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One late afternOOn in 2009, about two months into my year of field research in

Nicaragua, a national daily TV news program focused its hour-long show on

the “problem” of children and families “left behind” after parent migration. The

program’s interviewer-host, whom I will call Celeste, showcased the stories of

two grandmothers raising children of parent migrants in two different Nicara-

guan towns. In the first interview, Celeste probed an ostentatiously bejeweled

grandmother, Nora, about her neighbors’ allegations that she gambled away

all her remittances at the local casino. “Does your daughter know this is how

you spend her hard-earned money?” Celeste asked, with the camera showing

Nora’s teenage grandson hanging out in the barrio, smoking cigarettes, wear-

ing sagging jeans, and seeming to be up to maldad (no good). The second in-

terview portrayed a similar state of affairs: well-dressed grandmother Dania

bragging to Celeste about her shopping excursions at a major centro comeri-

cal (mall), with the camera following her grandchildren, for whom she was

supposedly responsible, roaming the dusty streets of their colonia (neighbor-

hood) poorly dressed and hungry. While an exaggeration, this program con-

tains what are the worst sorts of stereotypes about what happens to children

when parent migrants leave them in the care of grandmothers: they receive

inadequate supervision, do not value the sacrifices their parents make through

migration, and ultimately end up dropping out of school or otherwise failing

social expectations. Whether in Nicaragua or elsewhere in Latin America (for

example, see Duque-Páramo 2010), such images of families of migrants rel-

egate grand mothers to the most self-centered of material transactions: money

Ella me ayuda con cien dólares que manda, pero es mentira; con eso no me ajusta. (She [migrant daughter] helps me with the hundred dollars that she sends [monthly], but it’s a lie; with that I can’t make ends meet.)

—Marbeya

No Se Ajustan Remittances and Moral Economies of Migration2

Yarris, Kristin E.. Care Across Generations : Solidarity and Sacrifice in Transnational Families, Stanford University Press, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utsa/detail.action?docID=5013691. Created from utsa on 2021-03-23 13:33:11.

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No Se Ajustan 63

(remittances) for love (care) while failing to recognize the intergenerational

care grandmothers provide as a valuable cultural resource for transnational

families. In part, these are gendered stereotypes that blame mothers for emi-

grating and then assume that grandmothers’ motivation to care is solely mate-

rial rather than recognizing the structural and gendered inequalities that drive

both mother migration and grandmother caregiving.

In this chapter, I explore the material and affective dimensions of remittances

to illustrate both the concrete reconfigurations of care in transnational families

and the inherent tensions entwined with these reconfigurations. This discus-

sion speaks to feminist and anthropological literature on love in the context of

contemporary globalization by showing how self-sacrificing love and material

interests are always both at work within intergenerational transnational family

life, as family members balance expectations for remittances against realities of

physical absence (Coe 2011: 9). Grandmothers’ acknowledgment of the eco-

nomic necessity of migration—and by extension, remittances—to household

survival exists alongside their distancing of themselves from a material expla-

nation for their caregiving. Further, beyond remittances’ importance as mate-

rial support to migrant-sending households, money sent from abroad signifies

the affective implications of transnational migration. Remittances signify in-

tergenerational sacrifice and solidarity: as mothers send money, grand mothers

allocate remittances to children’s and families’ well-being; children in turn up-

hold these sacrifices by doing well in school. However, this transnational tie

through remittances has a more problematic side, for just as remittances are a

concrete sign that mothers abroad remain pendiente (responsible) for families

back home in Nicaragua, remittances also serve as an unavoidable reminder

of mothers’ absence from everyday family life. Grandmothers’ insistence that

remittances no se ajustan (don’t measure up) indexes a moral economy of care

and migration that sets remittances against the values of sacrifice and solidarity

that grandmothers view as threatened by transnational migration.

The argument advanced here is that an economic or structural perspective

does not account for the lived experience of remittances from the perspective

of members of transnational families in migrant-sending countries. Explor-

ing these experiences is important, especially given stereotypes in Nicaragua,

and elsewhere in Latin America, that hold that families of migrants enjoy rela-

tive economic prosperity and that grandmothers who head households after

parent migration are motivated solely by the material gains of remittances.

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64 Care Across Generations

Such a transactional view of remittances for care also pervades much of the

extant literature on transnational families, which tends to sideline caregiving

in migrant-sending countries and relegate caregivers themselves to roles of

dependency rather than agency. Here, I make a different set of claims about

grandmothers in transnational families, arguing that their stance toward re-

mittances decenters the material and foregrounds the affective, thereby making

gendered cultural values of solidarity and sacrifice central to understanding

Nicaraguan transnational families. In asserting no se ajustan, grandmothers

are at once pointing to the inadequacy of money as compensation for the ten-

sions of transnational life while also critiquing the global inequalities that push

mothers to migrate and shift configurations of care across generations in trans-

national families.

Remittances: Development or Dependency?

In Nicaragua, as in other Latin American–sending countries, migrant remit-

tances are significant to national as well as household economies, providing

a much-needed source of income. In 2008, remittances composed between

13 and 18 percent of Nicaragua’s gross domestic product, depending on the

source (Bello 2008; Rocha 2008; OIM 2013). From 2006 to 2011, the value of

remittances sent to Nicaragua increased from $697.5 million to $901 million,

equaling or exceeding total foreign direct investment in the country (OIM

2013). Most remittances are sent from Costa Rica and the United States, in

currencies valued much higher than the Nicaraguan córdoba, and are a coveted

source of revenue in Nicaragua (Guerrero Nicaragua 2014). Mainstream devel-

opment organizations, such as the World Bank, along with Nicaragua’s Central

Bank, cast remittances in a positive light by focusing on their contributions

to consumer spending, savings, economic growth, and even public investment

in health and education (OIM 2013; Bello 2008; World Bank 2006). Within

this discourse, women are often situated as pivotal to maximizing the develop-

ment potential of remittances, occupying a strategic socioeconomic position

as recipients of remittances sent by male migrants (their husbands, partners,

or sons). As a result, women are targets of interventions seeking to capture a

greater proportion of remittances at the household level on savings and in-

vestment, rather than consumption (OIM 2013). Such positivist development

discourse can inadvertently reinforce stereotypes of women family members

of migrants (e.g., when development programs fail, it must be because women

were spending rather than saving remittances).

