“Now I Am a Mananda Woman!”

Abstract

Scholars have suggested that migration from Mexico to the United States benefits women by challenging often rigid gender norms. The results of ethnographic field research in San Luis Potosí and New Mexico complicate this view. Here migration results in a complex interplay between males and females—a series of negotiations through which women exercise increased autonomy in some circumstances but also face the reassertion of male dominance and in which males reproduce patriarchal power even as they create new ways to express masculinity. This research problematizes previous understandings of the impact of migration on gender roles and underscores the need to make a gendered analysis central to theories of transnationalism and the study of (im)migration.