Mexican migration is one of the most studied around the world. Research on mobilities from Mexico to the United States has been used as examples when researching other mobilities within Latin America and beyond. A good example of this is the concept of cumulative causation, whereby members build networks from close-knit communities. The pioneer migrant has become a lynchpin in how many of us look at migration since there is always that one person that usually migrates, thereby opening the door for others.
The author argues against the idea that cumulative causation is said to eventually reach a saturation point within migrant from rural area since eventually networks ran out of participants or people willing to migrate (usually young males). She presents us with 4 scenarios of how cumulative causation need not need to reach saturation.
- Wilson states that internal migrants may not have a direct access to international networks, but throughout their movements, interactions, marriage, friendships, people in Mexicali in this case develop networks outside of the regions where they come from. This helps to mitigate saturation.
- Wilson, rightly in my mind, argues that networks are built throughout different places where once may have family, friends, or other relations. Network building need not be geographically located to where a person physically finds him/herself (the internet has show us this).
- The power of female migration, which has, more often than not been ignored and/or sidelined. Wilson rightly states that women also create and develop networks, where through marriage and/or friendship networks keep building and expanding. It sounds strange, but female migration is a phenomenon, which was mostly ignored until the late 1990s where suddenly people realized that millions of women were moving across the globe as nannies and bankers and everything in between.
- The increased importance of urban centres. 54% of the globe’s population (and counting) now lives in urban centres, which is unprecedented. This takes us away from the idea of rural to urban migrations, which still takes place, but the majority or migrations are now urban to urban, which enables the growth of transnational networks. It also goes against the concept of saturation since people keep moving and developing networks throughout different urban
What are your thoughts on this article?
Die
Am 12. November 2016 um 10:15 Uhr
I think that Wilson mentions some interesting and important points. Building networks is a dynamic process, people keep on moving from one point to another. In times of globalization, it may be difficult to imagine that migration of this type may reach a saturation point. Wilson’s first and second point indeed seem to be good arguments against the theory of saturation.
The third point is quite interesting. Therefore I wonder why so little attention has been paid to female migration and to the role women play in the migration of men. She has a good point in emphasizing that women may become “nodal poinst in the migration of both male and female siblings” (Wilson 159). Male family members can use their wife’s or sister’s networks to emigrate, and they in turn become part of a network, which could help other family members or friends emigrate/migrate. Therefore, speaking of reaching saturation might not seem plausible when considering this aspect.
Am 13. November 2016 um 17:02 Uhr
As the previous speaker already mentioned, for me it is also really hard to imagine that migration of this type (or of other types) will come to a saturation point. This kind of network theory is new to me but I especially in times with all the social networks where people can connect in a few seconds, maybe the networks will get bigger and bigger. Today it is so much easier to create new networks or extend them, that I don´t know how to reach a point of saturation.
For me, point four, the urban-urban migration is really interesting because I can observe it in my own environment. In our generation it is kind of normal, moving from the – very often – small hometowns/villages to a bigger city to study. After the study while looking for a job, often the only options are other bigger cities. Not rarely people then decide also after the network they have in the destination city. Everyone knows someone or knows someone who knows someone and so on in that cities. A good example I think is looking for rooms in bigger cities, especially Berlin, without having a network there, sometimes it seems impossible.
Am 13. November 2016 um 18:05 Uhr
By means of her research, Tamar Diana Wilson contributes to the understanding of the migration phenomenon, particularly in regard to the building up and functioning of migrant-networks. Yet, the researcher approaches to the inner circumstances of the urban-urban migration dynamic, instead of dealing with the already extensively and intensively studied rural-urban migration issue. From that novel perspective, the author puts into question the rigidness and male-driven nature assigned by many scholars to the migration influx in the American-Mexican border. The latter is clearly seen in the fluidity and multiplicity of networking-options woven by Mexican individuals and families settled in urban areas, who are characterized by the dislocation of the parochial social tissue that characterizes small villages and “pueblos” in the countryside. Urban migrants don´t depend anymore on their primordial family cores when pursuing to cross the border; instead, they can also rely and appeal to distant and sometimes unknown members of their extensive families when attempting to cross the Rio Grande. This particularity is made possible, in an important degree, by the female members of the migrants’ household, a fact that transforms women into essential actors in numerous experiences of urban-urban migration. All in all, Wilson manifests the irreducibility of infra and supranational human displacements to saturated-network and male-driven phenomena. Rather, the author proposes to apprehend such complicated issues from a flexible and functional point of view, while taking into consideration the uniqueness of every individual and household experience.