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No Se Ajustan 65

Critics argue that a reliance on migrant remittances in Nicaragua and other

Central American countries hinders rather than benefits national economic

development. Instead of a boost to development, remittances are viewed as a

crutch, aiding the economy in the short term while discouraging central gov-

ernments from seeking alternative development strategies that are sustainable

in the long term (Rocha 2006, 2009). By extension, such critiques view house-

hold economies as becoming dependent on the consumer spending facilitated

by remittances, a dependence reinforced via the transformation of cultural

values toward individualism and materialism that accompanies neoliberal

development (see Escobar 1994). Migration scholar José Luis Rocha dispar-

ages the view that Nicaraguan families disproportionately spend remittances

on consumer goods identified with North American cultural tastes, including

electronics, clothes, and toys (Rocha 2008). Such a shift in consumption pat-

terns and social values may be one adverse aspect of “social remittances,” which

are the transmission of ways of life that predominate in destination countries

back home to family members in sending countries via migrants’ shifting ex-

periences, tastes, and values (Levitt 1998). In this view, the initial impulse of

migration—to secure household economic survival—gradually shifts to be-

come a vicious cycle of debt and dependency on migration, as migrants and

their family members become increasingly dependent on remittances to satisfy

new material desires, which are themselves reinforced by migration (Stoll 2010,

2012). Critiques of such developmentalist discourse by anthropologists of mi-

gration are many. For example, David Pedersen has compellingly argued that

remittances and migrant labor are two overlapping sources of value in the con-

temporary capitalist economy, values interconnecting migrant-sending villages

in El Salvador to large U.S. cities through a moral economy based on inequality,

violence, and exploitation (Pedersen 2013).

This discussion also contributes to anthropological critiques of develop-

mentalist perspectives on migration by presenting a gendered analysis of the

ways women and children in migrant-sending households exert agency over re-

mittances. As has been argued, an exclusive focus on the material dimensions of

migration and remittances “discursively excludes” gender (Ginsberg and Rapp

1995: 3) and particularly women’s roles in shaping the social, relational, and

emotional consequences of migration. Further, economic overdeterminism re-

inforces popular discourse in migrant-sending countries such as Nicaragua,

which characterizes grandmothers caring for children of migrant parents as

motivated primarily by the promise of individual material gain. These sorts of

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66 Care Across Generations

images are not without real consequences at the community level, as children

of migrants and their caregivers feel the discriminating weight of stereotypes

implying they are selfish, materialistic, or otherwise different from their peers

because of migration.1 Furthermore, these views mask the real emotional con-

sequences of mother absence for sending families and relegate grandmothers,

other caregivers, and the children in their care to a position of dependence

and passivity in relation to migration. Here I address the questions, What is

grandmother caregivers’ role in relation to remittances sent by mothers from

abroad? How do grandmother caregivers make sense of the economic bene-

fits of remittances in relation to the social and emotional costs of migration?

While acknowledging the material benefits of migration to household econo-

mies, grandmothers’ posture toward remittances prioritizes the affective con-

sequences of migration. In particular, grandmothers’ response to remittances

through the framing “no se ajustan” foregrounds a moral economy of migra-

tion, which responds to the tensions and ambivalences wrought by remittances

by reinforcing the value of women’s intergenerational sacrifice in maintaining

relations of care and solidarity in families living transnationally.

Remittances and Household Economies

The ways grandmothers manage and allocate the money sent by migrant moth-

ers demonstrates the influence of both gender and generation on caregiving

relations in transnational families. After describing the material dimensions

of remittances, I turn to a discussion of remittances’ emotional significance,

showing how the cultural values of solidarity and sacrifice are upheld through

migrant mothers’ remaining pendiente, or responsible, for children, caregivers,

and other family members who stay. This discussion reveals how remittances

are central in the refiguring of relatedness and care that occurs across genera-

tions in transnational families but also how remittances embody the tensions

in cultural ideals of sacrifice and solidarity in Nicaraguan family life. We see

how grandmothers engage with these tensions, attempting to regenerate family

continuity despite the challenges posed by remittances.

As part of their caregiving responsibilities within transnational families,

grandmothers become remittance managers, receiving the money sent by mi-

grant mothers and spending it on children’s care. All the families in this study

share economic motives as main factors driving mother migration; most also

receive money regularly sent by mother migrants from abroad. Exceptions to

the regular flow of remittances do occur and reflect various dimensions of

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No Se Ajustan 67

migrants’ lives in destination countries. For instance, remittances may be ir-

regular or interrupted when migration is relatively recent (less than a year since

migrant departure), when migrants have yet to establish regular employment,

during periods of unemployment, and when migrants separate, divorce, marry,

or have children abroad.2 Certainly, the regularity of sending remittances home

depends on migrants’ ability to find and maintain secure employment in desti-

nation countries. Furthermore, migrants’ documentation status in host coun-

tries plays a role in the amount and regularity of remittances by influencing

the stability and security of employment. Additionally, when personal debts

are a primary factor pushing mothers to leave Nicaragua or when migrants

incur debts to pay for their migration journeys, the first several months or even

years of remittances may be dedicated to paying off the debts. While I did not

explicitly inquire whether debts factored into women’s decisions to migrate,

grandmothers, mothers, and even children mentioned the role of debt (both

personal consumer debt and debt incurred to pay for migrant journeys) in in-

terviews with five of the fifteen families discussed in this book.

When I asked grandmothers what they used remittances for, without excep-

tion all mentioned three main priorities for spending remittances: education,

food, and medical needs for the children in their care. Grandmothers receive

the regular envío (transfer) of money sent by mother migrants usually every

quincena (two-week pay period), retrieving the money from a bank account or,

more commonly, a private money-exchange company such as Western Union

or MoneyGram.3 For the families in this study, remittances average between

$100 and $200 per month.4 I was struck by this consistency in grandmothers’

responses to my questions about how they allocate remittances, a response that

reflects both the economic priorities of migrant-sending households and the

moral stance that grandmothers take in relation to remittances, which is that

the money sent from abroad by mother migrants no se ajusta (doesn’t measure

up). Food and housing are materially necessary but also have a symbolic im-

portance in maintaining a sense of family relatedness (Carsten 2000), especially

over time and across generations of migration (Constable 1999).

Nonetheless, grandmothers’ main priority for remittance expenditures is

children’s schooling. The priority of investing in children’s educational oppor-

tunities is evident from the large proportion of monthly remittances that go

to school tuition. All the children in this study attend private or semiprivate

grade schools, with tuition, books, uniforms, and other fees covered by the

remittances sent by their mothers from abroad.5 Average monthly tuition for

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68 Care Across Generations

one student at one of these colegios (grade and high schools) in Managua is

about $40; this does not include books, uniforms, backpacks, bus fare, lunch

money, and other supplies. Given that most families have more than one child

to support, school fees can consume a large share of monthly remittances. The

emphasis on children’s educational success as a central motivation of mother

migration is consistent with findings of other scholars who have demonstrated

that education is a key goal of parent migration and a main focus of remittance

expenditure (Dreby 2010; Abrego 2014). I return to the importance of school-

ing as part of the intergenerational sacrifice in transnational families below.

