This research represents the final stage of a longitudinal ethnographic study begun in the 1970's on an urban migrant community outside of the city of Oaxaca, Mexico. Specifically, the study will test whether and how migrants' visions of the future developed twenty years ago has impacted upon their participation in various social spaces today, how they assess their lives and the futures of themselves and their children, and what factors account for these assessments. The investigator will return to Oaxaca and these same key families in order to assess how, after 20 years of familial life, as well as major economic and social transformations with Mexico as a whole, members of this particular settlement and their children understand their identities and their social situations now that they have become members of an 'urban underclass.' This project adds an important intergenerational study to the existing body of literature on Oaxaca, particularly concerning the factors which have reshaped the lives of urban poor families and which has created a working class fraction of what might be termed globalized citizenship. The lives of women are specifically featured, as their power and resource base with the urban poor family is singular and central. The study also uses, for the first time in this context, an elaborated practice-theoretical framework with which to address the subject. They key contribution of the research is in the area of changing urban identity and citizenship. These are important issues with respect to national cohesion, crime, urbanization, and the overall economic and social development of Mexico. The PI is the only anthropologist in a small liberal arts university and is responsible for all the teaching in the discipline. Her advancement to the rank of full professor in such an institution will be dependent, in part, upon whether or not she has completed a satisfactory body of scholarly work. This award will enable her to complete and publish her research and thus considerably strengthen her research record.
