Abstract
This paper analyzes how Mexican hometown associations in New York City practice solidarity so that they might best meet the needs of the transnational communities that they serve. Commonly formed by immigrants in the United States, hometown associations are organizations which send money collectively to their home countries, supporting public infrastructure and community projects. Scholars have debated both the merits of remittance programs that channel migrant funds as economic development and the agency of immigrant economies in neoliberal development structures. Through primary data collected from interviews in New York City, I review the frustrations that hometown associations have with one such program: Mexico's programa tres por uno para migrantes. Concurrently, I examine how the same hometown associations engage ethical economic practices of collective remittance sending and community service provision in New York City. Drawing on feminist literature on diverse economies, I argue that the solidarity work of hometown associations disrupts the dominant remittance as development discourse. Migrants are not content to participate in tres por uno and through practicing solidarity they distance themselves from this neoliberal policy.
Highlights
This paper analyzes how Mexican hometown associations in New York City practice solidarity so that they might best meet the needs of the transnational communities that they serve
Based on my research of hometown association (HTA) in New York City (NYC), I argue that migrants are not content to participate in remittance channeling policies, like 3 × 1 that represent an attempt on behalf of the government to share the burden of infrastructure maintenance and development with migrants
In order to analyze the way that HTAs work in the United States (US) and in Mexico and how they might be creating alternatives to, or within, the more generally neoliberal development framework described above, I turn to the Solidarity Economy literature that intersects with the Diverse Economies literature and Community Economies methodology spearheaded by JK Gibson-Graham (1996, 2006, 2008)
Summary
In the fall of 2013 a small group in New York City (NYC) met to discuss forming a hometown association (HTA) so that they could raise funds to support their town in Central Mexico. The core dozen members in NYC registered the HTA and cemetery project with the Mexican Consulate in order to be eligible for matching funds from the programa tres por uno para migrantes (three for one program for migrants, hereafter referred to as 3 × 1) They began collecting $50 donations from the approximately 800 people from their hometown who live in the NYC area. Mexican migrants build volunteer networks in NYC that help their hometown out of a sense of shared economic responsibility, and in doing so engage in democratic decision-making and mutual support It is for these two reasons that I consider the HTAs' practices of cooperation and concern for the well-being of people in NYC and Mexico as a form of solidarity. They view themselves and the broader communities in NYC and Mexico that they represent, and not the government, as the architects of development in their hometowns
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