gender and migration

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Grasmuck, Sherri, and Patricia R. Pessar. Between two islands: Dominican international migration. University of California Pr, 1991.

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BETWEEN TWO ISLANDS

Dominican International Migration

SHERRI GRASMUCK AND

PATRICIA R. PESSAR

Sherri Grasmuck and PatriciR Pessar, "Households nnd lnternatiunal Migration: Dynamics of Generation and Gender," in Betwee11 Twu l sfllmls, 1991, Vnivrrsity of California Press, pp.148-161. Permission to reprint granted by the publisher.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY Los ANGELES OXFORD

Households and International Migration

Gains in Women's Status in the Household

Patriarchal control over household labor and its products is not only a contentious matter for household members in the Domini- can Republic; it retains its importance for Dominican immigrants in the United States as well. Control over the household budget is a key arena in which Dominican immigrant women have achieved greater gender parity. To appreciate why and how household bud- geting has become suc)l an important arena, we must discard the definition of the household which maintains that it is a collective, income-pooling unit. Implicit in this definition is the notion of a demo.£!:.!!tic or egalitarian mode of decision-making concerning how household income is obtained and spent. Income pooling, with members contributing different sources of income and collec- tively, even consensually, deciding on uses of that income, is only one possible form of budgetary organization . Indeed, such a rela- tively egalitarian type of household is a variant of domestic organi- zation that many Dominicans have, experienced for the first time in the United States. Far from being a universal structure, this household form marks a change in domestic relations within many Dominican migrant households.

Observers of the family in the Dominican Republic have distin- guished two basic forms of domestic organization, the single-mate and the multiple-mate patterns, each associated with specific forms of authority (see Brown i972; Ferran i974; Gondlez i970, i976;

{ Tancer i973). It! the sin_gle-mate pattern, authority resides largely with the senior male; in the multiple-mate unitt women tend to

../ command authority (see Brown i972; Ferran 1974). ~ -with Dominican migration to the United States, third pattern )

of domestic au thority has emerged in many immigrant house o ·s.

n @10~1-1i)akfog,AD.d con trQl pC@~ !esources ~a relative!:>~ (

The movement has b~en !_Wa from the he emony of one sex over}

e alitarian division ofjabor and distribution (;t aut_ority. Our etfino- grap ic ata on patterns of household budgeting collected in New York, allowing comparisons of budgetary arrangements before and after migration, illustrate this transition . Interviews with fifty-five immigrant women disclosed that in the Dominican Republic, prior to emigration, men controlled the household budget in the large majority of these households-even though women contrihuted

Households and International Migration 149

income in many of the households on a regular or semi-regular basis. Of the three types of budgetary arrangements uncovered, two can be considered ale-controlle The first type, the tradi- tional, patriarchal form in whjch members gave all or part of their

\V'ii.ges or profits to the senior male who, in tum, oversaw the payment of household expenses, constituted 18 percent. Approxi- mately half, or 51 percent, operated with the second type, the household-allowance pattern, wherein the wife was given a house- keeping allowance to cover such basic expenditures as food and clothing. When women in households with the household-allow- ance pattern generated income, it was most commonly used for household rather than personal items of consumption, and these household purchases tended to be luxuries rather than staples. Both objectively and symbolically, the direction of these women's savings to nonessential, prestige items reinforced the image of the man as the breadwinner and the woman as , at best, the bestower of modem status goods and, at worst, the purchaser of frivolities . Finally, 31 percent of these pre-migration households were charac- terized by what we term a pooled-household-income pattern. All but two of this third category of household were headed by women, with no senior male present in the Dominican Republic. In most cases, then, the pooling of income and shared decision-making occurred among a female head and other income-contributing household members .

