Upper-middle class Mexican women’s narratives of coping with new gender expectations post-migration offers another compelling illustration of how gender intersects with class. Their struggles with the domestic gendered division of labour in Canada are indicative of how relations of gender are changed and navigated through spatial mobility. For these women migration initiated a dramatic reconstruction of their gender identities, as they were now thrust into domestic responsibilities that their privileged class status in Mexico had permitted them to avoid. Accustomed to nannies and housekeepers, migration entailed a type of downward social
105
mobility as these services are not as readily available or as inexpensive in Canada. The difficulties and challenges of confronting new gender expectations around childcare and domestic labour were recurring themes in women’s narrative as exemplified in the following illustrations:
Everything in Canada was different! All of a sudden I was thrown in a culture where you actually have to cook and clean, and go to the grocery store. In the beginning my husband used to go with me every week. We used to go up and down every single isle and I had no idea what to get. I never cooked in my life; O.K. never! I never touched a pan in my life, I never cleaned. I never did any of it in Mexico!...Oh it was terrible! I had such a feeling of inadequacy, and a sense of helplessness. By that I mean O.K. I can cook but, what am I going to cook? You see, you go to the grocery store and you face these chunks of beef that are huge and I was completely overwhelmed!
Angelica’s remarks are equally revealing:
Many times when I speak with my sister who lives in Mexico, I joke a lot. I say to her, “I came to Canada to wash toilets!” [Rolling her eyes and laughing]—because I never did that when I was in Mexico, but here I do [Laughing]. In fact many of my taboos or images of myself, as in—I do not do this, I do not do that, which in Mexico relates to the social status that you have, I had to re-evaluate. Because of my class I was free from doing many things, like laundry, like cooking. Where class is different here [in Canada], it is completely blended here. Here you become more part of a society, which in Mexico you live in your bubble, in the specific social level that you belong to and you never leave that comfort zone. Here you relate to all social levels, classes they are not as pronounced, not as obvious. In Mexico class defines the fabric of life. (Angelica has lived in Canada for 10 yrs)
Irma related an analogous viewpoint:
You know coming to Canada has made me see Mexico differently. For example, I was raised to think that people are equal and you treat everyone with respect. But once you are here [in Canada], I tell you, you see the difference. Like the doctor’s son and the labourer’s son are in the same class and they speak to each other and they play. Now I have really seen equality. I really had to break that class difference, to say, “Yeah, I’m friends with the maid.” Whereas in Mexico it is like, “Oh my goodness! How come you are friends with the maid?” I mean you can treat the maid nice, but to say my friend is a maid—NO! Not in Mexico, they say, “Oh how come? This is a sin, no you are not friends with a maid, you are nice to her, you can be polite you can even give her donations, give here food, give her whatever, but you are not her friend!” There it is more like an up-down relationship—they see it as if you are lowering yourself to be a maid’s friend. Now [after migrating to Canada], I’m like no she is a person, she is the maid, she is the cashier, she is the cleaner—but she is more than that. [pause] And it is not just my views that have changed, it is also my experiences too because I realized all of the ways my life as a woman in Mexico was an advantaged one, something I never truly appreciated before coming to Canada.
106
In the case of migrant workers, men’s physical separation from their families also necessitates the reorganization of household arrangements and by extension gender roles. In discussions about this process, migrant men often alluded to the transformation of normative gender expectations as a result of their migration to Canada. For example, Juan poignantly stated: “Cleaning, laundry, cooking, these were never my worries in Mexico, but here, in Canada, here I am a man and a woman.” Similarly, Gilberto expressed the following:
I never realized how much my wife did for me, no, not at all. Not until I came to Canada and had to do it for myself—here I cook, I do my own laundry, I buy my own food—I never did this in Mexico—no way! Now I do understand.
While Jesús told me,
Now when I’m back home [in Mexico], I’m more aware. I try to give my wife a break. Now I also cook and do laundry, I did none of this before.
Needless to say men’s absence from Mexico is a source of marital conflict. Migrant men reported that their wives feel resentful and overwhelmed at having to manage the household alone. Equally, husbands are frustrated that they are ‘not there to help’ and/or ‘oversee’ the daily activities and responsibilities of the household. In one sense this frustration is indicative of the destablization of rigid gender roles as men referenced the importance of assisting their wives with domestic and childcare duties; on the other hand men also expressed frustration about the loss of authority about household decision-making processes. Additionally, men generally mentioned ‘masculine’ tasks that underscore a continued gendered division of labour such as disciplining children, fixing things, or managing household finances.
