Miguel, 28, is the fifth son of a family of six children whose main income was the international remittances from their father. I use the case of Miguel to illustrate the trajectories of beneficiaries who were exposed to both a tradition of international migration in their households and to the migration context of the taquerias. His father migrated to the USA when Miguel was nine years old, enabling the family to migrate internally from their hamlet to Tama town. This result echoes the findings of King et al. (2008) who have previously observed in Albania how the international migration of some members of the family financed the internal migration of the entire household to locations that offered more housing services and a better quality of life. Indeed, Miguel’s father probably considered that, on his return, he preferred to relocate near to his home town, where he could invest his earnings or have greater opportunities for employment. King and Skeldon (2010) identified similar results in their theoretical models of return migrants’ pathways, as did Skeldon (2006) in parts of China, Vietnam and India.
Since then, his father had returned and remigrated continuously. The main sources of income for Miguel’s family were the international remittances sent by his father,
Oportunidades, and the wages of his mother, who sold clothes in nearby towns or
Oaxaca City. In his view, Oportunidades was not as useful as remittances, but his mother described how both incomes were beneficial and complemented each other:
Oportunidades helped us. Before, there was no support and people could
only finish primary school. We began to live much better and to eat better … it helped us with household expenses, food, what the children needed at school … and of course my husband’s money helped… He doesn’t send a lot of money but it helps us … and we have been using Oportunidades to buy food, vegetables, fruit, meat, better clothes and soap to wash them.
The case of this household is similar to other studies that have found positive complementarities between remittances and Oportunidades (Bañuelos, 2006; de la Rocha, 2009; Sanchiz, 2006). The money that Miguel’s father sent was invested in building their house, while his mother allocated Oportunidades for its intended purpose. Although his father was in the USA, Miguel did not feel affected by his absence. According to Sawyer (2014) in his study of the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, the gender of the parent who migrates has a significant impact on the educational aspirations of the children. In his study, children cared for by their mothers did not report any changes in their aspirations or were even more successful, suggesting that Miguel’s life did not change radically and may even have improved as a result of Oportunidades and remittances. His mother wanted him to study and encouraged him to finish senior-high school:
Thanks to Oportunidades all my children finished senior high but now they have to see what are they going to do, they have to find their job themselves but I know they won’t suffer like me or their father because they speak Spanish, they know maths, they know writing and reading, we don’t know those things, that’s why I told them to finish senior high.
Although his mother had low educational levels, she could positively influence the school aspirations of her children. The arrival of new schools in Tama and the support of Oportunidades led her to encourage her children to take advantage of the opportunities not available to her own generation. However, Miguel’s parents had no experience of higher education institutions, which restricted their ability to guide him on the different university options. Indeed, their perception was that completing senior school was a sufficiently high achievement in itself. Therefore, as prior evidence suggests (e.g. Bok, 2010 in Australia; Young Lives, 2012 in India, Vietnam and Peru),
the number of school years that parents had completed impacted on their aspirations for a university education for their children and their ability to guide them.
Although his parents supported Miguel during his school years, the migration context of the taquerias encouraged him to work in one in Mexico City for six months after completing junior high. He saw his peers returning from the taquerias wearing new clothes and talking about the work and their lifestyles in other cities. His decision to migrate was driven by curiosity and a desire to make his own money, as prior studies on migration of Mexican youths have identified (Kandel and Massey, 2002; Tucker et al., 2013). Although Miguel returned to study at senior high, he had already shaped an aspiration to work in the taquerias, especially after seeing the lifestyle of his patrones. Once he finished senior-high, he thought about further studies but was unsure how to go about it. The closest universities were in Oaxaca City, where he had only been a few times and did not know anyone. Migrating to the USA became the more feasible option:
I went to experience what it feels like to be in the USA. Although that was not my plan I did it… I was thinking of studying but I didn’t have the opportunity to continue because, first, Oaxaca, I knew it only a bit, I did not know where schools were, where to rent, more than anything ... you have to know at least someone to do something there, that’s why … maybe that’s why I did not study further but crossed to the USA.
The day after his graduation, Miguel began his journey. With his father, godfather and brother, he crossed the Sasabe Desert to the state of Washington:
My dad invited me because he had been going and coming back from the USA since I was eight, and the coyote (people smuggler) was my godfather… I did not have any idea how to continue studying in further education or what was next. My dad never told me anything but ‘Let’s go to the United States’.
His family migration history influenced his trajectory after Oportunidades. Though his mother was making good use of both incomes, he migrated to the USA after senior high because his father and his godfather took the decision for him. Previous literature has shown that fathers with US migration experience encourage their sons to migrate (Cerutti and Massey, 2001; Tucker et al., 2013). However, once Miguel arrived, his
aspirations were higher than working in the agricultural sector, where his father took him, as he was also influenced by the potential profits to be made in the taquerias:
I was taken to the fields and it was the worst thing that could have happened to me … it was a 360-degree change because I used to be in a classroom with my pencil and my notebook, and suddenly I was collecting apples… I got tired and, after nine months, left that job, I told my father ‘Here I can’t do anything, I can’t make money and I came here to make money, not to stay here always’, so I moved to LA (Los Angeles), and I went back to what has always been my job, the taqueria…
In Los Angeles, he found a job in a taqueria and accommodation with help of his friends from Tama. With the money he was making he was able to build his house in Tama, something that made him proud. Miguel was certain that his migration experience increased his economic well-being and his goal became to open his own
taqueria:
In the USA, I got the idea to open a business and not to study at all. Why study if I can make lots of money from this? A teacher, for example, is always at the same level and, as we say in Tama, ‘A good taquero makes good money’ so, with the money I earned, I thought ‘I am going to start my own business’, and I completely forgot about further studying.
As Bok (2010) has suggested, the decision to continue studying, or not, can be influenced by the perceived value of education as a path to obtaining better employment and social mobility. For Miguel, the means to obtain social mobility was not education. The way Miguel decided he could continue making progress in his life was through opening his own taqueria. The successful stories of his patrones influenced him. This might be explained by the fact that other people from similar backgrounds can modify ‘mental models’ or the aspirations and future-oriented behaviour of individuals (Bernard et al., 2014). Indeed, aspirations can be framed based on the lives, ideals and achievements of ‘similar’ individuals in the ‘aspiration window’ (Genicot and Ray, 2009; Ray, 2006).
When he finished building his house, after five years in the USA, Miguel returned to Tama but with the ambition to migrate again somewhere else in Mexico. He moved to Guanajuato City where a neighbour offered him work. There, he met his wife and had a
baby. After getting to know more about the taco business, he finally decided to open his own taqueria, but the business did not go as well as he had expected. Perceiving his aspirations to have failed at destination, he decided to return to Tama.
Back in Tama he began to earn a living doing what his parents had taught him: weaving clothes or crafts to sell. After a while, with the help of his sister, he found a job at the local hospital. He considered this as a stable job because he received a regular income with some benefits. However, Miguel still hoped to migrate again and open his own
taqueria in another city in Mexico. He wanted his daughter to inherit the business so
that she would not have to worry about unemployment:
I will always have the aim to open a taqueria because, if you are good at it, you will live well… I want to tell my daughter ‘You know what? Why do you want to study that much if you can make money with my business?’, because now, even if you study, there are no jobs and you get frustrated … that’s my aim, to open my taqueria and get rich.
Miguel’s migration experience made him aware that education did not always lead to social mobility. Indeed, he considered that people with an education do not get jobs easily – a common view in Tama. He was, instead, more inspired by the successful experiences of individuals from his locality – those of his patrones.
5.2.2 Flor: ‘My father used to say to me “You are a woman and you are only useful to