La competencia de mercado

Feminist perspectives call for analyses which include conceptually a gender division of labour as a key ingredient of theoretical paradigms (Boyd, 1989). As is apparent from the critique of approaches to migration studies above, few have attempted to do this. Structural analyses largely fail to include the experience of the gendered individual, conceptualising migrants as a homogenous group, as in ‘the migrant labour force’. Individualistic approaches tend to overlook the wider social (and gendered) structures within which individuals are embedded. The critical need to link the macro- and micro­ levels in reaching a fuller understanding of how gender divisions affect social processes has been noted in several disciplines.

Feminist researchers in sociology, for example, point to the need to ‘rejoin the macro­ social (and the study of social structure) with the micro-social (and the social- psychological study of how individuals perceive their place within the social structure)’ (Daniels, 1982:347). The integrative approaches of migrant systems and migrant networks seek to link macro- and micro-scales, working from the ‘top-down’ and the ‘bottom-up’ respectively, but as shown above, also have their shortcomings. The structuration model applied to migration sounds promising, but has yet to fulfil its promise to include gender in its analysis.

A ‘new economics of migration’, or household strategies approach, has recently emerged, which also pitches itself some way between the individual and the structural. It has been suggested that some elements of the household strategies model can be found in the

structuration model (Wright, 1995). The household strategies framework has also been used in more general contexts, which I will discuss in the following section; here, the emphasis is on its application in migration studies. The basis of this approach is that migration decisions are made not by isolated individual actors, but by larger social units, typically families or households, motivated not by income maximisation but by income diversification and risk minimisation (Lauby and Stark, 1988; Stark, 1984). From this viewpoint, the:

migration of individual members or the entire household unit represents a strategy at the household level to achieve a fit between resources such as land and capital, the consumption needs of its members and the alternatives for generating monetary and non-monetary income.

(Boyd, 1989:645)

The link to the macro-level is made plain in the household strategies model proposed by Charles Wood, in which migration is described as ‘an important aspect of the adaptive strategy that the household pursues in response to changing structural constraints’ (Wood, 1981:340). At the same time, migration is determined by micro-level factors, such as the gender divisions of labour within the household which release some members while retaining others (Chant and Radcliffe, 1992).

The problem with this approach is that the household is assumed to allocate rationally capital and labour resources to provide for the productive and reproductive needs of its members - effectively substituting the rational, calculating individual of neo-classical economics with a rational, calculating household (Goss and Lindquist, 1995). Sylvia Chant and Sarah Radcliffe (1992) point to two further flaws of the household strategies approach. The first is that the theoretical basis of the model has been insufficiently substantiated through empirical work - though this surely provides a justification for further research in this area. The second is that the terminology is imprecisely defined and drawn from both feminist and Marxist works, which are often contradictory. This may present a larger problem, and is connected to a third, still more far-reaching problem which can be identified. This is that the actual concepts, and not just the language in which they are expressed, are misleading and misplaced. The concept of a unified household strategy in particular:

misrepresents intra-household behaviour, obscures intra-household stratification by gender and generation, and stifles the voices of the unempowered - usually females and the young.

A strategy implies a conscious, collaborative decision to benefit all those involved, when in fact ‘collective family strategies are not always in harmony with the strategies of individual members’ (Hareven, 1987:xvi).

Yet it does seem that the primary factors in the analysis of who migrates, whether or not anyone else moves, and who stays, can be identified as: the organisation of productive and reproductive labour at the domestic level; the divisions of power, decision-making and status within the household; and the pattern of gender segregation in labour markets of both sending and receiving areas. State policies, and cultural and social ideologies are further sources of influence (Chant, 19926). The interaction of macro- and micro-levels is clearly apparent in this brief summary of the influential factors in migration. I argue that a household approach is a progressive framework with which to analyse these primary factors in the migration process at both the macro- and micro-levels. Not only that, but the empirical testing of the household approach in the evaluation of migration situations could lead to the development of a more general household framework for widespread application in feminist and gender studies. This thesis aims to contribute to this development, and a conceptual framework of the household to be tested in the analysis of migration from Mexico to the US is discussed in the final section of this chapter. In the following section I address some of the problematics of the theoretical construction of ‘the household’ and the ‘household strategy’.