Immersion in the field

4.8.1 Sunville

I gained access to this community through the daughter of one of my main informants, who in this study is identified as Esperanza. I had met her daughter, Patricia, when she moved from Ocuilan to Mexico City in order to study at university³². She studied for only one semester at the same university where I studied my undergraduate degree³³. Unfortunately, financial struggles

32 Patricia had previously lived in the city of Toluca for high school study. Ocuilan has facilities for basic education only.

33 I studied the first year of my BA in Mexico City, later on, I moved to the city of Victoria, state of Tamaulipas, where I completed my degree.

85 obliged her to suspend her studies. A semester later, she continued with her studies at the State of Mexico public university. This had the advantage for her of being closer to her hometown and of affordable state fees. During this time, Patricia’s mother, Esperanza, emigrated from Mexico to the USA.

Years later, when this study was at the planning stage, I contacted Patricia, explained the purpose of my research and asked if I could make contact with her mother and her community. Patricia initially felt embarrassed that I would have a close look of how her mother lived and all the difficulties she faced. I explained that far from being an experience that should make her embarrassed, she could be a fundamental bridge for my understanding of the migrant experience and for bringing me the opportunity to study and write about migrants’ lives. Patricia communicated my plans to her mother. Approximately two weeks later, Patricia contacted me to let me know that her mother was keen to take part in this study. She also gave me her mother’s telephone number so that I could contact her directly.

I had never met Esperanza before entering the field. I first contacted her through telephone calls that started two months before commencing fieldwork.

Through these telephone conversations, I was able to explain to Esperanza in greater detail the aims and scope of my research. Likewise, I enquired about a suitable date to start fieldwork. During our telephone conversations, Esperanza said she felt very excited about my visit. She said that I would bring a change to her life, which she found monotonous. She talked about looking forward to my stay, the places we would go and our activities together while I would be in California.

Building rapport was facilitated by the preparation that Esperanza, my gatekeeper and main contact, did voluntarily and unasked with potential respondents. Esperanza maintained positive relations with the rest of the community. Before my arrival she had informed the rest of the house tenants, and some of her friends and neighbours about my forthcoming arrival. She said

86 that a friend of her daughter would be living with them for the following months with the purpose of doing ‘school work’.

However, despite the good intentions, Esperanza’s communications were to a certain extent imprecise. They resulted in an unanticipated ‘false start’ which was later repaired without further complications. She had been saying that I would write a book about the lives of Mexicans living illegally in the United States. After I learned this, I tried to make clear that what I was going to write was not a book but a thesis. Regardless of the arguable similarity of both products, I wanted to give accurate and honest information to my respondents.

Esperanza argued that the people of the barrio (neighbourhood) would not know what a thesis is, and that it was easier for everybody to understand that I would write a book. This could have been true, but I needed to make clear that the finished product, a thesis, would be something rarely accessed by people outside academia. Also, some informants might have thought that as participants to the stories told in a book (being a commercial product), they could look forward to a share of the royalties resulting from its eventual sale.

I shared a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house with seven other people:

Esperanza, Melchor, Benjamin³⁴ (Melchor’s son), Gladis (Benjamin’s partner), their son and her daughter, and Abraham³⁵. I shared the amount for rent and bills in equal amounts with the other house tenants. Also, I participated in domestic chores of cleaning and tidying up. These chores were mostly a female responsibility. Grocery shopping and food preparation was also shared between Melchor, Esperanza and me. The rest of the tenants either did not eat in the house or prepared their food themselves.

After some weeks of living in the neighbourhood, I was often invited over for dinner by several families, and we not only shared food, but day-to-day interactions. These ranged from trivial experiences such as watching and

34 Benjamin is used interchangeably with Benja

35 For a detailed account of the characteristics of the Sunville neighbourhood and the other sites where this work was conducted, see Chapter 5.

87 commenting on soap operas or football games, to showbiz and entertainment programmes mainly Sábado Gigante, Cristina, shows like Aquí y Ahora or the Univision news.

I was also invited to celebrations such as children’s and adults’ birthdays, christenings, the anniversary of the Mexican Independence celebration, barbecues and taquizas (taco meals). An honoured experience illustrating how I had achieved social access in the community was when I was invited to participate in the Mexican and Central American Independence celebrations.

For this occasion, Margarita, the neighbourhood manager, organised a party in her house. She asked the guests to contribute with prepared food, drinks or cash. When she invited me, she instead asked me a ‘special favour’. She asked me to give a speech about the significance of celebrating the Mexican independence.

4.8.2 Dallas

I gained access to this sample through Lisa with whom I was previously acquainted from the time she lived in the city of Victoria, Mexico. We had lost contact for several years, but as we have common acquaintances I knew she was still living in Dallas, Texas. When this study was at the planning stage, I contacted her to ask if she would be interested in participating in my project. I explained the purpose and general aims and what her role would be. Without hesitation, she agreed to participate and invited me to stay in her house.

I arrived in Dallas straight after I had been in California, so I noticed contrasts between the two sites both immediately and dramatically. In this location, I was residing in a suburban, middle-class, non-‘ethnic’ suburb. I was living amongst one nuclear family. I did not have to share the room with anybody else. Despite my offering, I did not pay for rent or bills (the house where I stayed was owned and not rented). By residing in a suburb, I did not have the spontaneous contact with potential new respondents that I did in Sunville. As

88 there was no public transport serving this area, I had less freedom to move about.

For some days, I asked myself why I was there. Because of the lack of contacts, I was afraid of having too little data for this part of my project to have fruitful results. At times I felt anxious and uncertain about my role as researcher. Lee-Treweek (2000: 117) has noted that the researcher’s own feelings towards his/her own self, researched subjects and the research environment are ‘pivotal to the successful completion of one’s work.’

Yet within days of arriving in Dallas, I started feeling more at ease because Lisa referred me to friends of hers that met the criteria I had established. Also, I started to help her out in her work cleaning houses and cleaning her own house. I felt I was less of a burden to her, especially because she had refused to charge me any money in terms of rent, bills or other expenses. Still, I sometimes felt uneasy about being heavily dependent on her to introduce me to new participants.

All of the respondents in this cohort had studied at least to high school level;

therefore I was able to explain in greater detail the purpose of my research. I assumed, given their educational attainment, that they would be more enthusiastic to take part in my ‘school work’ than the Sunville sample.

Surprisingly, they were not. Some expected completely structured interviews or questionnaires with multiple choice answers. Others underestimated the gains from participant observation. As a matter of fact, one participant asked me after I had interviewed him, if I was going to psychoanalyse him and make personality tests.

Amongst this sample, reciprocity between interviewee/interviewer was not evident. They did not ‘need’ me to communicate in English, nor did they see in me a person who could give an ‘educated’ opinion about current matters.

However, on several occasions I helped Lisa to do the cleaning in the houses where she worked as a domestic. After this, if I had scheduled an interview,

89 she would drive me to the place where this would take place. Also by way of reciprocity, I gave some orientation to Abel, one of my respondents, as to how his son could apply for scholarships for postgraduate education abroad. I spent a number of weekends going to several places with Magdis, a live-in nanny who enjoyed my company and did not like to stay on weekends in the house where she lived.

It took me some time to understand the different social dynamics between the migrants residing in Sunville and those in Dallas. However, the overall experience produced interesting and unexpected findings that will be discussed in Chapters 6 to 9. The marked contrasts gave me a wider research scope, which allowed me to have a more analytical perspective and to refine my research interests: for example, in respect of different strategies of integration depending on social and educational background and also local cultures in the place of reception, or for understanding how migrants themselves interpret undocumented migration.