Abstract
In this book, migration networks to Mexico and the extension of the Chinese market to the Latin American country are considered as the result of an intersection between strategies of survival and strategies of growth. The book starts with an ethnographic vignette, an interaction with one of the Chinese women traders that were met during field research. She was, among all interviewees, the one who had the most difficult conditions in Mexico City; our short interaction deeply affected the course of the analysis, for as much as it was short, it was charged with meaning. The vignette reveals different aspects that are dealt within this research: gender inequalities, labor migration, discrimination, the intersection of gender, class and race, but also resilience, family, and belonging. It also situates the uneven positions of the research subjects, as much among each other and according to the economic and social capital that migrants possessed upon arrival in Mexico as with myself in my position as “researcher.” The ethnographic research tools are also briefly introduced here: it draws information from a migration pattern that has had little visibility among academics and policy makers: the migration of Chinese women to Mexico, particularly of women working in the popular markets of Mexico City.
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Notes
- 1.
The names of the Chinese women and men in this book were changed to maintain privacy and anonymity, except in the case of those whose names are known in the media. On some occasions, I used pseudonyms that are common Latin names in Mexico; at other times, Chinese names, sometimes using only one syllable, as the women do themselves in the Tepito market. The selection depended on how each woman chose to identify herself in Mexico—whether to keep her Chinese name or a shortened version of it, or choose one that might be easier for Mexican acquaintances. The Mexican interlocutors are identified by their own names because they are already highly visible in public and political spheres.
- 2.
According to Cervera (2007: 38), one of the first influxes of Chinese to arrive in the southern Mexican peninsula came from Cuba in 1892 to work as indentured workers in haciendas henequeneras, but there was already a rather invisible presence of Chinese in the south, having arrived through Belize.
- 3.
For a more exhaustive analysis of these associations, see Cinco (1999: 33).
- 4.
The idea that strangers (whom local populations often classified as inferior) were “taking jobs” was the main impetus for the racist and prejudicial feelings against migrants—much as it still is today. In the case of the Chinese in northern Mexico, authors like Hu-DeHart have made it clear that the development of these areas would never have reached the same levels had it not been for the efforts of the Chinese. Nevertheless, they were persecuted for this exact same reason. For a more complete discussion of anti-Chinese sentiment in Mexico, see Cinco (1999: 35), Curtis (1995: 340) and González (2017).
- 5.
In a strict sense, economic enclaves depict the embeddedness of a specific economy in a wider economic context. The social life of the people working within the limits of the enclave revolves around the enterprise and its economy (Sariego, [1988] 2010). Likewise, ethnic enclaves, or ethnic enclave economies, refer to the social and economic networks that are created and reproduced by immigrants, particularly visible in determined localities where the actors develop specific economic activities that are nourished by migration flows (Portes and Bach 1985; Sanders and Nee 1987; Zhou and Logan 1989; Portes and Jensen 1989, 1992; Curtis 1995; Zhou 1998).
- 6.
To maintain unity in the text, the romanization of Mandarin (Pinyin) will be used for all the names of cities or provinces in China.
- 7.
In the worst-case scenarios, this is also provided by agencies or smugglers, who often raise their fees without notice and deprive travelers of the option to return home. Although some evidence of these networks was encountered during my field research, it was impossible to pursue the subject, which in any case was beyond the purview of my research.
- 8.
Authors like So argue that the Chinese model cannot be categorized as neoliberal because it relies on a deeper relation between the state and economic development, is still “highly nationalistic and authoritarian” (2007: 61), and—most importantly—its state developmentalism has lifted a substantial part of the population out of poverty. Although it is true that China’s development strategies in no way mirror the neoliberal strategies that have been developed in Latin America, I believe that the recent responses of the Chinese state to global economic dynamics thoroughly abide by the neoliberal model. As far as lifting the population out of poverty, the issue should be looked at from a wider—intersectional—perspective to fully understand the country’s economic path and its impact on Chinese society, as I argue throughout the book. However, So’s argument on the state authoritarianism and its role in subordinating labor to keep wages low and export prices competitive in a global economy—a trademark of the East Asian developmental state—is a fact that cannot be overlooked. So considers one possible outcome of China’s state developmentalism to be the return to neoliberalism, another interesting scenario that will not be pursued in this book. Hence, I will categorize China’s actual economic strategy as neoliberal.
- 9.
In this book, I avoid talking about “a Chinese diaspora” because I consider that it obscures the inner differences between the diversity of actors of migration and frustrates the visibilization of individual forms of action and/or agency. Instead, I follow McKeown (1999) and Hu-DeHart (2007) on the utility of considering a diasporic perspective to view and analyze these migrations and their inherent global connectivities.
- 10.
Throughout the book, I refer to markets in Mexico City and their dynamics, which fall within different levels of informality, as “popular markets”, “popular commerce” or “popular economy”. I do this, first, because it is the emic term used by the actors that live and work in these economic dynamics. Also, the term “informality” refers to a state dictate that will not always be significant. Last, the term “informality” brings with it many implications and cultural constructions that involve illegality. Therefore, to avoid the value judgments that often accompany the meaning of “informality”, I will only use the term when specifically referring to issues related to state control.
- 11.
Among the leading authors of these investigations are Zhou and Logan (1989), Zhou and Nordquist (1994), Zhou (2000), Baxter and Raw ([1988] 2004), Song (1995), Lee et al. (2002), Ryan (2002), Auguin (2005), Lévy (2005), Lévy and Lieber (2009, 2010), Lausent-Herrera (2007), Siu (2001, 2005) and Mazumdar (2003, 2007).
- 12.
For a more detailed explanation on the research methods, as well as a list of the interviews carried out during research, see the Annex.
- 13.
I use “Tepiteñes” (with an “e”) as the common label for people who live or grew up in Tepito to avoid a/o repetitions or gendered distinctions. Needless to say, Tepito and the networks of popular economy, as well as Mexico’s entire social organization, are full of gender distinctions and uneven power relations. The use of “Tepiteñes” is not intended to gloss over these differences, but to state that indeed they exist and are found within the dualistic heteronormal discourse that we often reproduce. I do the same with other Spanish words charged with gender distinctions, such as agremiades (literally meaning unionized, and, in the context of Tepiteñes, used to refer to a member of a specific vendors’ organization)or fayuqueres (referring to the men and women who made their living through fayuca networks, bringing commodities into Mexico through the US-Mexico border).
- 14.
In this book, I talk about alternative processes of globalization or alternative spaces of globalization. I do so in accordance with Ribeiro’s conceptualization and to avoid a dualistic construction between center/periphery, north/south by not conceptualizing the processes I look at as the “counterpart” to hegemonic globalization.
- 15.
The North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico.
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Alba Villalever, X. (2020). Introduction. In: The Migration of Chinese Women to Mexico City. Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53344-1_1
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