¡Si, Se Puede! Understanding the Status Location of Women in Transnational Relationships

• In Event: 4366 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 3. Global and Transnational Feminisms

Abstract

This piece analyzes the power dynamics experienced by women in transnational relationships on the Mexico-U.S. borderlands. For women with labor-migrant husbands, remaining in the sending country brings about notable challenges to the traditionally patriarchal norms of rural Mexico towns. To address questions regarding this population and related status dynamics and vulnerabilities, I first build on prior family, gender and immigration literature and particularly Cromwell and Olson’s (1975) original three-dimensional model of relationship power. Secondly, using primary data from qualitative, in-depth interviews with Northern Mexico women, I find that these women whose husbands migrate simultaneously experience empowering and disempowering consequences—consequences that cannot be fully understood without a more complex and dynamic model of relationship power. Indeed, many of these women experience empowerment through new responsibilities and decision-making power, yet also significant disempowerment when it comes to stress and either continued or increased gender-based constraints. Using the three-component model of relationship power, and a hypothetical infidelity scenario, allows for better understanding of women’s status locations and autonomy. My discussion and findings contribute to a small yet important literature on transnational relationships and, more generally, the study of families, inequality and immigration.

Author

• Melissa Rodriguez