Dystopian Travels in Gringolandia: Engendering Ethnicity Among Mexican Migrants to the United States

Abstract

This paper examines the correlation between migration to the United States from Mexico, ethnicity, and changing gender relations among Mexicans on both sides of the international border. For example, the idea that Mexican society is homogenous and static, and therefore that only when they arrive in the United States do men and women from Mexico confront challenges to gender roles associated with traditionalism and patriarchy, is demonstrably false if nonetheless persistent. Using changing gender relations as illustrative of transformations associated more broadly with transnationalism, modernity, and ethnicity, I argue that an understanding of shifting relations between men and women as husbands and wives, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, must be grounded in a rich knowledge of the changing conditions in the country of origin, Mexico, as well as the country of destination, the United States.

Keywords: acculturation, culture change, gender, gringoization, Mexico, migration, modernity, transnationalism