Despite the primary importance of schooling, housing, and feeding chil-

dren, grandmothers also allocated remittances to secondary priorities, such as

making household upgrades or repaying debts incurred by mothers before mi-

gration. Usually, these second-order priorities become a focus some time after

migration, as household economies stabilize and as grandmothers can afford

expenses other than food, shelter, and education. In determining the priori-

ties and allocation of remittances, grandmother caregivers communicate and

negotiate with migrant mothers, playing an active role in determining how the

money that mothers send is spent in Nicaragua. For example, grandmother

Marbeya consistently receives about $150 each month from her daughter Azu-

cena, who has worked in Costa Rica for nearly twelve years. During the first

four years of her migration, when she worked in a day care center without legal

documentation, Azucena’s remittances were inconsistent. However, Azucena

gained legal residency after her son Selso was born in Costa Rica, enabling her

to secure a better-paying and more desirable (from her perspective) job as a

doméstica for a family.6 During the next eight years, Azucena was able to regu-

larly send about a third of her salary to Marbeya. With this money, Marbeya

cares for Azucena’s two children, Selso (nine) and Vanessa (fourteen). Marbeya

described using remittances to cover the costs of her grandchildren’s schooling,

food, and health:

I pay for school, I pay for their bus transportation because they come and take

them and they drop them off in the afternoon. I pay for their food, and if they

get sick, I take money out of remittances for that. Also if they need anything else

for school, from [remittances] I pay for all of that.

As another example, as we see in Chapter 1, grandmother Aurora received

remittances (around $200 per month) from her daughter Elizabeth, who mi-

grated to Spain a little over two years before our interviews. Elizabeth had

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No Se Ajustan 69

learned about opportunities for employment as a niñera (nanny) through so-

cial networks of other Nicaraguan women she knew who had obtained work

in Spain and who found a job and a place to live for Elizabeth there. Elizabeth

began sending money about one month after she left Nicaragua and her re-

mittances had been consistent ever since. Most of the money she sent home

was used by Aurora on school expenses, clothes, and food for her two grand-

daughters, Salensca and Daniela, ages seven and five. Aurora said, “I bought the

girls what they needed with that [remittance money]: clothes, shoes, milk, and

everything for school.” Aurora prioritized care for her granddaughters, even as

she also confronted demands from the girls’ father that he have direct access

to the money Elizabeth sent home. Aurora communicated these tensions to

Elizabeth, who grew increasingly exasperated at her ex-partner’s attempts to

wrest control of her remittances from her mother. After two years in Spain,

Elizabeth fetched her daughters in Managua and returned to Spain, where they

have remained since. For Aurora, their departure was bittersweet; it meant she

no longer had to deal with conflicts about money but also left her missing her

granddaughters’ emotional companionship.

One concrete improvement to household economies that follows migration

is the quality of family diet and nutrition. For instance, when I asked Olga about

her household’s budget since Manuela’s migration to Panama two years prior,

she emphasized that “things in the family haven’t changed much [las cosas en

la familia no han cambiado mucho],” referring to the poverty she still lived in

as evidence that remittances “no ajustan” to cover household expenses. Olga

conceded that “solamente en lo de la comida” (only in things related to food)

was there “mejoría” (improvement) in her household economy since Manuela’s

migration. Olga went on to describe how, before migration, she would pre-

pare the typical Nicaraguan gallo pinto (fried white rice and black beans) for

all three tiempos (mealtimes) of the day. After migration, she was able to pur-

chase a greater variety of foods for her household. Olga noted with discern-

able pride that she now was able to prepare soy-based nutritional beverages for

the children every morning and to include animal protein (such as eggs and

chicken) in meals more regularly (usually two times per week). These changes

were made possible by Manuela’s remittances of about $125 every month from

her job as a doméstica in Panama City, which helped cover the costs of caring

for nine-year-old Juliana and seventeen-year-old Dayton. Even as she manages

a tight household budget, Olga has invested remittances in the health and well-

being of the children in her care through improved nutrition.

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70 Care Across Generations

For several families in this study, secondary allocations for remittances had

emerged as priorities. In these families, the generational distribution of respon-

sibilities for remittances had come to the fore, as grandmothers find themselves

responsible for paying off debts incurred by their daughters to migrate (e.g., to

purchase expensive plane tickets to Spain). While such networks of debt were

not a focus of my fieldwork, that they were salient to the economies of several

households in my study supports David Stoll’s claim (based on his research in

the highlands of Guatemala) that relations of lending, credit, and indebtedness

are central to the causes and consequences of contemporary Central American

migration (Stoll 2010, 2012). Debts incurred by the mothers in my study before

migration were both formal (loans from banks or other lending institutions)

and informal (loans made by loan sharks, informal creditors, or family mem-

bers). When creditors are informal, grandmothers often must manage tense

relationships with unsavory characters to ward off collection threats and keep

them satisfied with regular debt payments. Their relationship to remittances

and debts places grandmothers in a position of responsibility and vulnerability

that precedes, facilitates, and follows migration.

For example, Aurora’s daughter Elizabeth owed several thousand dollars to a

bank for credit card debts and house payments; in fact, these debts were a main

factor motivating her migration to Spain (a trip also made possible by bor-

rowed money). During her two years of caregiving for Elizabeth’s daughters,

Aurora had to set aside enough money from remittances to make payments on

the house in which Aurora lived with her granddaughters (but which was in

Elizabeth’s name at the time). Aurora also had to interact with informal credi-

tors who had lent Elizabeth funds for her plane ticket to Spain. While managing

remittances was a significant source of stress for Aurora, she also viewed it as a

concrete expression of intergenerational care, as Elizabeth intended to put the

house in her daughters’ names once it was paid off, giving them an inheritance

in Nicaragua.

As another example, grandmother Isabel allocated a portion of the remit-

tances sent by her daughter-in-law Katherine to paying back the loan she had

taken out to purchase her plane ticket to Spain. (She had taken a loan from a

microlending agricultural cooperative located in the rural town where her par-

ents lived; it was not clear to me under what pretenses Katherine had borrowed

the money.) Katherine had lost her job in Managua about three months before

she decided to migrate and was pulled to Spain by a female cousin who had

emigrated and who had lined up a job for Katherine in elder care. Before she

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No Se Ajustan 71

migrated, Katherine discussed her plans with Isabel, who recalled, “I told her

she should go, that I would support her, that over there she could find a better

future for herself and her family.” In this way, Isabel assumed care for Robin as

a gesture of solidarity for her grandson, daughter-in-law, and her son. Interest-

ingly, and reflecting women’s care responsibilities across generations, Katherine

sent her remittances (about $150 every month) to Isabel (not to the father of

her son, Isabel’s son René), and Isabel allocated them for Robin’s care and, later,

to paying off Katherine’s debts.

