Consumption Dilemmas: Tracking Masculinity, Money and Transnational Fatherhood Between the Ecuadorian Andes and New York City

Abstract

This article explores the consumption dilemmas encountered by migrant men from the Ecuadorian Andes living and working in New York City. Specifically, it looks at how the priorities of budgeting and saving money that are necessary for generating remittances conflict with migrants’ practices of consumption. New consumption practices take shape as young men experience the city as an engagement of perceived modernity. I argue that the changes involved in this process require men to confront long-standing relationships between ideas of what constitutes proper masculinity and the uses of money in the Andes. They also require men to find new ways to balance consumption and their gender identities. In this space, new models for fatherhood emerge as migrants shape their role as breadwinners through the specific practices of providing for families back home.