Making a Living in San Miguel

I'm back in the States now, having had an extremely productive research trip. My research assistant, Jalal, served as a type of "pace car" and kept me moving throughout the three and a half weeks. Together we completed 127 oral history interviews, which is truly amazing.

Every research trip (for me, at least) tends to focus on a particular topic. Last year I interviewed mainly longer term expats. Those interviewees were able to give me a longer-term vision of the SMA expat community, but also revealed aspects of the population that I would not have expected: younger working expats, some married and raising kids, others who were making a go at living in Mexico.

For the next few days, I'm going to be blogging about expat work in SMA. Most of the people I interviewed had businesses, and therefore are willing to be identified (or their businesses identified) on this blog.

I"m still decompressing from my return trip: I was overjoyed to to see my family, but I was not happy to have to take the wheel of my minivan again (alas, this is the suburbs). I will be processing much of the materials Jalal and I collected, and reporting some of those findings here. I was amazed and impressed with what I discovered this summer. I think you will be as well.

April is the cruelest month

---for academics, at least.

I'm finishing my semester (loads of grading, meeting with students, and last-minute faculty meetings), so I'll be neglecting this blog for a week or two. When I return, I will be en route to San Miguel, so check back by May 14 for the latest on my fieldwork adventures and lots of photos.

Back to Mexico

It's mid-April, and as the semester winds down I am also planning another field trip to San Miguel. My plan is to depart in mid-May, just after I submit my grades. It will be a crazy month between trying to tie things up here and plan for the work there, but it has to be done. This time I'll be working without the benefit of having my family along, as they have other obligations to attend to this spring.

I arranged a rental about six weeks ago. This time finding a place was much easier. I simply posted a request on a couple of discussion lists and got a barrage of available rentals. I decided to take a combination house-sitting/rental. It's a nice place in a good neighborhood, and I have the added bonus of my landlady's cats around to keep me company while I work.

Soon my well-oiled fieldwork machine has hit a snag--Felipe, my friend and field assistant in Mexico for many years, found a much better paying full-time job a few weeks ago. He had been a professor at a small Mexican college for many years (thus free to work with me during school holidays), but found this new position too good to pass up. It bothered me that I would not be working with Felipe this go round. He and I know each other well and we have had a comfortable working relationship. So, I was off looking for a new assistant.

I knew that process might be onerous. I will be in Mexico for nearly a month, but that is not so much time that I can afford to spend days looking for someone new to work with as I traipse through new neighborhoods and (at times) go door-to-door looking for informants. Once I go started, I was thankful that San Miguel is not a typical Mexican small town.

My first move was to contact all of my friends and colleagues in Mexico. I have several contacts in Guadalajara, Aguascalientes, and Puebla, but those cities are far enough away that I knew it would be difficult to find someone who would be free and willing to travel that far, even for a decent part-time job. I put in a few calls to colleagues who have done work with the University in Guanajuato, and to some of my old friends in Textitlán. Then I got a true inspiration: to call some of my gringo friends in San Miguel.

To be honest, I wasn't certain it would work. Last year it appeared that the foreign expat community did not have terribly deep networks with Mexican residents, but I am now questioning that assumption. I first called Caren Cross, the director and producer of Lost and Found in Mexico. She took on this task with a zeal I would expect of a best friend, although she and I have never met face to face. We have been corresponding by e-mail and talked on the phone once. To date, Caren has not only putting the word out that I need an assistant, she is also interviewing those women who say they are interested, clearly above and beyond the call of duty.

So, today as I consider my plans for my upcoming trip, I know that this visit is going to be much different from the last, and I am going to see a very different side of San Miguel. Being connected in San Miguel means something: there are people you can count on, even if you do not know them well. This has to be one of the major draws of living there.

The Flip Side of U.S. Migration

The link above will lead you to a website dedicated to research about American emigration. The report was initiated by New Global Initiatives, Inc. Although I've looked through their website, it is not entirely clear what New Global does and who they are--there is much discussion of "years of professional experience," but the site does not specify what exact qualifications its founder and employees have, and what expertise they have to conduct large-scale research about anything, let alone immigration issues. They also have no link to any of the major immigration scholars in the U.S., nor do they have an affiliation with an organization (university or think-tank) that has an established track record doing this type of research.

I mention this because I am certain many of my readers will be interested in the study summary that is linked here. I applaud Global Initiatives for taking the (pardon the pun) initiative to execute this type of study; at the same time, the report itself lacks a solid description of its methodology and how the data presented were aggregated.

So, I offer this to you with a word of caution: there is no clear evidence that any of the data presented are reliable. For instance, the report says that 18% of Americans between the ages of 24-35 state they have definite plans to live outside the U.S., but there is no other clear data to tell us who this 18% might be--are they average citizens who are fed up with life in the U.S.? People employed by multi-national corporations? Military families? Because it is not clear who this group is, it is also not clear how significant this finding is. Obviously, I would be intrigued to know that 18% of the general population in this age group was planning to move abroad; if they are mainly military families, then the data are hardly surprising.