Summary
Summary all Literature Gender and Social Inequality, year 2020/2021
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This document consists of all the literature of the course Gender and Social Inequality by Julienne Weegels.
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Book and articles Gender and Social InequalityCare Across Generations: solidarity and sacrifice in transnational families
Introduction
Angela and Marbeya: mothers of migrant daughters and primary caregivers for grandchildren
in transnational families. Their daughters migrated and they take care of their daughters as if
they were their own. In this book they take a close, ethnographic look at grandmother care in
transnational families, examining on the one hand the structural and gendered inequalities that
motivate migration and caregiving and on the other the cultural values that sustain
intergenerational care and give it meaning.
Global care and grandmothers
Grandmothers are central actors in the material and moral economies of global migration and
care. The concept of care circulation offers a way of moving beyond dichotomous views of
care transfer in the global economy by highlighting social relations of care in transnational
families.
The idea of care in circulation helps reveal the ways intergenerational care in
Nicaraguan transnational families is a dynamic resource for social regeneration without losing
sight of the structural and gendered inequalities that shape migration and care. Nicaraguan
migration flows North and South, following lines of inequality and relative economic
opportunity in historically contingent ways. Examination of how care in the migrant-sending
country of Nicaragua is reconfigured across generations in response to transnational
migration, which is influenced by political and economic opportunities.
Grandmothers serve as middlewomen, negotiating between children and parents. The
biological parent, especially mother and child tie remain primordial, and grandmother care is
analyzed as temporary. Such a framing further stigmatizes transnational families rather than
viewing migration, absence, and distance as central features of contemporary family forms in
their own right.
Nicaraguan Migration Dynamics: Effects on Grandmothers and Families Who Stay
Migrant destinations matter for members of transnational families, because geographic
distance, host-country attitude toward migrants, and immigration policies shape the
experiences not only of migrants but also of family members who stay behind. What shapes
,the migration is economic inequality as a determinant of migratory flows and migrant
illegality as a factor shaping the experience for both parties.
The choice to migrate is often made not by families as collectives but by individual
migrants. Viewing migration as a choice when migrants are leaving context of chronic
poverty and social insecurity fails to recognize how migration is always a decision
constrained by structural factors in the political economy. The 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution
brought the Sandinistas to power, and many former allies or functionaries of the Somoza
regime fled the country and sought political asylum in the US. Throughout the 1980s,
hundreds of thousands of poor and working-class Nicaraguans continued to emigrate to the
US, fleeing political violence of the Contra War. The term ‘economic migrant’ is problematic,
because it glosses over the complicated, intertwined constraints and challenges – political,
economic and social – that shape migration and because economic migrants are deemed to
move voluntarily and therefore are often not granted political protection or social support.
Nicaraguan migration is characterized by a South-South regional dynamic, with more
than three-quarters of a million Nicaraguans residing as migrants in Costa Rica and Panama
combined. Central American migration has an international agreement of El Salvador,
Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Many live undocumented in Costa Rica. They are the
main destination. Male migrants work as construction workers, agriculture, security guards.
Women: service sector, household domestic laborers, workers in beauty salons. Migrants who
enter legally with tourist visas or temporary work permits, end un undocumented and
vulnerable to the discrimination and exploitation that accompanies their unauthorized status.
Nicaraguans are socially excluded. They are accused of taking jobs away or taking
advantage of publicly funded social services. Nicaraguan women working in domestic service
in CR are triply marginalized, as undocumented migrants, as women, and by the isolation that
characterizes domestic employment. Restrictive immigration legislation increases.
Panama is the second major regional destination for Nicaraguan migrants and also
presents a complicated case of a host country with a climate of accepting unauthorized
migrants to fill low wage service sector jobs while excluding them from mainstream society.
Panama became an important destination country after La Crisis In 2008, when employment
reduced in CR and pushed migrants further south. There are a lot of undocumented migrants.
This infrastructure of illegality also shapes the experiences of family members in Nicaragua,
as migrants trapped in lower-paid jobs have less disposable income to send home to family
members and, since a lack of legal documents makes it difficult to visit home. Long absence
and separation.
