When Women Remain Behind: The Emotional Management of Transnational Family Life from a Community of Origin

• In Event: 380 - Regular Session. Gendered Dimensions of Family and Work

Abstract

Through in-depth interviews with 54 women “who remain behind” in an origin community in central Mexico, this research examines the ways in which women perform emotion work during periods of family separation when their husbands migrate abroad. Given women’s role in reproductive work, the emotional management needed to sustain transnational family life is both heightened and altered during periods of family separation. In this paper we focus on the role of women as emotional managers in the maintenance of family life across borders with a particular interest in understanding the types of emotion work that women do to help mitigate the emotional costs of family separation. Our findings show that women perform emotion work in three important ways. First, women are seen as the ‘emotional managers’ of family life with the responsibility of knowing and responding to the emotional needs of family members. Second, women provide love and encouragement through palabras de ánimo (encouragement words) to evoke emotional support in an effort to mitigate their husband’s feelings about loneliness and economic uncertainty when in the US. Third, we find that women suppress their own emotional needs and wants during periods of family separation. In these ways, women’s emotional management of family, invisible in the eyes of many, makes women central actors in the migration process through the maintenance and emotional reproduction of transnational family life.

Authors

• Robin Paige, Rice University

• Sergio Chavez, Rice University