Once debts are paid down, usually in cases of longer duration of migration,

grandmothers may invest remittances in a third-order priority: improving or

upgrading houses. For example, five years after her daughter Azucena migrated

to Costa Rica, Marbeya used remittances to build an indoor bathroom and

install a concrete floor in the living room of the small house she shared with

twenty other family members. Another example is that of grandmother Con-

cepción, whose daughter Melba had migrated to Costa Rica more than seven

years before this study. Melba had found work as a doméstica in Costa Rica’s

capital city and sent approximately $150 every month, which Concepción used

to feed, clothe, and shelter the six grandchildren in her care (three of whom,

ages twelve, fourteen, and fifteen, are Melba’s daughters, and the other three,

ages seven, seven, and eleven, children of two other migrant daughters, who

live in Guatemala and Mexico). While Melba’s two migrant sisters also send

remittances home to Concepción, Melba earns more in Costa Rica than her

sisters do in Guatemala and Mexico, and so she and Concepción agree that her

remittances should be shared among the girls. This spirit of shared responsi-

bility for children, in which migrant mothers’ remittances are used by grand-

mother caregivers as a pooled resource for children’s well-being, is found in

other transnational families, such as Angela’s. According to Concepción, one of

Melba’s original intentions when she left Nicaragua was to earn enough money

to purchase a house for her family in their rural community of origin. Con-

cepción was able to help Melba achieve this goal; beginning several years after

Melba’s departure, and once her household economy was stabilized, Concep-

ción set aside some of her monthly envío for the dreamed-of house.

In the months before I met Concepción, she had successfully completed

oversight of the house’s construction. Of the small, three-room structure, with

brightly painted concrete walls and a corrugated steel roof, Concepción said

with satisfaction, “Now we aren’t rootless, as Melba says. Even though I went

through sacrifices and we all went through sacrifices, now we have a stable little

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72 Care Across Generations

place where we can live.” For Melba, Concepción, and their family, migration

affords a sense of rootedness through a new home. In cases such as this, it is

precisely mothers’ departure and ongoing absence that enables transnational

families to achieve a secure sense of having a home in Nicaragua.7 Houses built

or upgraded with remittances are a concrete sign of the intergenerational sacri-

fices made by women in transnational families. However, homes built by remit-

tances may also embody the uncertainties of migration insofar as they signify

mothers’ continuing absences and the illusory promise of migrants’ return

(Fourrat 2012; Sandoval-Cervantes 2015). Concepción pondered whether,

now that Melba’s goal of building a house had been achieved, her daughter

would return to Nicaragua as promised. The house had been completed for

several months, and yet Concepción remained uncertain about her family’s

reunification.

As these cases show, home improvements may be made when migration

lasts long enough for the household’s economy to stabilize and permit grand-

mothers to spend remittances on things other than first-order priorities of edu-

cation and food. Signaling these priorities, grandmothers would point to their

inability to make needed home improvements as a sign that migration had not

changed their family’s economic status much at all. For instance, during an

interview with Olga in her home on a rainy Managua afternoon, she pointed to

the stream of water leaking through her roof and rhetorically asked, “Don’t you

think I would have replaced this zinc roof if I could have afforded it?” In pos-

ing this question, Olga reinforced the idea that migration had not significantly

changed her household’s economic status.

Remaining Pendiente: Gender, Generation, and Responsibility As the preceding discussion demonstrates, managing remittances forms an

important part of grandmothers’ caregiving responsibilities in transnational

families. Grandmothers in Nicaragua see their caregiving, including their re-

lationship to remittances, as embodying cultural values for sacrifice and soli-

darity in families extended across transnational space and into the uncertain

futures of return or reunification. Mothers who migrate and their families back

home see remittances as a sign of women’s concrete sacrifice as mothers, albeit

mothers who live and work abroad. In short, through remittances, mother mi-

grants are able to remain pendiente for the well-being of their families back

home in Nicaragua, just as through their management of remittances, grand-

mothers participate in the intergenerational sacrifice of migration.

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No Se Ajustan 73

Remittances partly reinforce gender role expectations for women in Nica-

raguan transnational families, even while the responsibility for care is recon-

figured as it is extended across generations and over space and time. Other

migration scholars have argued that gender roles are transformed in the con-

text of transnational migration, as migration permits women greater economic

autonomy through employment abroad than they would otherwise have ex-

perienced (for example, see Hirsch 2003; Parreñas 2005; Moran-Taylor 2008).

Rather than a transformation of gendered expectations for women’s sacrifices

to their families as mothers, I found that mothers’ sacrifice is refigured through

migration, work abroad, and sending remittances, while grandmothers’ sacri-

fice is extended over time through intergenerational caregiving, which includes

the management of remittances. Instead of being either radically transformed

or completely reinforced, gendered values related to women’s sacrifice and care

for families are reconfigured over generations and across borders in Nicara-

guan transnational families.

In this framing, mothers uphold their responsibilities to families through

migration and by sending remittances, while grandmothers uphold their

end of the intergenerational sacrifice of migration through managing remit-

tances and allocating them to children’s care. Grandmothers and children re-

fer to mothers’ responsibilities using the cultural trope of pendiente, in which

mother migrants are perceived as upholding responsibilities by sending remit-

tances to and keeping in touch with families back home. In this way, while the

content of care shifts from mothers’ physical presence to their sending money

in ausencia (absence), children’s experiences of transnational family life may

be less disrupted to the extent that the regular receipt of remittances and fre-

quent communication with mothers is framed in terms of mothers’ sacrifice for

children’s well-being.8 In fact, situating mothers’ remittances discursively and

symbolically as a sign of mothers’ sacrifice is one key element of grandmother

caregiving. The alternative, undesired possibility is that mothers abandonan

(abandon) their children and families in Nicaragua by ceasing to remit and

otherwise losing touch. Much more than money is at stake in the receipt of

remittances, as mothers’ envíos become an index of the strength of family ties

and the maintenance of relatedness across national borders.

For instance, Norma described her daughter María José’s remittances as a

concrete sign of her fulfilled responsibilities to her family in Nicaragua. Over

nearly ten years of migration (except for a difficult episode during the first

few years), María José regularly sent an average of $250 per month to Norma.

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74 Care Across Generations

Norma managed the remittances María José sent, using them for grandson Jer-

emy’s education in a private elementary school and to cover other costs associ-

ated with Jeremy’s care. More recently, María José also sent remittances to help

Norma make improvements to the home she and Jeremy share. These improve-

ments included adding a bedroom and bathroom and painting the house’s in-

terior. In addition, María José sent money so that Norma could purchase a

desktop computer and wireless Internet service so that family could regularly

communicate. Of María José, Norma said, “She’s the one who’s maintained the

family all this time up until now, she’s the one who has made all this hap-

pen. All the costs are on her shoulders. She has taken on everything.” Norma

frames María José as taking on the costs of supporting her family as part of her

sacrifice as a transnational mother. Norma reinforces this framing of mother

sacrifice with grandson Jeremy, reminding him whenever they receive her envío

that his “mamá Marí” is working hard in the United States for his benefit and

that she has not forgotten her son but remains pendiente for his well-being.

