Elsewhen among the elderberries: Gendered infrastructures of home and migration in a Mam Maya town

Abstract

Abstract

Migration is often understood through the lives of migrants, but the experiences and desires of those who stay behind are important in understanding how the world is shaped by movement across borders. In this article, I put the work of a Mam Maya women's collective in conversation with Indigenous and communitarian feminist theory to illustrate the home as an infrastructure where temporalities of migration are made visible and from which new social infrastructures emerge toward Indigenous futures. In Toj Coman, Guatemala migration has become a life plan for boys and men, and associated local infrastructures reflect this pattern: migrants build houses for an imagined future return. However, this elsewhen doesn’t always manifest as planned. Houses are built slowly, ebbing and flowing with funds and momentum or lack thereof. Violent border policies create conditions in which men leave with delayed or impossible return. Families who stay behind live with temporal inconsistencies that affect their daily lives, often waiting through displacement and disconnection. Homes are the center of both the temporal disruptions generated through migration and collective strategies to mitigate them. The Toj Coman women's collective formed around women's infrastructural needs but now serves as scaffolding for the community in this context.