, transnational moves (with scores above 6—that is, they remittedfor more than three years).

Durrand, Massey, and Zenteno (2001) recently argued that Mexicanmigration to the United States had shifted in structure and content very littleover the past two decades. The majority of migrants to the United Statescame from Mexico’s central states, and the southern states of Oaxaca andChiapas contributed little to the overall flow. Our results suggest that whileOaxacan migration rates are increasing, it is at a slow rate. The majority of

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Oaxacan migrants move because of the needs of their households, andalthough they may behave in a transnational fashion, they are not involved inthe long-term, cyclical migrations that create profound new social and cul-tural institutions that Durrand, Massey, and Zenteno have found in more tra-ditional sending regions (see also Marcelli and Cornelius 2001).

We used a correspondence analysis to model variations in outcomes asthey pertain to central valley communities. Our findings suggest that migra-tion patterns vary by destination and, perhaps more important, by the patternsof flows. (Are migrants moving in several different ways, as in San Juan delEstado, or are they concentrated, as in Santa Ines Yatzeche on migration tothe United States?) While our samples of communities and of community-level variables are too small to permit quantitative analyses, the factors thatappear to determine these different patterns are (1) the overall history ofmigration and when and to where migrants originally left, (2) the location ofa community in relation to Oaxaca City and transportation services, (3) thepresence or absence of indigenous cultures and languages, (4) the structureof the internal (village) economy, and (5) the local environment.

San Juan del Estado has a rich history of migration that dates to the 1940sand has always included migrants moving to local, internal, and internationaldestinations. The location of the community near the Pan-American High-way and with easy access to Oaxaca City further supports movement. Addi-tionally, San Juan del Estado is a mestizo community, so its citizens are moreable to find work locally as they lack the social stigmas that mark indigenousOaxacans who encounter much bigotry as they move to Oaxaca City andother internal destinations in Mexico. Finally, the community has served as acentral market site for surrounding villages, is home to several small indus-tries (stone quarries and timber harvesting), and holds much irrigated landthat supports multicropping throughout the year.

The example of San Juan del Estado contrasts with Santa Ines Yatzeche, acommunity with a much shallower history of movement. The communityalso lacks the easy linkages to Oaxaca City. Bus service connects the villagewith the state’s capital, but only indirectly, and few of the community’s citi-zens make the two-hour journey to Oaxaca City. Additionally, Santa Ines is aZapotec community, and most of its citizens are bilingual, nonnative Spanishspeakers; their native identity stigmatizes them when they seek work or edu-cation in Oaxaca City. Finally, the village is marginal in an economic sense:It lacks infrastructure, it has no industry to speak of, and its agricultural heri-tage is under pressure as pollution from Oaxaca City travels down the AtoyacRiver to contaminate Santa Ines Yatzeche’s water supply.

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CONCLUSIONS

The approach we have outlined is a start. The key to success is continuedresearch on other cases in Mexico and elsewhere in support of comparativeinvestigation of migration patterns. We have demonstrated that we can mea-sure, predict, and evaluate transnational outcomes for individuals and house-holds and that we can explain variations in community-sending patterns.

A second implication of our work is theoretical. We often give theoreticalconstructions methodological significance in the social sciences. We believethat such an error has occurred in transnational studies. An overly aggressivefocus on transnational flows, linkages, and outcomes makes it difficult tounderstand fundamental local processes that constitute the transnational—orfrom which the transnational emerges. We have organized a methodologythat allows us to identify transnational processes and outcomes as parts oflarger systems.

Our approach moves the concept of transnational toward the concrete. Byfocusing on how migrants and their households use their connections withsettled migrants, how they cover the costs of migration, and where they liveonce they have settled, we can quantify outcomes. When we add the length oftime migrants move and remit, we bring a temporal dimension to our discus-sion. Given the scores for Oaxacan migrants and households and the relativeplacement of villages in the correspondence analysis and plot, we can arguewith confidence that although the communities are embedded in flows oftransnational capital and global markets, the variables involved in the cre-ation of transnational space in the central valleys are largely defined throughlocal connections and economic needs. Transnationalism is rooted in kin andcommunity networks, not linkages to far-away cultural processes.

Portes, Guarnizo, and Landolt (1999:218) argued, “In the case of trans-nationalism, it is not enough to invoke anecdotes of some immigrants invest-ing in businesses back home or some governments giving their expatriatesthe right to vote in national elections to justify a new field of study.” Wewould add that transnationalism is tangible and to be discovered in the livesof individuals as members of households and communities. Our approachcombines surveys, interviews, and background work to make the global tan-gible and to clearly define some of the ways in which transnational processesplay out between communities and within households. Using basic statisticaltools, we can effectively model transnational outcomes for individuals, theirhouseholds, and their communities, and we can begin a cross-cultural discus-sion of outcomes.

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NOTES

1. We selected communities from a randomized list that Dr. Martha Rees (Agnes Scott Col-lege) created for the central valley region.

2. If a household head refused to participate, we moved to an alternate household in the sameblock. Typically, this was the first household clockwise from the originally targeted household.The fieldworker moved to a randomly selected block where we planned no surveys if no house-holds in a block volunteered to complete the survey (or if all houses were empty in the block).

