‘Sometimes they achieve a good life, sometimes they come back in a coffin’ – exploring social worlds of mobility at the communities of origin in Chiapas, Mexico

Abstract

ABSTRACT Based on ethnographical and collaborative research conducted in the South Mexican region of The Lacandon Jungle, my paper explores how Indigenous peasant communities deal with the effects that various forms of mobility have on their social worlds. Combining decolonial work on Indigenous communality and transnational perspectives with a situational analysis approach, my research specifically focuses on collective processes of meaning-making in light of the increasing mobility among these communities’ members. By analyzing how the people who stay collectively organize the community’s social world, I position myself against approaches that reduce Indigenous movements to cultural policies, since such approaches overlook the relevance of anti-colonial resistance. My research shows that within the ‘Indigenous communal governance systems’, the departure of individual members plays a formative role for the entire community, shaping the resulting social relations and political practices. To ensure collective access to territory as a means of communal self-determination, a ‘transnational continuum of communality’ emerges between the communities of origin and their absent members.