In discussing the experience of initial downward social mobility in the Canadian labour market, immigrant men also referenced the transformative impact of migration.
Before coming to Canada I had never really worked. Not like the way those who work in the fields and factories in my country [Mexico] work. Here I had to work in the greenhousese—working up to eight hours every day from 7 in the morning till 5 at night—I can now say with pride, for the first time in my life, that I really worked these hands. There, I was protected, spoiled and selfish; I tended to look down on the poor. I took so many things for granted, like going to restaurants. I would be rude to waitresses and
107
waiters—I was demanding without ever considering or realizing how difficult such jobs can be. You know? How one’s position in life determines so many things. (Rodrigo)
The funny thing about working in the greenhouse—even though it was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do, the physical labour, it was exhausting! But it woke me up, it made me tougher. I was [shaking his head and laughing] such a snob in Mexico! I never broke a sweat; I never really worked a day in my life. Really! [Laughing] I realize that now. And yet I felt so entitled, so worthy. In many ways coming to Canada showed me what it is to truly be a man, to work and to earn things. So much of what I had in Mexico was given to me by my parents. I just simply took it for granted. (Roberto) In advancing the GGP framework Pessar and Mahler (2003: 819) ask, ‘does transnational migration provide openings for men and women to question hegemonic notions of gender and entertain competing understandings of gendered lives?’ They propose, ‘[i]f the latter proves, at least sometimes, to be the case, we should inquire whether the changes observed were emergent prior to migration, or if they would not have occurred in the absence of migration’ (Pessar & Mahler, 2003: 819). The example explored above are suggestive of the ways migration has incited migrant women and men to reflect differently on Mexican gender norms and class structure.
The inclusion of women and men's embodied narratives of negotiating Canadian immigration reveals the gendering of immigration processes, more specifically how ‘social locations’ of difference are constituted, negotiated and embodied not in the abstract, but through material practices in particular sites (Dyck & McLaren, 2004; Silvey, 2006). My analysis illustrates how gender identities are often altered and reshaped through transnational processes, highlighting the ‘co-constructed nature of identities and places’ (Silvey, 2006). As other authors have noted (Boehm, 2008; Castellanos & Boehm, 2008; Zontini, 2004), transnationalism reconstitutes gender in diverse and contradictory ways. In contrast to one-dimensional findings from prior studies equating migration with greater equality, my findings underscore the paradoxical and diverse ways in which intersecting geographies of gender and class are constituted, reproduced and resisted in everyday life.
108
CONCLUSION
In this article I have taken up Pessar and Mahler’s (2003) challenge for scholars to do research that provides a gendered analysis of transnational migration—namely the gender transformations that migration elicits—in order to examine the ways gender identities and relations are negotiated in transnational contexts and also how gender organizes them. In so doing, I have underscored ‘embodied transnationalism’ (Dunn, 2010)—the emplaced materiality of the everyday lived experience of transnational migration. Exploration of the gendered migration experiences of Mexican migrants in Canada reveals the intersecting relations of gender and class. These ‘gendered geographies of power’ are accessed through research participants’ embodied narratives of migration. Specifically, the analysis elucidates the complexity of women and men’s gendered lives by tracing how systems of social inequality are actively negotiated, resisted and reproduced. The research reveals how migration reconfigures gender identities and subjectivities. For example, post-migration both upper-middle class Mexican women and male migrant workers face new domestic burdens, while some upper-middle class immigrant men must participate in manual labour for the first time in their lives. At the same time, research participants’ narratives also suggest the transformative potentiality of migration as men and women come to not only question prevailing ideologies of class in Mexico, but also their positionality in relation to these power hierarchies. Thus, findings denote the shifting transnational social location of gender.
This article problematizes scholarship suggestive of the liberating and destabilizing effects of transnational migration. Focusing on gender and not women, my research underscores the importance of a relational, spatially and temporally contextualized gender analysis. Also in attending to transnational embodiment through examining narratives as access points of embodied negotiated gender subjectivities, I emphasize the ongoing, dynamic and contradictory articulations of gender and in turn the agency of transnational subjects. Against overly
109
structuralist readings of transnational migration, in foregrounding embodiment my approach to gender emphasizes the constitutive relationship between agency and structure. Working from Mahler and Pessar’s (2001) GGP transnational theoretical framework the research emphasizes the individual agency of migrants in negotiating and constituting the structure of gender, while also realizing the constraints put upon agency. In demonstrating how gender acts as an axis of power relations that shapes and organizes the materiality of men and women’s embodied lived experiences of migration the research contributes to feminist migration scholarship.
110