Dissertation Improvement Grant: Watershed Management in the Wake of Emigration:Transnational Flows of Remittances and Capital in Rural Households and Communities

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Carylanna Taylor Bahamondes, doctoral student at the University of South Florida, supervised by Dr. Rebecca K. Zarger, will investigate how remittances sent home by transnational immigrant workers affect natural resources in the home country. Community-based natural resource management projects, such as those governing national parks, tend to treat communities as spatially bounded localities contained within physical watersheds. In contrast, Bahamondes will explore the possibility that transnational immigration stretches community and park boundaries and changes behaviors that impact natural resources within and beyond local watersheds.The researcher will carry out a year of field research in Azul Meámbar National Park in Honduras, and among Honduran immigrants in the United States. The researcher will address the following questions: 1) How do the funds (economic remittances) and ideas, perceptions, and values (social remittances) that emigrants send to their households of origin affect household, village-community, and watershed-impacting practices? 2) How do remittance-driven changes in social and economic capital affect the distribution of power among households to impact decisions about community and park resource management? Building on prior research, the study begins with a village-wide survey to document immigration, remittance-receipt and expenditure, practices, and economic and social capital. Three case-study families will keep remittance budget diaries and all family members, including those who immigrated to Honduran cities and the United States, will be interviewed to reconstruct and contextualize the flow of funds and ideas. She will use participant observation of family, village, and park activities in Honduras and in-depth interviews with case-study family immigrants to the United States to document their experiences with and discourse about remittances and watershed impacting activities. The research is important because it brings together research on transnationalism and on political ecology to understand how transnational movement tangibly affects home environments. The research findings will be shared with park communities and managers so that they may consider immigration and remittances in future planning to improve conservation and development practice. The research also contributes to the education of a graduate student.