Migrant parents from Michoacan Relationship between them and their children
The temporary workers that are hired to work in agriculture in the U.S. with H2-A visas are natives from rural towns in the regions of Cienega and in the Bajio in the state of Michoacan.
These workers are familiar with migration to the United States, as they have lived it since childhood, whether it be with their own father, with another close family member or with acquaintances from the same town. Migration by contract, through which they are currently participating, is a circular migration, which is to say that they are abroad for some months, they come back to their place of origin and, if they are hired again, they temporarily migrate again, so they have various departures to and arrivals from their home.
When they talk about their experience as temporary workers abroad, many of them has ambiguous feelings about being missing from home and far away from their families; on the one hand they see their contract as a “great” opportunity to work, to move safely and to be in the “North” in legal and documented manner, and to improve their life conditions, but they also consider that during the time that they are abroad they lose, so to speak; they stop sharing important experiences in the life and development of their children. For some of them, the idea that a parent be absent was also a memory of their own childhood, whether that be because the father was also a migrant (during the bracero period and/or he left undocumented) and they spent many years without seeing him, or because the very character of the father didn’t allow for a proper affectionate bond or communication, which was also a way of being “absent” in the life of their child, since the absence of the father doesn’t have to be physical but can also be the result of a minimal participation in the raising and care of their children.
The main reason that took them to make the decision to accept a job far from their home were precarious life conditions that they have been facing since the decade of the 90s and the uncertainty that they had about being able to count on the necessary economic resources to sustain their family and to bring them a better quality of life in material, educational and health issues.
Their exit from the country was taken as “a good opportunity” in terms of work and salary that would allow them, after satisfying their immediate needs, to save and improve the house that they already had or to buy a new home, finance a better educational level for their children, and if possible, open their own business to support the local economy. To achieve these goals, they sent a large amount of their money back home to their wives.
That way, the remittances that are sent to the family have a goal and are tied to the desires of the family members; but also, in one way, they reflect the satisfaction of the father that feels that with his work abroad he can give a better quality of life to his family and keep his children and his wife from adverse situations in the present or in the future, in terms of food, education or health.