Grandmothers view the consistent sending of remittances as a symbolic

representation of mothers’ care, even as remittances fail to fully compensate

for mothers’ absence. For instance, grandmother Marbeya told me proudly

that her daughter Azucena had consistently sent remittances during the eleven

years she had lived and worked in Costa Rica. Marbeya has seven adult chil-

dren, including four daughters, but Azucena is her eldest child and the only

one who had migrated. Further, Marbeya shared a particularly close relation-

ship with Azucena, which magnified the emotional impact of Azucena’s mi-

gration. Marbeya recounted, “I lost my company; I lost it—because up until

today I still don’t have it. But economically, well, she [Azucena] has always been

helping. . . . Thank God she has never abandoned her first daughter or her

mother or her other son here.” For Marbeya, the regular receipt of remittances

confirms that her daughter has not “abandoned” her children or family in

Nicaragua. Instead, Marbeya describes how remittances are a concrete sign

that mother migrants maintain their intergenerational responsibilities as both

daughters and mothers. However, despite Azucena being pendiente, remit-

tances only partially offset the emotional distress of migration, for Marbeya still

feels sadness over the loss of her daughter’s “company,” her everyday supportive

presence. Even though she has always received remittances, Marbeya fears her

daughter may one day abandon her and the children. In grand mothers’ nar-

ratives of transnational family life, abandonment remains a threat to family

unity and solidarity, an ever-present possibility that represents the antithesis of

culturally valued sacrifice and solidarity.

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No Se Ajustan 75

The average length of migration in this study was two years; two mothers—

Marbeya’s daughter Azucena and Norma’s daughter María José—had lived

abroad for more than a decade. Despite the length of time, all mothers con-

tinued to send remittances and communicate regularly with families in Nic-

aragua. This consistency persisted even though some mothers formed new

families and bore children abroad. This finding concurs with what other stud-

ies of transnational families have documented, which is that mother migrants

tend to send remittances and maintain relationships over longer periods of

migration than father migrants (for example, see Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001;

Abrego 2009, 2014). This dynamic illustrates how gender shapes transnational

family relationships, whereby women uphold gendered cultural expectations of

themselves as mothers, despite the difficulty of their illegality and precarity in

host countries. Grandmothers who also had migrant sons (six women in this

study) would often compare their sons’ and daughters’ remittance behavior as a

way of emphasizing women’s enduring responsibility to their children, further

reinforcing gendered cultural expectations for mothers.

Grandmother Juana had one son and two daughters who emigrated to

Costa Rica (all three children left grandchildren in Juana’s care). Juana made

gendered distinctions between her son’s and her daughters’ remittance pat-

terns, emphasizing that her son’s remittances are smaller than her daughters,

who know to send enough money to cover basic household necessities, such as

food and medicine, for their children’s care. Juana told me,

When my son sends me money and I don’t have anything, I can go buy food,

[but only a little] because everything is expensive, and he doesn’t send much.

But when my daughter sends money, it might be enough to pay for things at

the store, basic grains, and other things. . . . And if maybe the girl [her grand-

daughter] needs something, a medicine, whatever, something else, well, we can

buy it.

Juana’s two daughters migrated six months before this conversation and each

sent about $50 per month home, despite their relatively low-paid jobs in beauty

salons. On the other hand, Juana’s son had lived in Costa Rica for over ten years

and had a steady, relatively better-paid job in construction, and yet his remit-

tances were fewer and less consistent.

Juana viewed her son’s behavior as illustrative of a broader cultural pattern,

explaining migrant fathers’ relative inconsistency in sending money as a reflec-

tion of gendered norms shaping Nicaraguan men’s behavior and irresponsibility

for children. Specifically, Juana viewed migrant Nicaraguan men living in Costa

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76 Care Across Generations

Rica and other destination countries as prone to succumb to vicios (vices), such

as heavy drinking and infidelity. Juana claimed, “The man assumes many vices

over there and forgets about his family here [El varón agarra muchos vicios allá

y se olvida de la familia aquí]. This is why the man doesn’t send hardly any-

thing.” Unlike migrant mothers, who have the fortitude to remain responsible

to their families back home, Juana views Nicaraguan men as lacking willpower

to resist temptation and thus being vulnerable to vicios. This gendered framing,

while partly critiquing men, also situates paternal irresponsibility as an almost

anticipated outcome for father migrants and reinforces the gendered expecta-

tions that mothers remain pendiente, even when fathers fail to do so.9

Luisa María offers another example of how grandmothers discursively re-

inforce gendered expectations of migrant mothers compared to fathers. Lu-

isa María has one son and one daughter living in Costa Rica and sharing a

residence there. Luisa María was raising five grandchildren, four children of

migrant daughter Salvarita (who had lived in Costa Rica for three years) and

one son of migrant father Marcos (who had been in Costa Rica for one year).

Marcos’s employment in construction was sporadic, and he sent remittances

irregularly. Salvarita, on the other hand, had regularly sent $50 every two weeks

once she found work as a doméstica shortly after arriving. Luisa María re-

marked on the difference between her daughter’s regular remittances and her

son’s irregular support, saying, “The difference has to do with the fact that she

is a woman and she knows the obligation and she knows the finances, she man-

ages the situation, and this is why. It’s always the daughters who know what

children cost, they are more responsible than sons.” In other words, women and

mothers are thought to be more understanding of the costs of maintaining a

family and therefore more responsible for meeting these costs with remittances

than men and fathers. Luisa María’s statement seemed to overlook her son’s

unstable employment and instead focused on his (almost anticipated) paternal

irresponsibility.

To the extent that grandmothers use such gendered assumptions to frame

differences between mothers and fathers’ remittance behavior, they are in es-

sence upholding a gendered double standard that increases the pressure on

mothers while excusing fathers’ lack of responsibility for children and families.

Thus, fathers who fail to send remittances are in part fulfilling cultural expecta-

tions that they are less responsible than mothers. On the other hand, grand-

mother caregivers expect that migrant mothers will uphold their responsibility

by remaining pendiente for children back home through remittances. This

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No Se Ajustan 77

double standard most likely adds to the pressure on mothers to send money

and compounds mother migrants’ stress when they are unable to, such as when

unemployed or beset by pressing economic demands.

Schooling and Intergenerational Sacrifice

Not only mothers sacrifice to remain responsible for families back home;

grandmothers and children also participate in the shared sacrifice of transna-

tional family life. Grandmothers sacrifice through caregiving, which includes

the management and allocation of remittances for the welfare of children and

households. Children, for their part, contribute to the shared intergenerational

sacrifice of transnational migration by studying and succeeding in school.

The five mother migrants I interviewed as part of this research study all em-

phasized that a central motivation for their migration was to afford expanded

educational opportunities for their children. When Azucena visited Nicaragua

for the New Year’s holiday, I sat down with her to talk about her motivations

for migrating to Costa Rica over a decade earlier and her struggles as a migrant

mother. Azucena said her principal motivation for migrating was to give her

daughter Vanessa the opportunity to study at the university level, an experi-

ence Azucena had not had: “My goal is that she completes her education. . . .

I put all my effort toward her studying.” For her part, grandmother Marbeya

reinforces this emphasis on education by paying for Vanessa’s school tuition

and supporting her daughter’s ambitions that Vanessa attend university in Nic-

aragua.

