Caregiving in pandemic times: Perspectives from women heads of transnational households in rural Mexico
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Date
2022-10-04
Authors
Pedraza, Alejandra
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This thesis explores how women heads of transnational households in one rural Mexican village in Querétaro, Mexico experienced the COVID-19 pandemic vis-à-vis their gendered family roles. From June 2021 to February 2022, I conducted remote semi-structured interviews with twenty-five mothers actively receiving remittances to understand how the pandemic and related outcomes have manifested with their caregiving roles that already expand upon their husbands’ labor migration. Situating my findings in the literature on the social science of migration, I argue that the social conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic have intertwined with the social conditions of migration to compound caregiving responsibilities for the women in my study. In turn, the tremendous caregiving burden women in my study bore throughout the pandemic had detrimental consequences on their mental health. I situate the distress the women in my study experienced throughout the pandemic as an outcome of the distress associated with transnational family life that intertwined with the caregiving burden they were expected to provide throughout the pandemic and the social conditions of the pandemic they were subjected to. Ultimately, I show how various axes of marginalization directly shaped their lived experience throughout the pandemic.
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Keywords
Caregiving, COVID-19, Mexico, Remittances, Transnational Families