Migrant Stories: Zapotec Transborder Migration and the Production of a Narrated Community.

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how linguistic and cultural practices are shaped by transborder migration, and how these practices shape patterns of mobility. Drawing on research in a Zapotec transborder community formed by migration between San Juan Guelavía Oaxaca and Los Angeles, California I explore stories of migration, told by or about migrants, and the migration of stories themselves as they circulate across borders, contexts and speakers. I use the concept of “second stories” to demonstrate how individuals’ narratives are organized and shaped to align with the narratives of other speakers, and how these efforts yield unintended transformations. I argue that Guelavians on both sides of the border comprise a “narrated community,” and explore how community members use narrative to make sense of their disparate experiences and (re)create ties to one another amid geographic and temporal separations. Conversely, I consider how Guelavians transform cultural categories and interpretive frameworks as they reproduce them in new interactive contexts. Throughout the dissertation I investigate the interplay of mobility and rootedness, cultural tradition and transformation in: narratives of local labor migration, practices of linguistic differentiation, narrative histories of language planning, traditional Zapotec storytelling, and talk about ritual practices. I argue that membership in a transborder community involves a heightened state of reflexivity tied to the continual attempts of individuals to maintain continuity across geographic and social divides. This is especially true of membership in an indigenous transborder community whose members have been historically marginalized in Mexico, and comprise a minority within a minority in the United States. Guelavians face diverse forms of cultural and linguistic marginalization as they move across borders, which complicate efforts to reproduce cultural and linguistic practices across generations. An awareness of their socio-cultural location pervades the way they talk about themselves, and the way they move through their everyday lives. Through the analysis of second stories I illustrate the unintended transformations that result from the deployment of familiar linguistic and cultural practices in distinct social and geographic contexts. By comparing stories that Guelavians tell about themselves and others I bring to the fore the experiences and challenges associated with living across borders.