One interpretation of this motivation to expand children’s educational op-

portunities is that it reflects and reinforces a particular, Westernized view of

childhood as a period of dependency and of children as in need of protection

from work or other responsibilities (for example, see Horton 2008: 926; for a

critique of this view, see Heidbrink 2014). However, my interpretation of chil-

dren’s experiences in the families in this study is that they are not protected

from the difficult realities of migration but rather are keenly aware of, and im-

mersed in, the struggles and sacrifices of transnational family life. Although

children in this study were not economically productive, they participated in

the shared sacrifice of migration by studying hard and succeeding in school. In

my home visits with families, most after-school hours were spent doing home-

work, with children intently focused on their upcoming exams to ensure they

would pasar de grado (pass on to the next grade). Of all the children in this

study, only one seemed not to be doing well in school.10

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78 Care Across Generations

For instance, children are knowledgeable about the economic motives of

their mothers’ migrations as well as about the economic costs and benefits of

migration (for a fuller discussion of children’s experiences than that provided

here, see Yarris 2014a). Children (even those as young as six years old) can re-

count in detail the circumstances of indebtedness, underemployment, and eco-

nomic hardship that prompted their mothers to migrate. For example, Juliana

told me of her migrant mother, Manuela, “She had to leave to pay some banks.

She had to go and work there and send my grandma [money] to feed me.” At

nine years old, Juliana was aware that her mother was financially indebted to

“some banks,” that she was working in Panama to pay off these debts, and that

the money sent from Panama to her grandmother Olga is essential to buy food

and sustain the household. Fourteen-year-old Vanessa expressed a similarly

sophisticated understanding of the economic realities of migration. Vanessa

recalled her initial response to her mother’s migration over ten years earlier:

“I asked myself, ‘Why did she leave?’ and the answer I came up with is, well,

that she had to leave to work so that we could study and because we needed

money to live.”

Grandmothers reinforce this narrative of remittances as a necessary part of

the intergenerational sacrifice of transnational family life by reminding chil-

dren that their migrant mothers are working extremely hard for their benefit.11

As an example, eleven-year-old Laleska described how her mother Karla “is

working [over there, in the United States] so that I can be well [over here]

[Está trabajando allá para que pueda estar bien aquí].” Grandmothers also

reinforce mothers’ sacrifice by making sure children are aware of how much

money and with what frequency their mothers send remittances. For example,

Juliana knew that her mother regularly sent about $125 to grandmother Olga,

and could even spell out the detailed process Olga went through to obtain this

money from Western Union at each envío. Similarly, grandmothers framed the

gifts mothers sent to children as more than mere material presents sent from

abroad; they were, rather, another instantiation of their mothers’ efforts to up-

hold affective ties over space and time. Robin, the six-year-old son of Kather-

ine, who had been in Spain for about two years, was happy to receive a toy fire

engine and a stuffed bear from his mother one afternoon when I visited, but he

told me in a clear voice, “Yes, I like them, but I really want to see her again soon

[Sí me gustan, pero quiero que le vuelvo a ver pronto].” Despite his young age,

Robin was able to articulate the ambivalence about money and love, presence

and absence, embodied by remittances and gifts in transnational families.

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For children and their grandmother caregivers, remittances sent from

abroad are always about more than material gifts; they are also signifiers of the

temporal dimensions of migration, simultaneously indexing mothers’ sacrifice,

marking their long absence, and indexing the future uncertainty of return or

reunification. Like Robin, most children in my study had ambivalent relation-

ships to remittances, gifts, and even their mothers’ phone calls from abroad.

So it was that Laleska said she usually did not tell her mother about problems

she was having at home or school, since, in her words, “What good does it do

if she’s not here to help me?” Similarly, fourteen-year-old Vanessa, Marbeya’s

granddaughter, opted not to tell her mamá Azucena about troublesome things

her peers told her at school—for instance, when her classmates accused her

mother of having abandoned her—because, according to Vanessa, “There are

things you can’t communicate over long distance.” Vanessa’s nine-year-old

brother Selso added that every time his mother called or sent money or gifts

home, he is “happy but also sad [feliz pero triste también].” When I asked Selso

to explain, he told me he felt happy to receive the gifts she sent but also sad

because his mother was not physically present and he did not know when she

would return to Nicaragua. For children, money and gifts do not fully com-

pensate for their mothers’ absence, and phone calls fail to collapse the distance

between them and their transnational mothers.

Grandmothers and the children in their care simultaneously experience re-

mittances as a symbol of mothers’ responsibility and a sign of the uncertainty

of the future of return or reunification. Gendered cultural expectations shape

the ways that remittances sent by migrant mothers are understood by family

members in Nicaragua, particularly through the trope of remaining pendiente

for children and families, over time and across borders. However, the ideal of

responsibility indexed by “pendiente” is less a stable state of transnational fam-

ily life and more a status that migrant mothers strive to attain, their striving

occurring against the realities of distance and absence and the feared possibility

of abandonment. Just as remittances are a sign that mothers have not forgotten

families back home, money sent from abroad also marks mothers’ absences,

further inscribing uncertainty on the everyday experiences of children and

grandmother caregivers in transnational families.

Remittances Do Not Measure Up

Despite the material benefits and shared sacrifice surrounding remittances,

grandmothers in my study insisted of remittances that “no se ajustan.” This is

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80 Care Across Generations

an idiomatic expression that translates approximately to mean that remittances

do not make ends meet or measure up. On one level, saying “No se ajustan” is a

way for grandmothers to emphasize the difficulty of covering the costs of child

caregiving and household maintenance with the money sent by mothers from

abroad. By using this expression, grandmothers emphasize their part in the

sacrifice of transnational caregiving. However, “no se ajustan” also refers more

broadly to the inability of remittances to fill the vacío (void) left in the wake of

mothers’ migration. In this framing, in using the phrase “no se ajustan” grand-

mothers are giving narrative form to the tensions between love and money, care

and compensation, absence and distance in transnational families.

Grandmother Juana described how she used the approximately $50 sent by

each of her daughters every two weeks from Costa Rica, “to buy food, to buy the

things the girls [her granddaughters] need for school, and we always save for

whatever sickness or whatever emergency the girls might have.” One of Juana’s

granddaughters suffers from severe asthma, exacerbated by the hot, dusty cli-

mate of her rural community, so covering expenses related to her medical treat-

ment (inhalers, a home respirator machine, and other medicines) is a constant

source of concern for Juana. Juana insisted of remittances,

No, no, it doesn’t measure up [No, no, no se ajusta]. You have to make, like

they say, other little adjustments to make [ends meet], and even though we are

few [in the household], the money isn’t anything. That’s because everything’s

expensive. If you have to buy a medicine . . . that takes away [from the food

budget], as they say; [remittances] are just not [enough]. . . . You have to limit

yourself to not buy some things to be able to buy other things.