Dominican households in the United States have experienced a profound change in budgetary allocation. Far fewer households follow a patriarchal pattern of budgetary control, and many more pool their income. Not only is pooling more common in the United States, but it is increasingly found in households with a senior male present. Thus only 4 percent of the fifty-five migrant households in New York followed the traditional, patriarchal pattern of budgetary control. Also, in most of the households where women received a household allowance, the wife was either not employed or engaged in industrial homework. The dominant pattern, found in 6g percent of the households in New York, was to pool income. The majority (s8 percent) of these income-pooling units were nuclear, with 42 pe rcent headed by women. When nuclear households pool in- come, the husband , wife, and working children pool a specific amount of their wages or profits for shared household expenses

l/cmsdwlds ancl l11tcriwtimwl Migmtimi

such as food, rent, and electricity. The remainder of the income is usually divided between joint or individual savings accounts and personal items of consumption.

Income pooling within nuclear households brings women advan- tages that were unavailable to them in the Dominican Republic. Responsibility for meeting the household's basic subsistence costs is distributed among members regardless of gender, thus mitigat- ing the invidious comparison between "essential" male contribu- tions and "supplementary" female inputs. Moreover, according to informants, men's greater participation in domestic tasks generally assigned to women in the Dominican Republic-tasks such as de- veloping strategies for stretching the food budget-has led them to appreciate more fully the experience and skills women bring to these activities.

How have Dominican immigrant households managed this transi- tion from patriarchal to more egalitarian relations, not only in household budgeting but in other domesti~ activities? We believe that the answer lies in the material and cultural experiences of immigrants in the United States.

Most Dominican immigrants earn wages below the family- subsistence level. In practice, this has meant that few married- couple households can manage economically, at least in the early years of residence in the United States, if they adopt the traditional pattern of a sole male provider. Certainly this has been the case if the family has aspired to a secure working-class standard of living, or more desirable still, a middle-class one. Out of this experience of dual- or multi-wage-earning households has come a questioning of the efficacy and legitimacy of the traditional, patriarchal ideology which holds that the man should be the sole or at least the primary breadwinner.

Moreover, the fact that the wife is working, and often the older children as well, suits the Dominican migration ideology. Key val- ues in this ideology are consistently articulated as progress through the concerted sacrifices of a united family. The fact that family members who traditionally did not work outside the home do so in the United States also reflects and reinforces the popular views among Dominicans that "one lives to work" in the United States, and "there is no life in New York." In this labor market, where Dominicans receive relatively low, unstable wages, many have

1/1111.wlwlds mid lult'rtWlimwl Migrntion 151

agree_a\tem~ submerge traditional familial values based on Jack of equivalence and gender hierar~hy to more "aemocrati<' ... ~f !!lar'ket values in which adult family members all r~resent l!lb2.!,. power. • As "Dominican immigrant women find themselves materially in a position parallel to wage-earning husbands, many have demanded that their husbands relinquish some of the self-gratification and privilege that have historically accrued to males who have "sup- ported" the family (Kessler-Harris and Sacks 1987; Rubin 1976). Such renegotiation has been very clear in the matter of which family member or members have the right to assume the status of household head. For most Dominicans the status of household head is equated with the concept of "defending the household" (defenderse la casa). This "de(ense" is conceived oflargely in mate- rial terms. As women have come to demonstrate their capacity to share material responsibility with men on more or less equal terms, they have begun to expect to be co-partners in heading the house- hold. Thus in response to the questions "Who is the household head now?" and "Who was the head previous to emigration?" the words of this woman echo those of many respondents:

e are both the heads. If both husband an<l wife are earning salaries, then t tey s ou ru u y in the household. In the Dominican Republic it is always the husband who gives the orders in the household. But here, when the two are working, the women feels herself the equal of the man in ruling the home. 6

Many Dominican couples have also renegotiated another feature of the household division of labor; namely, private housework and child care. At issue is the norm that assigns women exclusively to this unwaged labor. According to traditional family norms, the wife (often with assistance from daughters and a paid domestic worker) is expected to carry out housework and child care duties for her immediate family and for other kin domiciled in the home. These duties are dispatched in the name of femininity, obligation, and

6. In his study of Dominican immigrants in a small New England city, Andrew Gordon also found a change toward greater equality between working husbands and wives (1978: 80). In the words of one of Gordon's male informants: -[In the Dominican Republic, women] had to accept whatever the man did. In the U.S. the woman says Yo poncho la tarjcta (I punch the card; i.e., clock in the factory). She ~ays, 'I contribute too.' She says what she wants" (Gordon i978: 66).

