CAREER: Gendered Transnational Labor Migration, Agriculture, and Environmental Change in Mesoamerica

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Labor migration across international borders continues to grow and is an increasingly important livelihood strategy for many households around the world. This type of migration has significant implications for rural livelihoods and the physical environments of migrant-sending communities, particularly in the developing world. It is predicted that global environmental change will result in increased out-migration from rural areas in the developing world as livelihoods are impacted. Migration patterns (who goes, where, and for how long) are highly gendered, with men and women following different strategies in different places. Labor migrants usually maintain ties to origin households and communities by frequently sending remittances and by returning home periodically or permanently. Thus their migration is associated both with their physical absence and with the injection of new resources, ideas, or skills during their absence and on their return. This research will examine the interconnected outcomes of international labor migration for sending region agricultural systems, land distributions, household economies, gender relations, and local/regional environments in Mexico and Central America. Research to date in Mexico suggests that local gender norms and expectations are important in shaping these outcomes. Thus this project will explicitly explore the role of gender, and specific and varying gendered migration patterns, in determining the impacts of international labor migration. The project will also analyze what role local environmental change plays as a driver of current patterns (both internal and international) of labor migration. By examining both environmental outcomes and environmental drivers, research results will contribute to a better theoretical understanding of the relationship between environmental change and human migration and the complex intertwining of this relationship with key social systems such as gender. Over a five-year period, the research supported by this CAREER award will conduct research in three regions: Mexico's southern Yucatan region, the highland Guatemalan state of Huehuetenango, and the northern Nicaraguan states of Leon and Chinandega. Methods are primarily ethnographic, consisting of face-to-face interview-surveys with smallholder farming households as well as semi-structured in-depth interviews with a subset of migration-participating households.Findings from this project will inform policies to facilitate positive outcomes in human and environmental well-being in the contemporary world. The project will help establish a Geographers' Migration Research Network. Integrated with the research project are various educational activities. The project will support and train at least three graduate students through research assistantships and their participation in collaborative research teams consisting of faculty and students from Utah State University and El Colegio de la Frontera Sur in Mexico. Establishment of these research teams will foster an expectation and culture of international collaboration. The project will also foster global and local citizenship in undergraduate students, through service-learning activities and the development, implementation, assessment, and dissemination of new teaching materials on migration, environment, and development.