Juana emphasizes the material inadequacy of remittances, but she also alludes

to her own agency in relation to remittances, as she is the one who has to man-

age household economies, limiting her spending on “some things to be able

to buy other things”—in other words, prioritizing the feeding and care of her

grandchildren.

Grandmother Luisa María, who was caring for four children of migrant

mother Salvarita, emphasized her gratitude for remittances, saying that, with-

out this money, “Who knows how I would do it? [¿Quien sabe como hiciera

yo?].” Still, even as she recognized remittances as imperative to covering the

economic costs of caring for her grandchildren, Luisa María explained that re-

mittances are insufficient to cover household expenses: “$50 is for four children

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No Se Ajustan 81

and from that I have to buy everything, and sometimes you find yourself in a

real bind because $50 doesn’t measure up [no se ajusta].”

On a material level, by insisting of remittances that no se ajustan, grand-

mother caregivers are referring to the economic realities of their households,

which are that they continue to struggle to meet household costs, even with

remittance income. In a study comparing households of migrants to nonmi-

grants in Nicaragua, Sang Lee documented how families of migrants “at best

cope with (and don’t necessarily flourish from) international migration” (Lee

2010: 8). Indeed, in my study, all families of migrants remained living in the

same communities and neighborhoods where they had lived before migration,

challenging the developmentalist assumption that migration and remittances

are automatic pathways to class mobility. While not eliding grandmothers’ real

concerns about meeting household economic needs and considering the fre-

quency with which grandmothers talked about their difficulties in making ends

meet, the phrase “no se ajustan” refers to not just the material dimensions of

remittances but also a broader claim by the grandmothers about the moral

economies of migration.

In one sense, by saying the money sent by migrant mothers is insufficient,

grandmothers are indirectly referring to (and rejecting) popular ideas that care-

givers of children in transnational families stand to personally gain from remit-

tances, such as in the vignette that opens this chapter. Instead, “no se ajustan”

emphasizes that grandmothers stand in solidarity with their migrant daughters

and uphold the shared, intergenerational sacrifice of migration through their

caregiving.

As a way of distancing themselves from potential personal economic gain

from remittances, grandmothers emphasized that they had to forgo needed

medical care for themselves because they could not afford it. For instance, Mar-

beya had delayed a needed cervical cancer screening because she did not have

money to pay for it. Grandmother Angela, diagnosed with high blood pressure,

similarly told me she was unable to regularly purchase her prescribed medication

because she did not have the money for it after paying for her granddaughters’

care. In their conversations with me about remittances, grandmothers would

constantly evaluate competing household needs and describe how they carefully

calculated expenses to make ends meet and prioritize children’s well-being.

In a broader sense, by referring to remittances through the frame “no se

ajustan,” grandmothers stake their claim about the inadequacy of remittances

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82 Care Across Generations

to compensate for the costs of mother migration to cultural continuity and

social regeneration. What fails to “measure up,” from grandmothers’ point of

view, is that money sent from abroad will always be inadequate compensation

for the disruption to family unity and solidarity that mother migration pro-

vokes. In other words, what fails to measure up for grandmothers is that remit-

tances cannot fill the void left by mothers’ continuing absence from everyday

family life.

Grandmother Concepción articulated quite clearly these moral econo-

mies of migration, remittances, absences, and care. Concepción spoke directly

against stereotypes about grandmothers such as herself assuming care for chil-

dren of parent migrants solely in exchange for remittances. She said, “That’s

something else. It’s not for money that we assume this responsibility. It’s not

because we benefit from the money . . . because there are moments that I don’t

even have a peso in hand [no tengo ni un peso en la mano]. Do you understand?

So, no, it’s not for that.” Concepción emphasized the economic limitations she

faces as one dimension of what “doesn’t measure up” about remittances. Con-

cepción also talked about her grandchildren growing up without their mother

and dealing with accusations or teasing from their peers because their mothers

have migrated. Referring to her care work in response to these tensions, Con-

cepción said, “That is what we grandmothers respond to. We fill the void for

them that mothers can’t [Les llenamos ese vacío que las madres no pueden].”

For Concepción, this emotional dimension of caring for and caring about is

what motivates grandmothers’ sacrifice, a sacrifice made in solidarity with the

sacrifices made by their migrant daughters.

As another example of the ways grandmothers view remittances as failing

to measure up, Juana explained her thoughts about her daughter’s migration

and remittances:

Idiay,12 but the situation and economic necessity make us feel divided. . . . I told

my spouse, maybe when the family is all together, sharing a meal, you feel sur-

rounded by your children. Everyone there together, right? But when they leave

[migrate], what’s left over is that emptiness [vacío], that feeling that says, “You

start and you end alone [Uno comienza solo y termina solo]” if there’s not—if

your children aren’t with you.

In Juana’s rendering, remittances partially symbolize, and partially stand

against, the emptiness (el vacío) left after mother migration. For grandmothers,

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No Se Ajustan 83

the moral consequences of migration are more important than the economic

results.

As another example, in her narrative of her daughter’s migration, Marbeya

emphasized the emotional consequences:

You feel you want to cry, you wake up depressed, you want to close yourself off

[Se siente ganas de llorar, amanece deprimida, se quiere estar encerrada]; when

you are without money and it’s time to pay the light bill, the water, school, you

get even more depressed. It doesn’t measure up, what Azucena sends back [no

le ajusta lo que manda la Azucena].

Her feelings of depression and sadness illustrate Marbeya’s difficulties in pay-

ing household bills, but also, and most centrally, they foreground Marbeya’s

sense of loss over her daughter’s absence. In considering the economic effects

of remittances and her difficulties in covering household expenses, Marbeya

emphasizes that migration does not measure up—either economically or

emotionally.

As these examples show, central to the moral economies of migration from

grandmothers’ perspective is the threat that migration poses to having toda la

familia unida (all the family united). Unidad (unity), like solidaridad (solidar-

ity), is a central cultural ideal for Nicaraguan family life. Remittances are often

understood in relation to these cultural values, such that receipt of remittances

is, as described above, much more than a mere envío of money; it is a way for

families to remain affectively tied across national borders.13 This moral valence

means that remittances help transnational families feel that they remain united

and in solidarity, despite distance and time. The sacrifices that mothers make,

through sending money, and grandmothers make, through allocating remit-

tances, are ways women express solidarity with these moral values for family

life. Nonetheless, as the claim “no se ajustan” reveals, family unity and solidarity

are always held in tenuous counterpoint to other, undesirable, possibilities—

namely, that migrants will forget about, or even abandon, family members

back home. The threat of abandonment casts a veil of uncertainty over grand-

mothers’ caregiving efforts.

One concrete way grandmothers draw attention to the threat migration

poses to family unity and solidarity is by lamenting that migrant daughters

are physically absent at times of sickness. When children are sick, grand-

mothers feel that mothers should be present and able to take care of them.

