trabajo digno. Work, gender, migration on the Mexican southern border

The Mexican south has one of the highest rates of socio-structural marginalization in the country, which can be seen as push factors for increasing migration in search of economic livelihoods and to improve their own living conditions. In rural and indigenous contexts in particular, migration regions have emerged over the last 15 years in which forms of seasonal and circular migration are on the rise. At the same time, the Soconusco region in Chiapas is a traditional port of call for seasonal commuter migration from neighboring regions such as Guatemala and increasingly also from Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua due to its agricultural production sites (coffee and fruit plantations).
When border and control policies were shifted from the Mexican northern border to the south as part of Plan Sur and the Merida Initiative, this was accompanied by the expansion of comprehensive security techniques and practices to the southern Mexican border region in order to prevent the unwanted movement of people at an early stage (Braig/Baur 2005). In addition to the extended materialization of the southern border through fences, checkpoints and deportation prisons, social science research is also interested in the ways of dealing with and (survival) strategies of those affected by this development in the communities and along the migration routes, whereby these negotiation processes shape the lifeworlds of the people living in the region.
In the context of the drug war, which has intensified since 2006, migrants are also increasingly becoming victims of violence and human rights violations. In the course of the militarization launched by former President Felipe Calderón, they are criminalized and "stylized as potentially dangerous persons" (Wienold/Tuider/Bewernitz 2009: 15).
Women are particularly vulnerable in this context. This is because the various forms within the postulated "feminization of migration" prove to be highly gendered. In the context of massive gender-specific violence, women choose other routes and forms of migration, especially when they migrate alone or accompanied by their children (cf. Roblero/Zunino 2007, in Kerkeling 2009: 296). It is not only in the process of post-migration and family migration that they have to cope with specific tasks and attributions. Particularly in work contexts - as in the case of coffee cultivation - there is usually a strong gendered division of labor. This in turn has undergone a transformation in recent years due to increasing migration. In the case of coffee plantations, for example, the number of female coffee farmers is steadily increasing (see, for example, for the Oaxaca region: Nessel 2009).
Women also tend to remain behind in their contexts as those responsible for care work in the family, while other family members emigrate. By taking over the areas of responsibility created by the absence of those who leave, those who stay are also part of the migration process of their relatives.
The aim of this study trip is to examine these and other factors influencing forms and actors of migration and to trace the complex diversification processes of migration using the example of the southern region. With a view to the thematic complex of migration-human rights-gender, various realities of life in and around the southern Mexican border region will be analyzed by the students in qualitative-empirical projects.

• What effects does the border regime have on the commuter migration of (Guatemalan) seasonal workers and their working conditions? What conflict (avoidance) strategies do the migrants use in their everyday working lives and to what extent does this open up scope for the subjective and collective protection of interests?
• How do those who remain in their region of origin deal with newly emerging social structures and what changes do migration and emigration movements bring about in terms of power structures (such as gender relations in particular)?
• Does the migration of migrant men lead to an increase in property relations and access to productive resources among the women who remain? To what extent do processes of empowerment take place in the context of massive male emigration among those who stay behind in the sense of greater autonomy in decision-making powers, social and political participation?

Project management and organization: Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Tuider and Miriam Trzeciak, M.A.

Duration: 09-10/2013