Am 15. November 2016 um 16:08 Uhr
I also believe that the described migration is not going to reach a saturation point. The globalization and the related advances in communication and social media are even going to increase the possibilities to amplify these networks.
Leas example for urban-urban migration in our generation is really good. A lot of younger people moving from one big city to another. For this, they are using networks to find jobs and flats. In January I’m going to Rio de Janeiro to do an internship and at the moment I’m in contact with friends of my friends who are living in Rio to find a place to stay at. Through social media it is easy to get in contact with them and they are passing me other contacts to expand my networks.
The role of females in the migration process is quite interesting. Every time we’ve read an article about migration it is focused on male migration. But as Wilson pointed out females are important in creating and amplifying migration networks.
Am 25. November 2016 um 17:53 Uhr
Wilson’s study gives a very interesting insight into how migration networks, especially in case of urban-urban migration, work. To be honest I haven’t quite understood how Massey et al. come to the conclusion that migration will reach a saturation point and what exactly is meant by “bounded community”. I do not believe that something so flexible and fluent as migration will ever come to an end. It will keep developing and changing according to the necessities of the respective time and place.
I find it hard to believe that female migration or the role women play through facilitating migration has not been paid enough attention to in social science. Wilson’s article makes the importance of women in building (transnational) migration networks very clear.
By picking out some interesting but very different cases of migration in her article, Wilson points exactly to the fluent nature of migration and migration networks that, in my opinion, contradicts any theory of possible saturation.
Am 9. December 2016 um 16:01 Uhr
The Massey et al.’s thesis was written in 1994 and, even if it may have been true one day in rural areas (which is impossible to demonstrate), it seems now over-dated. Indeed globalisation fosters exchanges and the creation of networks are always cumulating. Even if I agree with Wilson on the 4 points mentioned against Massey et al’s theory I was shocked not by the fact that the role of women in migration had been ignored but by the fact that she made it a thing. I think both men and women create new networks through work, familiars, marriages, siblings and friends and I am not really pleased to read that “this is most probably due to women’s central occupation with the morality of familiy obligations” (p.12).
Wilson may be against Massey et al’s theory but she actually considers women through reproductive obligations, such as Massey et al. did:
– according to Massey et al. the cumulative causation reaches a point of saturation when there is too many males and not enough females
– according to Wilson the women are the ones in charge of maintaining and expanding the network through familial or relative obligations
I hope I haven’t well understood this point …
Am 29. December 2016 um 11:33 Uhr
I agree with my colleagues above about the impossibility of the saturation of the cumulative causation of the migration process: in a time of globalization and of extremely high use of internet in general I cannot imagine a saturation of the phenomenon but an extension of it; without this connections sometimes is really hard to survive in an urban center like Berlin, London etc. Migration is a dynamic process and we cannot really predict how it will develop in the future; this is a fact that depends on policy decisions but also on world-wide phenomena (in the last 10 years the increasing use of social media for instance).
Regarding the central role of women in the migration processes, it is really sad that they have not been considered for a long time. However that’s a trend that we can find in other world-wide processes leaded by women like feeding, their central role in the farm production (in which they are not remunerated as much as men) or taking care of children or old people, so it’s not surprising me at all that they play a central and decisive role also in the building of transnational migration networks and giving a big help in the adaptation of siblings in another country.