Households and International Migration

love. In exchange, the husband is expected to provide financially for the family. Now that many wives share the latter duty with husbands, many of our female and male informants have come to question the legitimacy of the traditional division of labor that assigns only women to housework. Sometimes willingly and some- times after clomcstic struggle, Dominican immigrant husbands ancl sons have come to assume a greater, but by no means equal, share of the housework and child care responsibilities.

Since household duties are not shared equally between the sexes, the double burden of wage work and domestic work falls hardest on women. As the following vignette from our fieldwork shows, the vast majority of our female informants, as well as many of our male informants, believed that when both partners worked outside the home, the husband should "help" with tasks such as shopping and washing dishes:

At the Collados' home, Toma.~ was preparing dinner. Tomas claimed he would never he found in the kitchen, let alont~ cooking, in tlw Dominican Republic. But, he added, there his wife would not be working outside the house; he would be the breadwinner. Tom:is explained thnt since he mnclu his living in the United St;itcs as a chef, it seemed natural that his cont rilrn - tion to running the household should include cookin)!; at home. Ile joked thnt ifhc wore out more pairs of socks run11ing ahout in the kitdwn, it was all right because his wife worked in the garment trade and she could apply her skills at home by darning his socks.

Tomas and his wife said that soon after they were both working they realized that "if both worked outside the house, both should work inside, as well. Now that we are in the United States, we should adopt Americans' ways."

t Dominican women mentioned such male assistance in house- l work and child care when they spoke positively of changing rela-

tions between wives and husbands in the United States. None of our informants believed, however, that men could or shouICl act as 'equals- to women in the domestic sphere. The following quote Cliptum the beliefs held by many Dominican immigrant women: "I know of cases where the man assumes the housekeeping and child care responsibilities. But I don't believe a man can be as good as aL woman; she is made for the home and the man is made to work." .

In analyziilg women's household labor, feminist theorists have drawn our attention to the fact that under capitalist relatfons of

..

Houschold.s and lntemational Migration 153

production, employers depend on this unpaid female labor to repro- duce labor power on a daily and generational basis (Bentson 196g; Dalla Costa 1975; Fox 1980; Hartmann 1981). Although wa;es) + cover the costs of many of the commodities neeaecr1o sustain househota memoers, a certain amount of s~_Fplementar{labor is ;:equired- to transform , rep enish, and maintain these commo.dities..:. Ristorfcally, women have been assigned to these activities of social ~rocf'uctioii . Moreover, kinship -iaeology has tenaea to 'ilryst1 y TTie ~ pro uctive nature of these activities by classifying them as women's('.!ibor oflov;;}as distinct from men's wage labor. Some of our female informants have begun to challenge such classification, as is attested by the following disagreement:

Bolivar: After killing myself at work each day I long to return home, where love resides. It is here in my home that I can bask in love's warmth.

Criselda: Don't think for an instant that work stops and love takes over as soon as people punch the time clock and return home. I have my own time clock here, Bolivar. Dinnur must he 011 the table for the children at 6:00, for you at 8:00. The children must be bathed by 8:30 and in bed by ~) :oo. Sure, I love my children and would do anything for them, but let me assure you that the work that confronts me at home when I come hack from the factory is every bit as demanding as my work on the assembly line.