3. Thecargosystem refers to the system of civil and religious committees that make up thelocal political system of most rural communities in Oaxaca. Individuals, as representatives ofhouseholds, must serve voluntarily in these committees. Committee or cargo service confirmsstatus on the server and the household in relation to the position held, which range fromvocal(voting member) topresidente(president or committee chair). Cargos and committees areranked according to their social status and difficulty. Low-rankingcommittees include those thattake up little time and have few decisions to make. Often these committees maintain a commu-nity’s services, roads, and schools. High-ranking cargos may require up to three years of serviceand demand a great deal of time. High-rankingcargos include thecomite del pueblo(literally, thetown’s committee and the equivalent of a county commission),bienes comunales(communityresources), and religious cargos that care for a village’s church. Service is usually met by men,but a growing number of women hold positions today, in part in reaction to migration. House-holds typically send members to serve in committees every two to three years (and see Cohen1999).

4. Correspondenceanalysis is a relatively new technique that permits the perceptualmapping(as in multidimensional scaling) of contingency tables. Specifically, it allows the representationof both the rows and the columns of ann × mmatrix in the same multidimensional space. In ourcase, we use correspondence analysis to represent the rows (communities) and the columns(migration outcomes) of Table 3 in a common multidimensional space. Hence, the association or“correspondence” between communities and outcomes is shown in Figure 1. More similar com-munities are closer to each other in the two-dimensional space, while more similar outcomes arecloser as well. In addition, communities that exhibit particular outcomes more frequently thanothers are closer to those outcomes in the space (see Weller and Romney [1990] and Greenacre[1984] for introductions to correspondence analysis).

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Durand, J., D. S. Massey, and R. M. Zenteno. 2001. Mexican immigration to the United States:Continuities and changes.Latin American Research Review36 (1): 107–27.

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JEFFREY H. COHEN (Ph.D. anthropology, Indiana University, 1994) is an assistantprofessor in Penn State’s Department of Anthropology and Program in Demography.His work focuses on the outcomes of migration for rural sending communities in Oaxaca,Mexico. He is a fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology and a board member ofthe Society for Economic Anthropology. His article “Transnational Migration in RuralOaxaca, Mexico: Dependency, Development and the Household” (American Anthro-pologist2001) was awarded the Buck Prize by Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts in2001. The University of Texas Press will publish his ethnographyThe Culture of Migra-tion in Southern Mexicoin 2004. This is his second article forField Methods.

ALICIA SYLVIA GIJÓN-CRUZ holds a B.Sc. degree in chemical engineering and a mas-ter’s degree in regional development planning from the Instituto Tecnológico deOaxaca, where she has been attached since January 2000 as researcher through grantsof the MacArthur Foundationand the Ford Foundation.She is currently working towardher doctorate in anthropology and regional development planning and will complete herdissertation on migration in the community of San Lucas Quiavini, Tlacolula Oaxacawith the support of a grant from the National Council of Science and Technology(CONACyT). Her publications have appeared inCiudadesamong other journals andalso she has published various book chapters; she has presented research at meetings ofthe Latin American Studies Association, the Society for Economic Anthropology, theMexican Association of Rural Studies, the National Network of Urban Research, and theMexican Association of Regional Development Studies. In addition to working on thisproject, she has collaborated on research with UCLA, UC Davis, Portland State Univer-sity, the Pennsylvania State University, LAMP (the Latin American Migration Project),and El Colegio de Mexico.

RAFAEL G. REYES-MORALES is a professor in the program in regional developmentand urban planning that is housed in the department of Industrial Engineering at theInstituto Tecnológico de Oaxaca, where he directs many student projects. His workfocuses on the impacts of migration on rural development in Oaxaca and the economicimplications of regional development for rural populations. His work has appeared inCiudadesandAlteridadesamong other journals, and also he has published various bookchapters. He has presented his research at meetings of the Latin American Studies Asso-ciation, the Society for Economic Anthropology, the Mexican Association of Rural Stud-ies, the National Network of Urban Research, and the Mexican Association of RegionalDevelopment Studies. He is a founding member of the International Network of Migra-tion and Development. His collaborative work with UCLA, UC Davis, Portland StateUniversity, LAMP (Latin American Migration Project), the Pennsylvania State Univer-sity, and El Colegio de Mexico has been funded by CONACyT, UC-Mexus, the FordFoundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

GARRY CHICK (Ph.D. anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, 1980) joined Penn Statein 1999, after eighteen years in the Department of Leisure Studies at the University ofIllinois, Urbana-Champaign.He is a professor of hotel, restaurant, and recreation man-agement and professor-in-charge of the graduate program in leisure studies. He is pasteditor ofLeisure SciencesandPlay & Cultureand a coeditor ofThe Encyclopediaof Lei-sure and Recreation in America, which will be published in 2004 by Scribner’s. He is a

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past president of the Association for the Anthropological Study of Play and of the Societyfor Cross-Cultural Research and is a fellow of the American Anthropological Associa-tion, the Society for Applied Anthropology, and the Academy of Leisure Sciences. Recentpublications include “Cultural Consonance in a Mexican Festival System” (Field Meth-ods2002); “The Social Nature of Leisure Involvement,” with Gerard T. Kyle (Journal ofLeisure Research2002); and “What Is Play For? Sexual Selection and the Evolution ofPlay” (Play and Culture Studies2001).

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