Mapping Formal and Informal Labor Practices in a Transnational Forced Migrant Community

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Forced migration of Guatemalans and their participation in the labor markets of Mexico and the US has led to their categorization as economic migrants. This identification loses sight of the contextual experience of forced migration for more than economic reasons. My research methods apply a cultural analysis that blends feminist ethnography with photography. By distributing disposable cameras, participants’ have been able to record aspects of their lives of greatest concern. These images and participants’ interpretations of them will enhance globalization/gender theories by capturing the cultural practices that enable or prevent women or men from participating in particular forms of production and exchange. My use of a feminist ethnographic approach aims to challenge the dominant representation of migrants, based on a heteropatriarchical gendered script, which defines women as domestics and nurturer’s of children, while men are viewed as mobile wage earners. This gendered construction has become the dominant form of photographing forced migrants by International Humanitarian Organizations such as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees that diminish migrants’ self-determination to freedom of movement and residence within and across the borders of the state. My photographs aim to expand the scope of how the international community understands the immediate needs of forced migrants. A focus on gender relations can help devise gender conscious programs that help further the peaceful coexistence of forced migrants and citizen-nationals of host nation-states and diminish the multiple vulnerabilities (xenophobia, intimidation, and violence) faced under long-term exile.

Stream: Art in Communities

Paper: Mapping Formal and Informal Labor Practices in Transnational Forced Migrant Communities