, Another major destination is Spain. Majority are women who work as caregivers in
private homes for children and elder adults. Drawn to Spain through friends, neighbors,
family members. Spain offers relatively higher-paying work. But also imposes transatlantic
distance between migrants and family members. Going south or going north can be dangerous
for Nicaraguans. North, passing through Mexico, extortion by human smugglers, abuse by
Mexican immigration authorities, violence perpetrated by armed parastate actors. The
illegalization of migration results in deportations.
When migration has lasted more than a decade, with grandmothers forming strong ties
to children in their care, ties that further complicate prospects and consequences of mother-
child reunification.
Solidaridad: A Political Ethos and Cultural Value in Nicaragua
The importance of solidaridad (solidarity) as a value motivating and reinforced by the
assumption of care by grandmothers. Grandmothers draw on solidarity and sacrifice to
motivate their care in response to the precariousness of their daughters’ migrant lives and to
the threat’s migration poses to culturally valued family unity. Solidary has powerful
significance as an orienting value for families facing the threats of political and economic
violence and social insecurity and uncertainty. A noble feeling that makes us react in the face
of the needs and pains of others, in a generous, cooperative, and committed way. Solidaridad
provides meaning for migrants themselves, who leave Nicaragua to labor abroad, making a
personal sacrifice for the sake of their children and families, and solidaridad motivates
grandmother caregivers in Nicaragua, who stay behind after migration and assume the
responsibility of caring for another generation of children.
Solidaridad, Revolution, and US Intervention
In the 1970s, 1980s, solidarity was connected to social and cultural survival, as Nicaraguans
fought a war of resistance and independence against a US-backed dictator (Somoza) and then
struggled to maintain their revolutionary ideals despite US intervention (during the Contra
War). In this period, Sandinistas organized as an armed guerrilla insurgency opposing
decades’-long control by the Somoza dynasty. Somoza was political corruption and economic
control; government favored landowners, industrialists, foreign capitalists, implementing
economic policies that marginalized the urban poor and rural campesinos. Inspired by
international postcolonial movements in LA revolutionary ideologies, the Sandinistas
developed a unique political philosophy that combined elements of Marxism, social
, democracy, feminism, and revolutionary Christianity. In the 1970s, Sandinista leaders and
intellectuals settled in exile in CR, where they organized to overthrow Somoza. International
solidarity took the form of social justice, religious and leftist groups providing material
support to Sandinistas both in exile and inside Nicaragua. El 19 de Julio is a venerated
national holiday in Nicaragua, commemorating the victory of popular rebellion and national
solidarity over the forces of dictatorship and imperialism.
In the 1980s, solidaridad from the international community continued to support
Sandinista revolutionary programs to redistribute wealth and land to the poor and to achieve
universal literacy and health care access. During the first years of the Sandinista period,
feminist pushed the FSLN to include gender equity as a central part of the revolution, leading
to initial reforms to family law and policy granting women and children better rights. Despite
its ideological and pragmatic goals, the Sandinista revolution encountered an enormous foe in
the US, which backed the Contra War. In a climate of Cold War ideological division, the
Sandinista revolution was characterized by the US as communist and hostile to US interests in
the region. In 1981 Ronald Reagan began to illicitly support military destabilization through
contrarevolucionarios, or the Contras. They had to invest in their military defense,
undermining their capacity to invest in popular social programs. In 1990, US backed Violeta
Chamorro was elected. Chamorro implemented economic policies reflecting the Washington
Consensus, or economic neoliberal prescriptions, designed by US backed international
financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to shrink the
role of the state, cut social spending, and open markets for foreign capital investment.
Structural adjustment policies slashed public spending on programs such as health care and
education that the FSLN had worked to develop. unemployment, wage stagnation,
widespread poverty, social despair.
Solidarity Rebranded: Cristiana, Socialista, Solidaria
Solidaridad has been revitalized as part of official government discourse, implying alignment
with the new LA left, solidarity with the poor, and a regional development strategy
independent of US influence. neoliberal period was ended in 2006 by controversial elections
that brought President Daniel Ortega back to power. He allied with Venezuela. Chávez,
Ortega and Fidel Castro positioned ALBA as an overtly anti-imperialist development program
that would be a radical departure from the Washington Consensus, independent of
international financial institutions, and work in favor of the poorest sectors of society. He
adapted the new FSLN slogan Cristiana, Socialista, Solidaria.
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