Finally, a small minority of our female informants have come to f... challen 1e dual notio that domestic work is both women's work an a type of activi~ thaii~ separate rom t e capitalist sphere. As our interviews with these informants reveale , in most cases hat led to this challenge was the women's recognition that many o the men and women w1El1ou dose 'kin in the Dominican community had o fta~ or e omeSHc services that our informants provided freely

n i{y mim~~ As the foll owing incident shows, this realization ~ally e~boldened our informants to request more assistance in housework and child care duties from other household members:

We were all sitting around the dinner table, having just finished the meal, when Pablo came home. His brother, Sergio, told his wife, Elvira, to pr<.~pare another plate for Pablo. Elvira was clearly agitated as she clanged the pots and pans in which the food was being reheated.

After wolfing down his food, Pablo departed for his evening job at a gas station. As soon as the door closed behind him, Elvira began shouting.

154 Households and International Migration

She told Sergio that she was not his family's slave. She said that, like Sergio and Pablo, she too put in long hours at work and did not plan to add further to her labors by providing for "extra people" like Pablo. Moreover, she added, she was not about to help Pablo's employer, as well, by freely providing housekeeping services that the employer should be forced to compensate adequately in his payment to his workers. Elvira concluded her argument by declaring that Pablo would have to pay her a fair wage for her cooking and cleaning on his behalf, share in these duties as an equal member of the family, or find his own place .

Within two months, Pablo had rented an apartment with a male friend . He had also changed to a higher-paying job in order to be able to afford his added household expenses.

In an attempt to interpret the emergence of more egalitarian \ households among Dominican immigrants, certain analogies may

be drawn between middle-class American families and Dominican immigrant families aspiring to !!1idill_e-cla~~ stl!tus. !:!!:.st, many of t' V our informants claimed, like Tomas, that they self-consciousTy paf- terned their more egalitarian relations on w)1~t l11eyoetie_::ed t_~ ~e-h

V tfie omma t . . mo e . They viewea this change in orientation II oj aSDot1irl oder and(Jl- ~J.gn c;f progr~ Second, as Ervira s -com- plaints about providing ror-extra-ram"'Ily members attests, many of our upwardly mobile informants sought to slough off kin and fr~ That is, they aoandoned aJ_)attern _!!lore CQmmqn..i.!l..!h.e rnitial phase of mumrticin-:_resource pooling among kin and friends and ~~e SE~~~t l~veling o(.r~ouices. What Rayna Rapp says aEouuuiddle-cli\SS J\.ll}erj£l!!!_.fall!!li~ is applicable to Elvira ai,:id _

~ many others of our informants: they have selectea a pattern _of~V ramny re~a~1<!i:i~ ~wJii~ is con~fste_n1 ~it}l ~2!J.1'.'""ii accumulation, .. I rather ~aq_d~s.a.r: {1978: ~g7). . - In significant ways, however, the Dominican experience does not parallel the American one. In the United States, gender and class ideology can be reinforcing, as in the model of the relatively egalitarian, middle-class professional family where, ideally, part- ners share in salaried work and housework does not fall exclusively

~ to women. The Dominican immigrant woman faces a far more contradictory7e°t of gender and class norms and values. The bour- geois standard of living the female Dominican immigrant and her family hope to emulate i~ a standard informed by Dominican val- ues . These hold that the woman shall remain In the home and the

Households and International Migration 155

man shall be the sole breadwinner. For Dominicans, this repre- sents a material and social accomplishment analogous to that of early generations of American workers whose men symbolized and actualized their material well-being and social mobility by earning a "family wage." Thus, most of our female informants spoke of their tenure of work outside the household as temporary. Even the most ardent supporter of joint status as household head could be heard to say that she was working "to help her husband out." ¥

