Antropología

On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork with rural Mapuche families in the Araucanía region of Chile, this article analyzes ways in which Mapuche parenting practices and the process of socialization during early childhood involve and transmit a sense of volition that is intrinsic to Mapuche notions of personhood and autonomy. Recounting concrete daily events, we describe how children make use of their own initiative and intentionality when exploring, acting, learning, and creating social relationships. At the same time, Mapuche parents avoid constant visual supervision and direct intervention, rarely oppressing children's volition while respecting and valuing children's personal and direct experiences of the world. By considering volition as an important cultural feature of parenting and socialization, and by reflecting upon how different ideologies of childhood and parenting relate to children's volition, we aim to contribute to current developments on early socialization and parenting cultures. [Early socialization, volition, Mapuche, parenting]

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Araucanía region of Chile, this article analyzes the caring practices of rural Mapuche women through relatedness, investigating how the study of mutual care illuminates the acknowledgment of sociality and personhood. Recounting concrete daily practices of mutual care-ayuda (help), estar atenta(being aware), and estar ahí (being there)-we examine the enactment and narratives of what these women label cariño, or affection. We argue that these women's caring practices and sense of cariño are coherent with the acknowledged volitional and autonomic features of Mapuche personhood. We also claim

This article discusses two dominant and contradictory representations of Indonesian female migrant workers: as national “heroes” who contribute to Indonesia’s economic development, or as exploited “victims” of labor abuse. By analyzing public statements by Indonesian state actors, news reports, and migrant activists’ websites, I argue that representations of migrants as victims do not undermine representations of migrants as heroes of development. Instead, in Indonesian public discourses about migrant women, various institutions and actors often evoke similar gendered moral assumptions of what makes a “good” or “bad” Indonesian woman and worker. These assumptions serve narratives that imply which migrant workers are heroes who deserve media attention; which migrants are unfairly abused and deserve state protection; and which migrants partly deserve their tragic fates. I term these assumptions gendered moral hierarchies, which distinguish between “tolerable” and “illegitimate” violence. Gendered moral hierarchies in representations of migrants downplay the responsibility of states and institutions for migrant safety, labor protection, and aspects of social welfare, by emphasizing individual moral responsibility and blame. More attention to gendered moral assumptions behind migrants’ narratives of development and victimhood can illuminate how they experience the risks and promises of transnational labor migration in gendered and culturally specific ways.

This article considers how and why somen non-migrants partially inhabit migrant subjectivities. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Central Java, Indonesia, I describe experiences of those who embarked on pre-departure migration processes, but failed to leave the country. Men are often victims of fraud; women typically ran away from the confines of training centers. Upon being redirected away from border-spaces of airports and recruitment centers, they typically self-identify and are perceived by kin and neighbors as “former” transnational migrants. I analyze how migration infrastructure—intersecting institutions, agents, and technologies— produces such subjectivities in-between conventional migrant and non-migrant categories. These positions in between leaving and staying illuminate the infrastructural conditions that both enable, constrain, and mediate transnational mobilities. These cases of non-departure demonstrate the expansive social and spatial effects of migration infrastructure beyond the facilitation of transnational movement. Such less considered (im)mobilities of non-migrants point to diverse ways migration institutions and agents mediate the circulation of persons between and within national borders.

RESUMEN | Este artículo examina la relación entre el discurso sobre las víctimas migrantes del Gobierno de Indonesia y la promoción de la migración como camino al desarrollo. Se discuten dos representaciones dominantes de migrantes indonesios: como héroes nacionales que contribuyen al desarrollo económico del país y como víctimas de la explotación laboral. Analizando discursos de representantes del Estado y publicaciones de medios locales y ONG se argumenta que ambas representaciones enfatizan la responsabilidad individual en términos de moralidad de género. Para ello se propone la categoría víctimas inmorales, que distingue entre violencia tolerable y violencia legítima, en donde quienes no califican en el estándar moral de mujeres ideales son percibidas como merecedoras de sus circunstancias. Un enfoque basado en la (in)moralidad del individuo reduce la responsabilidad de Estados e instituciones acerca de la protección laboral y el bienestar social de la población.

In contrast to current research focusing on how migrant parents provide care for their 'left-behind' children, this article highlights how Indonesian adolescent women also migrate (or stay) in order to provide care for their families. Drawing from ethnographic research conducted mainly between 2014 and 2015 in Central Javanese migrant-origin villages, this article discusses how opportunities for transnational labour migration affect young unmarried women's roles as 'dutiful daughters' in diverse ways. By analysing how the (im)mobilities of three young women are mutually shaped by diverse expectations to care for their families, I highlight that care is always relational, showing that the distinction between care-givers and care-receivers is less evident than currently assumed in migration studies. Closer examination of how young persons mutually negotiate mobility and parent-child care expectations brings into focus the new forms of agency, power and vulnerability that they encounter in migration and migrant-origin contexts.

This article presents narratives and tropes of transnational tourism from a less considered perspective: rural migrant-origin villagers of Central Java. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Cilacap and Yogyakarta, I analyze how and why some former temporary labor migrants depict their typically harsh experiences in terms of tourism and leisure. Addressing the tendency in current research to approach labor migration and tourism as mutually exclusive or unrelated class categories and experiences, I consider the ways in which former migrants and non-migrant villagers evaluate or identify labor migration in terms of gender, class, religious, and ethno-national subjectivities associated with " tourist " and/or " migrant " categories. Popular and commercial imaginations of leisure travel and tourism importantly shape the subjectivities and positionalities of precarious labor migrants. Foregrounding the relations between tourism and labor migration reveals the multi-scalar ways in which associated discourses and infrastructures of both mutually shape and constitute global socioeconomic inequalities.

Villagers in Indonesia hear a steady stream of stories about the injuries, abuses, and even deaths suffered by those who migrate in search of work. So why do hundreds of thousands of Indonesian workers continue to migrate every year? Carol Chan explores this question from the perspective of the origin community and provides a fascinating look at how gender, faith, and shame shape these decisions to migrate. Villagers evaluate men and women’s migrations differently, leading to different ideas about which kinds of human or financial flows should be encouraged and which should be discouraged or even criminalized. Despite routine and well-documented instances of Indonesian migrant labor exploitation, some villagers still emphasize that a migrant's success or failure ultimately depends on that individual’s morality, fate, and destiny. Indonesian villagers construct strategies for avoiding migration-related risks which are closely linked to faith and belief in supernatural agency. These strategies shape the flow of migration from the country and help to ensure the continued faith Indonesian people have in migration as an act of promise and hope.

Studies of relations between China and Latin America have largely focused on economic and political relations between the Chinese state and specific countries in the region, or examined the experiences of Chinese migrants in Latin American countries. This is also true in studies of China-Chile relations. Drawing on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with ethnic Chinese persons in Santiago, Chile, this article examines how “China” and “Latin America” are mutually constituted and negotiated through ethnic Chinese intra-regional geographical mobilities and social networks. These mobilities and networks illustrate that “China-Latin America relations” are not disembodied macro-processes. Instead, they constitute and dramatically shape the lives and opportunities of ethnic Chinese persons in the Americas. I attend to the concrete ways these persons exchange and create information, and negotiate complex regional identities and networks, in response to historical and contemporary geopolitical uncertainties. In doing so, this article provides an important ground-up perspective to the shifting power dynamics between China and Latin America.