Sociopolitical Remittances, Rural Development, and Mexican Migrant Hometown Associations: The Shifting Nature of Transnational and Trans-Local Connections in the Chicago-Michoacan Corridor

This dissertation focuses on Hometown Associations (HTAs) from the state of Michoacan with strong transnational links in the Chicago metropolitan area. The study explains the impacts of collective remittance projects financed by migrant-led HTAs at the sociopolitical level and addresses the practices of civic binationality that hometown associations have displayed in the last decade. Using archival research, in depth interviews with key players, and participant observation, this work demonstrates that new patterns of binational civic participation in sending and receiving societies have made a modest contribution to more democratic and accountable socio-political environments in high expulsion regions in rural Mexico. HTA's most significant democratizing practices include pressures by migrant leaders on local governments for greater accountability and stronger voice and representation for outlying villages in municipal decision-making. In terms of organizational capacity, the evidence suggests that Michoacano migrant organizations in the United States are transplanted adaptations of rural village organizing systems, and not necessarily the result of an increased exposure to American democratic and philanthropic values during the adaptation process to the host society.

The dissertation also describes the evolution of Chicago-based Michoacano HTAs during the past decade and reveals that these organizations have been an increasingly more powerful force for social support as well as human, labor, and immigrant rights advocacy for their members in the United States. HTAs burgeoning organizational capacity has led to a greater involvement in the social and political issues affecting their communities in the host society. This work examines the inner dynamics, organizational challenges, and expanding roles of these groups.

The emergence and consolidation of Mexican HTAs is an important outcome produced by expanded flows of family remittances in the North American corridor. Until recent years, HTAs, the most prevalent form of voluntary-sector activity among first-generation Mexican migrants in the U.S, were solely portrayed as an important mechanism for the promotion of local development through their collective remittances and philanthropic work in Mexico. This new system of binational organizing needs to be interpreted as a potentially democratizing element, one involving the expansion of substantive citizenship practices and identities in transnational contexts.