In this regard, perhaps a more apposite group within U.S. soci- ety with which to compare Dominicans is Cuban immigrants. In their research among Cuban women in South Florida, Fernandez- Kelly and Garcfa (1990) Tound tiiar"women entered the labor force to buttress their households' declining socioeconomic status and to maintain the integrity of patriarchal families by, in their informants' words, "helping their husbands." However, the bourgeois class aspirations of these Cuban households, coupled with the associa- tion of patriarchy with middle-class standing, have dictated a tem- porary period of wage work for Cuban women. According to the researchers, once Cuban immigrant households attained their de- sired socioeconomic standing, wives were receptive to husbands' urgings to abandon wage employment. ~ Dominican and Cuban cases share the norm of relegating

micfdle-class women to the domestic sphere in the name of house- hold mobility, but at least in the Dominican experience we find indications of a; powing tension between previously reinforcing ge~r and cla5Sideolog1es. At issue For Dominicans is the greater J$

gender equality brought about by migration to the United States and wage work. For most of our Dominican female informants, an improvement in gender relations has been an unintended outcome of the immigrant experience. 7 And once this improvement has be- come available to women:ithas emerged as an attainment or a goal in its own right-one that is incompatible with women's "retire- ment" to the domestic sphere in order to support the bourgeois norm of a sole, male breadwinner. 8

7. For additional studies that show how migration has improved women's status within the household, see Abadan-Unat ig82; Brettell ig82; Morokvasic 1984; Lamphere 1g87; Watts 1g83; and Whiteford 1978.

8. For a discussion of how women's seasonal, wage employment affects domes· tic relations in Chicano households, see Zavella ig87.

llmm:lwlrf., "111l /11ten111timwl Mign1tim1

" The irony is that, for many women, tl.!£ struggle to gain greater parity has not led to a more ~alitMi~D bo1m:.h2ld but, rather, to the dismantling of the union. Of the fifty-five senior, female mem- l::iers in our ew York ethnographic sample, ~ghteeg were di- '" vorced or separated from a partner while in the United States. I• Fourteen cited the struggle over domestic authority as the primary factor leading to the disbanding of the union. Not only have they lost the battle for a more equitable union, but without a husband's financial contributions t}lese women have also severely compro- mised their goal of attaining a middle-class standard of living. The median income reported in the ig8o U. S. census for Dominican households in New York City was $12, i56, but the corresponding figure for female-headed households was only $5.i..9,13 (Mann and Salvo 1984). In the next chapter we will describe in greater detail

V the disadvant~es as.s.aciated .with marital di~uu;Ui.Qu _!!nd female- " headedness. ,.

The Gender Politics of Settlement versus Hetum

The decision regarding the household's return to the Dominican Republic has become an arena in which women struggle to main- tain the gains that migration and employment have brought to them. Women tend to postpone return , because they realize that Dominican gender and class ideology, as well as the sexual division of labor in the Dominican economy, militate against wage employ- ment for women of their training and class background. It will be recalled from our discussion of return migration that, in the thirty- five households comprising our Santiago ethnographic survey, only one of the wives was working.

In their attempt to postpone their return and likely "retire- ment," many women have embarked on an income-allocation strat- egy whereby large amounts of money are spent on expensive, durable goods, such as a home and home furnishings. This strat- egy serves both to root the family securely and comfortably in the United States and to deplete the funds needed to relocate. By contrast, men were commonly reported as planning ways of reduc- ing their time in the United States, as is reflected in the often

/lmw~lwltls m11/ luti:rrwtimwl /\ligratim1 157

repeated refrain, "Five dollars wasted today means five more years of postponing the return to the Dominican Republic." In this struggle over return, migration loses its character as a collec- tive and unifying household project for social mobility. Rather, the cQn_flict pyer return n~vQlves around traditional gendered mfvi: leges for middl~clas!__!lnd ~~r-workin -class men rivUege.s _ that mig:_a~n has challenged and many men s~ilio.-regain. back

_ ome.:- · Migration has brought societal- and household-level changes to

many Dominican immigrant men. Immigrants' first jobs tend to be on the lowest rung of the prestige hierarchy, and the status associ- ated with these jobs may contradict the immigrants' self-identity and sense of worth (Piore 1979). This is particularly likely for Do- minican men, whose pre-migration employment often placed them in the ranks of the middle class or the upper working class. Al- though such men experience a decline in status by migrating, they are urged by others to subsume their individual identities and goals within the larger sphere of the household.

