Dr. David Griffith (East Carolina University) and Dr. Ricardo Contreras (East Carolina University), along with collaborators Dr. Elizabeth Juárez Cerdi (El Colegio de Michoacán) and Dr. Kerry Preibisch (University of Guelph), will undertake research on the sending community effects of managed migration (guestworker) programs. There has been a global increase in managed migration programs; therefore, increasing numbers of guestworkers from Mexico and Central America have had the opportunity to experience United States and Canadian labor markets and work regimes. At the same time, however, many families across Latin America are struggling to maintain traditional livelihoods, such as fishing and farming, based on domestic production -- household economic operations that draw on family labor and are oriented toward the maintenance and reproduction of the domestic unit and its supporting cultural traditions and social institutions. The co-occurrence of workers who sell their labor in North America and workers who work in traditional contexts provides an exceptional opportunity for a comparative study of work, labor values, and well-being.
Working with a multinational team in Mexico and Guatemala, the researchers will investigate how the migrants' experiences compare to each other and to others in their home communities, with a particular focus on how they understand and value labor. The researchers' overarching question is whether the experience of selling labor in Western labor markets affects the culturally based economic logic of how labor is valued at home. The research will be carried out in four communities that have a range of domestic producer operations (artisanal, farming, and fishing) and also send large numbers of guestworkers to the North American labor markets. The researchers will gather data using a combination of qualitative research methods, including: community mappings, several time-staged phases of interviewing, focus groups, transect walks, and cultural domain analyses employing cultural consensus testing, sentence frame tasks, and pile-sorting tasks.
Findings from this research will contribute to social scientific theorizing of the relation between economic activities, culture, and social well-being. The focus on nonmonetary values attached to labor is important in light of the current global economic crisis, which has challenged prevailing economic logic. Understanding how labor in different kinds of economic operations produce happiness, dignity, and social legitimacy can assist policy-makers across both North America and Latin America in promoting economic alternatives that have beneficial individual and social outcomes and in developing more effective managed migration programs. Funding this research also supports international research collaboration and education.
