‘We are Always Thinking of our Community’: Bolivian Hometown Associations, Networks of Reciprocity, and Indigeneity in Washington D.C.

Abstract

Using the case of Bolivian migrants in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, this article analyses the development of hometown associations and the construction of migrant communities at multiple scales. While research has largely focused on the role of hometown associations (HTAs) in promoting local development in sending countries, HTAs also facilitate civic engagement and shape identity formation in both sending and receiving contexts. The article explores the efforts of HTAs and other migrant organisations to construct unified Bolivian communities at local, regional, national and transnational scales, while demonstrating that HTAs are simultaneously contested and highly gendered spaces. It analyses soccer fields and folkloric dance performances as sites of cultural production that seek to transfer practices and identities to the 1.5 and second generations. The article also contributes to an emerging literature on indigenous migration by examining how Bolivians have transferred and adapted organisational practices and networks of reciprocity from rural Cochabamba to suburban Washington D.C. It argues that indigenous migrants are developing new ways of being native even as they move across borders and reside away from traditional lands for long periods of time.