Herein lies a major tension in the immigrant experience of many Dominican men. As noted above, the purpose behind migration- according to most Dominicans, it is the desire for economic and social progress-'!!!Y not be realized by an. ~ndivi~ but is often !ShieveQ. £oll$:ctively. The wages migrants receive and the level of consumption this income makes possible permit the domestic unit to enjoy, by its members' standards, a middle-class life-style. Not- withstanding the social mobility realized at the household level, however, Dominican men in the United States sometimes become frustrated by their inability to translate these household gains into public prestige . This observation underscores what is for men an uneasy balance between becoming first among equals in the immi- grant household, and the prevailing gender ideology and sex roles in the Dominican Republic, which promote patriarchy in the home and prestige and privilege for middle-class men in the public sphere. 9

With this tension as a major catalyst, some men choose to pursue

9. Gordon also notes that men's social rclntions have become "atomized, mak- ing th e household, rather than the kin or friend network, the primary unit of social relations" (Gordon 1978: 80).

Households and International Migration

a financial strategy in which frugal living and savings are empha- sized to ensure that the household will eventually return to the Dominican Republic. Not infrequently, this places the man at odds with his spouse, who has embarked on an opposing financial course. In five of the eighteen cases of divorce we studied, what ultimately precipitated the breakup was the man's return to the Dominican Republic with si'tllrdent savings to reestablish himself, ' wliHe lhe woman elected to remain in the U~ited States:

This ethnographic maferial clearly illustrates the fallacy of assum- ing that the household is a unit that is defined by its members' contribution to and management of an tindilf'erenffated;-c:Ollectiv~ income fund. Jo Tulfy unaerstana the "profound changes in house- hold authority within Dominican immigrant households and wom- en's strategies to prolong their householdis stay in the United States, we must recognize two elements that arc absent from this conceptualization, First, wage income is assigned greater value and rewarded differentially from the use-values. that women often con- tribute to household budgets. Second, under some circumstances, such as when they gain regular access to wages, women arc ahlc to use this income as leverage to modify the terms that dictate decision-making about household budgeting and other domestic activities. When previously excluded members of the household are permitted control over this household activity, they are reluc- tant to give up this newfound power.

Our discussion of the collective household project of social mobil- ity, as well as the divergent projects concerning settlement versus return, underscore one of our fundamental claims regarding house- holds. While we do not deny the existence of collective household projects, we do question the tendency to view them as typical and unchanging.

Migrant Households and the Workplace

Researchers frequently argue that migrant households possess cer- tain features that make them especially suited to meeting employ- ers' goals of capital accumulation (Burawoy i976; Meillassoux ig81; Griffith ig85). Foremost among these features is the existence of household members back home who subsidize the migrants' low wages and provide for the dependents left behind. Under these

Households and International Migration 159

conditions, the migrant purportedly is willing to accept low-paying, insecure employment. This situation does characterize most immi- grant populations at some phase of the migration process, and for some groups it may prevail until the migrant returns home for good. Nonetheless, as our studies of Dominicans clearly show, this portrayal relies on an essentially static conceptualization of rela- tions within migrant households and between these domestic groups and the larger political economy. Little attention has been paid, for example, to the changing social relations and strategies that lead members of temporary migrant households to change the location where dependent household members are raised.

These concerns lead us to a reconsideration of Dominican settle- ment in the United States. Women's strategies for rooting the household in the United States include bringing dependents from the Dominican Republic. 10 This strategy carries implications for the type of jobs immigrant household members will remain in or accept. First, U.S. residents who wish to sponsor the immigration of a relative must demonstrate that they have savings-an accom- plishment that 11s11ally requires steady employment at hi~her than minimum wages. These savings are needed to convince U.S. immi- gration officials that the children being sponsored will not become wards of the state. They arc also needed to meet the actual costs of sponsoring the children's migration. Second, since tax records arc part of the portfolio of successful petitioners, the decision to recruit additional family members greatly reduces immigrants' in- centives or willingness to work for employers who pay "off the books ." Indeed, we knew of many Dominicans who quit such jobs when they began to contemplate sponsoring their children's emi- gration. Finally, of course, the costs for maintaining children in the United States are usually higher than they were in the Domini- can Republic.

