Making futures in Oaxaca: Remittances in the diverse economies of social reproduction

Abstract

In this article, I analyse intermingling economically productive and reproductive work at the global and local scale through the lens of how remittances are folded into the communal social relations of one Indigenous community in Oaxaca. Scholars have illustrated the many ways that social reproduction is reconfigured through transnational labour migration, and troubled the categorisation of economically productive and socially reproductive labour. Expanding on their work, I engage with scholarship about Indigenous communal governance in Guatemala and Mexico, particularly the theories of Gladys Tzul Tzul on reproduction, in order to present new insights into feminist geographical knowledge of diverse economies and social reproduction. Drawing on ethnographic methods, I present three empirical examples, which illustrate how the intermingling of economic production and reproduction of communal life make Indigenous futures. I argue that large-scale reproductive activities, such as those deployed by the community, produce values beyond capitalist circuits of production and that it is how remittances are inserted into the local communal economies that render the money valuable for reproducing life and securing a future.