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84 Care Across Generations

When grandmothers themselves are ill, they long for their daughters’ presence

and their emotional and instrumental support. To emphasize their daughters’

absence during these moments, grandmothers would lament, “If she were only

here to bring me a glass of water [Si solo estuviera para traerme un vaso de

agua].” Whether grandmothers were sick or just in need of emotional support,

that their daughters were not present and unable to fulfill this most basic of

supportive tasks is a symbolic illustration of the moral impact of mother mi-

gration on intergenerational relationships of care. Even though migrant moth-

ers regularly send money home, from grandmothers’ perspective this material

transfer is inadequate compensation for mothers’ physical and emotional ab-

sence. In other words, remittances are necessary (to household material econo-

mies) but insufficient (for moral economies of migration and care).

In emphasizing grandmothers’ experiences, this discussion is not meant

to deny or undermine the sacrifices made by mothers. In my interviews with

migrant mothers, I was impressed by their struggles and their overcoming the

hurdles and precarities of illegality and undocumentation; working long hours,

often in multiple jobs; confronting discriminatory working conditions; and

sending a large portion of their earnings home for their children and families

in Nicaragua. In addition to their own sacrifices, mothers also express gratitude

for the sacrifices their mothers make to care for grandchildren.

In an interview that took place shortly after the airing of the television pro-

gram described in the opening of this chapter, Concepción rejected the view

presented by the host Celeste that grandmothers raising children of migrant

parents are motivated primarily by remittances. Seemingly frustrated that the

public could so greatly misunderstand the reality of her family’s life, Concep-

ción said,

They’re wrong because, at least in my case, I don’t do it to benefit myself because

it’s a lie; I do it more humanely—not as a grandmother but out of my humanity,

because these children can’t go anywhere else. I hear so many cases of mothers

who send their children over borders, and they are robbed or even killed.

Concepción articulates grandmothers’ moral accounting of mother migration

and its consequences for family life. As a grandmother caregiver, she is ada-

mant that her motivation is not the remittances her daughter sends but her

“humanity,” a desire to protect her grandchildren from possible harm and to

share in the sacrifice of migration. The possible harms to migrant children are

great, Concepción knows, and her intergenerational care is an embodied form

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No Se Ajustan 85

of protection against the dangers of illicit migration. It is not money, in Con-

cepción’s configuration, but solidarity and sacrifice that motivate the care she

extends across generations in her transnational family.

Money, Love, and Moral Economies of Care

The moral claims grandmothers make about the value of remittances and care

in transnational families recall long-standing debates in feminist literature

about the economic and social value of women’s caregiving. Feminist scholars

(for example, see Folbre 2001; Zelizer 2005; Glenn 2007) have convincingly

argued that women’s activities in the domestic sphere—caring for children and

maintaining households—while unpaid or underpaid, have essential economic

value in the broader (extrahousehold) economy. In her important work on

economics and family values, for instance, feminist economist Nancy Folbre

argues that family caregiving activities are founded on three general princi-

ples: love, obligation, and responsibility (Folbre 2001). These three principles

are embodied by the caregiving of grandmothers in Nicaraguan transnational

families, care that both motivates and reinforces gendered cultural ideals of

women’s sacrifice.

Feminist scholars have also highlighted what has been described as an in-

creasing “commodification of intimacy” (Boris and Salazar Parreñas 2010: 8),

or a tendency in postindustrial, globalized societies to negotiate relationships

of love, care, and intimacy through the marketplace. To the extent that migrant

mothers’ relationships with their children back home become focused on send-

ing and receiving remittances and other gifts, these transnational ties might

be viewed as one example of this increasing commodification (Boehm 2012;

Horton 2008). However, relations of love, care, and emotional intimacy are al-

ways, at least partly, influenced by economic exchanges and material interests

(Boris and Salazar Parreñas 2010).14 In one sense, Nicaraguan grandmothers’

concerns that economic remittances cannot replace emotional intimacy may

be viewed as upholding a false dichotomy between money and love. However,

I advance another interpretation for solidarity and unity in family life: that

grandmothers’ laments about remittances index their views of mother migra-

tion as running counter to cultural expectations for physical and emotional

closeness between mothers and children. In this way, grandmothers’ posture

toward remittances reflects their stance that money cannot buy love and that

only through committed caregiving can family relationships be sustained, es-

pecially in families divided by borders. In this way, the claim “no se ajustan”

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86 Care Across Generations

embodies an ethics of care that is noncontractual (Held 2006), a rejection of

the remittances-for-care assumptions built into developmentalist and popular

discourses about families of transnational migrants.

Viewed in this way, grandmothers’ rejection of the money-for-love trans-

actional model of the remittances-caregiving relationship is, by extension, a

critique of the marginalization of women’s care across generations. Both the

remunerated care work of migrant mothers abroad (which becomes neces-

sary for social reproduction) and the nonremunerated care of grandmothers

(which is necessary for social regeneration) ultimately do not measure up to

the moral ideals for family unity and solidarity. Claiming “no se ajustan” cap-

tures these tensions surrounding the complex material necessity, but emotional

inadequacy, of mothers’ remittances and the necessity, but also the imperma-

nence and uncertainty, of grandmother caregiving. Grandmothers’ tenuous re-

lationship to and narratives of remittances articulate an even broader critique

of a structural system that pushes mothers to leave Nicaragua in order to sup-

port household economies while threatening the moral economies of solidarity

and care that sustain families across generations.15 In this way, grandmothers’

claims of “no se ajustan” pose a challenge to discourses—both popular and

scholarly—that view remittances as a positive sign that communities are in-

creasingly integrated through global capitalist development (for example, see

Orozco 2002). Instead, even while acknowledging the material importance of

remittances to household economies and while participating in the shared in-

tergenerational sacrifice surrounding mother migration, grandmothers lament

that migration separates their families and that their intergenerational care is

necessary at all. (These tensions, contradictions, and ambivalences surround-

ing transnational family life and caregiving as significant sources of emotional

distress for grandmothers are the focus of Chapter 3.)

In another sense, the claim “no se ajustan” also reflects grandmothers’ desire

for recognition of the value (both economic and emotional) of their intergen-

erational caregiving within transnational families. This desire for recognition

is illustrated by what I witnessed in my visit to La Red described in the intro-

duction. Recall that, one afternoon early in my fieldwork, I attended a meeting

of an NGO of women family members of migrants to identify women who

fit my study criteria. After I had made clear that my interest was in their ex-

periences, in Nicaragua, of intergenerational caregiving, Marbeya responded,

“Finally, someone’s interested in us [En fin, alguien se interesa por nosotras].”

Grandmothers viewed their relationship with me as an opportunity to tell their

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No Se Ajustan 87

stories and have their experiences made visible, validated, and valued. Grand-

mother care embodies values of solidarity and sacrifice, which are essential to

social reproduction and regeneration within Nicaraguan transnational fami-

lies. By situating their relationship to remittances within the frame of “no se

ajustan,” grandmothers are drawing attention to the limited economic benefits

of migration and the value of their intergenerational care within the moral

economies of migration.

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