The high rates of marital instability and of female-headedness among Dominicans in New York, which were uncovered in our ethnography and confi~med by others (Gurak and Kritz ig82: 20; U.S. Bureau of the Census i984), also influence the types of em- ployment Dpminican immigrant workers are willing to accept. Do-

lo. This strategy also fulfills the desire of many women to care for their chil· dren themselves.

i6o Households and International Migration

minican immigrant women who head households rarely conform to the pattern of the migrant target earner who accepts unfavorable working conditions in order to maximize savings and return quickly to gainful employment back home (Piore 1979). In most cases, the female head shares the dream of eventual return to the Dominican Republic with all the material accoutrements of a solid, middle- class standard of living. To realize this dream, however, the woman realizes that she must toil for many more years in the United States than must members of dual-wage-earning immigrant households. She also recognizes that her goal will be achieved more easily if she finds secure, reasonably well-paying employment. As is described in the next chapter, this employment goal is made problematic by a discriminatory labor market, which assigns to immigrant women the least desirable jobs. As our ethnographic research uncovered, over time many such women become resigned to a stable working- class lifestyle in New York, and a lesser number enter the ranks of the underclass as welfare recipients.

To summarize, our ethnographic material challenges the com- mon depiction of a passive migrant household whose members essentially respond to the needs of employers, allowing the latter to exploit not only the migrant worker but his or her household mem- bers as well. We have focused on ~e dynamic acti®.S--Of Damjnjcan \ female immigrants, many of whom. i ursuit of th~wn goals, ~nfounded the wishes of some U.S. employers for a c eap, . impermanent source of labor:U

Conclusion

In order to understand how the global transformations of the inter- national economy have stimulated emigration, it is essential to consider those social organizations that mediate these transforma- tions. In this chapter we have focused on the role assumed by households and have made a number of observations regarding the

11. Fcrnlindez-Kelly and Garcia (1990) find that a change from on-site produc- tion in garme11t factories to industrial homework is a way that economically secure Cuban immigrant women can resolve the pull between their dedication to chil- dren and husbands and their desire to bring in additional income. This strategy, which is tied to Cuban family ideology and mores, has confounded apparel factory owners' requirements for on-site workers, according to the authors.

Houseliolds and International Migration

social relations found in households . An appreciation of these social relations, we maintain, is essential to a better understanding of the way opportunities for migration are realized and how certain migra- tion effects occur.

With an eye to encouraging further study of the role of house- holds in migration, we criticized some of the inadequate or faulty premises found in the literature on households in general and mi- grant households in particular. In their place, we offer the following formulation. First, _Qouseholds are organized according to social relatio~ based on _pri~ipks of ge11eration and gender. Second, these principles are converted into sentiment through killship, gen- der, ai!f) class ideolo . Third, tcn.s.is:m and confl~t within ho!illt_ holds ar.e likely when bier.arc~ and inequality rather than comple- mentaritv ch.arit rize_®...m.eulc relatjons and ideoloID:'.: . Fourth, conflict is likefy_to. ..surface when new strategies .are devised to reaQjust the unit to changing conditions in the .lru:ger. ocioeco- n_omic s_yuem · in rejecting old strategies and searching for new ones, an opportunity is opened for household members to renegoti- ate both their role in decision-making and their access to valued resources such as wage income. The ways these tensions get re- solved are highly significant for such migration outcomes as the decision to sponsor migrants, the decision to return to the home community, and the nature of ties between international migrants and their home community. Although households can never be indifferent to the broader socioeconomic environment in which they operate, attention to the way these complex units mediate these broader processes helps to explain certain migration out- comes not comprehensible using conventional analyses.