¿El Señor O la Señora? Gender and Participation in Chicago's Mexican Immigrant Community

This article analyzes the role of gender in the organization of immigrant communities and contrasts two dimensions of community among a group of Mexican immigrants in Chicago. The "formal" dimension is one in which members pursue defined goals and make fixed economic contributions. The other "informal" dimension is based on casual interactions that result from maintaining the social ties that were developed in their homeland. Despite an apparent dominant presence of one gender in each dimension, the other gender participates actively in making decisions and implementing the activities that maintain the ties among paisanos (people who come from the same place, in this case, the municipio of Huejuquilla el Alto, Jalisco). It is necessary, then, to distinguish the various elements encompassed in both the formal and informal dimensions of communities, as well as the role of gender in each of them. Furthermore, culture, political economy, and position in the life cycle of the immigrant family will influence the possibility and desirability of the involvement of male or female involvement in the various activities and practices of both dimensions of community relations.1 These issues are approached from a qualitative sociology perspective, utilizing mainly ethnographic methods: fieldwork, interviews, and life histories. It is important to emphasize that what researchers see when looking only superficially at the immigrant experience might be deceptive. It is necessary to enter into people's more intimate interactions to see the full range of experiences that take place within the family and that most times are not reproduced in front of others. Moreover, the scenes that appear to us are not the product of spontaneous actions but the result of short- and / or long-term processes that are now expressed in particular circumstances. The participation of women and men in building their communities reveals hidden elements of the immigrant experience, especially with regard to gender, cultural patterns, and the timing of arrival. The creation of communities of immigrants entails both unintended reproduction of learned patterns of interaction and a more conscious utilization of resources from the homeland and its host society. The way immigrants combine such processes influences the shape that their communities will take, the transitions these communities will experience over time, and the meaning that their homeland will have in their lives abroad. Recent literature on international migration has paid attention to the issue of the construction of paisano communities in the host societies. Most of the studies on Mexican immigrants in the United States have focused on paisano communities with relatively high degrees of formal organization, usually called "clubs. " They have shown that such clubs usually organize social gatherings and other activities-for example, beauty contests, soccer tournaments, etc.-in the United States to promote a sense of community among paisanos and, at the same time, to collect funds to implement projects geared to the improvement of social conditions in their municipios (or towns) of origin. In some cases, these organizations also pursue the goals of intervening in the politics of their homeland. Such analyses have shed light on social, political, and economic factors pertaining to the maintenance of immigrant transnational ties.2 However, the focus on clubs of paisanos has distracted scholarly attention from other kinds of immigrants' practices that also reinforce paisano community ties, but in a less formal and "inclusive" fashion-that is, including only close friends and family. These include intimate gatherings and annual or semiannual celebrations in the summer months or during Christmas season. These practices define the more common social interactions among immigrants and they tend to reproduce the social relations that were in existence in their homeland. Furthermore, in many cases, patterns of former social relations structured the networks that "brought" immigrants from Huejuquilla to Chicago. …