Searching for Wages and Mothering From Afar: The Case of Honduran Transnational Families
Author(s)
Schmalzbauer, Leah
Abstract
This article draws on data from a two-year two-country study that included 157 people to explore the survival strategies of poor Honduran transnational families. I argue that transnational families, defined as those divided between two nation-states who have maintained close ties, depend on a cross-border division of labor in which productive labor occurs in the host country and reproductive labor in the home country. This article bridges the literatures on transnationalism and families. The transnationalism literature tends to focus on macro processes, whereas the literature on families assumes proximity. This research helps fill the gap in both literatures, exposing the ways in which processes of economic globalization have radically altered family form and function.
