Emotion Work and Gender Inequality in Transnational Family Life

Abstract

This study examines the emotion work of non-migrant women as they seek to sustain family life across borders. We draw on in-depth interviews with 59 non-migrant women in Guanajuato, Mexico who had immigrant spouses in the USA to assess emotion work dynamics between partners. Our analysis reveals that non-migrant women do emotion work that entails imagining lives abroad and then tailoring emotional support that addresses the needs of spouses. We also discuss how the difficulties associated with prolonged separation leads women to suppress their own needs and feelings, which can lead to emotional burnout and marital conflict. Putting non-migrant women and their activities at the center of our analysis highlights the emotional costs of migration for those who remain behind and the ways in which emotion work is a highly gendered activity that reinforces inequality through communication. We highlight how women’s subordinated status in transnational Mexican families and the need to keep the remittances flowing help explain why emotion work falls largely on women.

Keywords

Emotion work transnational families international migration gender inequality marriage

Introduction

Over the past century, migrants from Mexico’s western region began migrating to the USA (Durand et al., 2001). To meet a household’s economic needs, men migrated on a temporary basis while women remained in Mexico caring for home life resulting in the formation of “transnational families” (Arias, 2013; Dreby, 2010; Kanaiaupuni, 2000).¹ Globally, scholars have studied transnational family formation in Guatemala and Armenia (Menjívar & Agadjanian, 2007), El Salvador (Abrego, 2014), the Philippines (Parreñas, 2001, 2005), Ecuador (Pribilsky, 2004), Australia (Baldassar, 2007), and within the US territory of Puerto Rico (Aliciea, 1997) providing a robust literature on gender and the migration process. One finding that stems from this scholarship is that although migration disrupts traditional gender roles, the idea of men as economic providers and women as caretakers remains a central part of family life. Additionally, transnational family scholars have theorized about household labor (e.g., cooking, cleaning, and childcare) and paid labor as the locus of inequality in marital relationships (Dreby, 2010; Herrera, 2013; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994; Pessar & Mahler, 2003; Salgado de Snyder, 1993).

Although scholars have studied various dimensions of gender inequality in the migration process, less attention has been given to the study of the unequal emotional division of labor in transnational families (see Abrego, 2014; Parreñas, 2001 for exceptions). Briefly, emotion work refers to activities that promote a positive emotional state or efforts aimed at the enhancement of other people’s emotional well-being (Erickson, 2005: 338; see also Thomeer, Reczek, and Umberson (2015: 12).² US-based studies on housewives have found that since emotion work occurs in the private realm (Daniels 1987), is invisible and unpaid (di Leonardo, 1987; Erickson 1993; Hochschild, 1983), and involves cognitive labor that is associated with the “natural” abilities of women (Devault, 1999; Daminger, 2019), women do more emotion work in family life. A focus on emotion work among transnational families is crucial given the stress associated with extended periods of separation (Arias, 2013; Dreby, 2010; Salgado de Snyder, 1993), the challenges associated with being physically separated from one’s social connections (Waldinger, 2015; Mouw, Chavez, Edelblute, & Verdery, 2014), the shift to companionate marriage in Mexican society (Hirsch, 2003; Hirsch & Wardlow, 2006), and cultural assumptions about intimate family relations (Devault, 1999; Erickson, 1993; Hochschild, 1983).

Building on previous studies, we add to the literature by showing how non-migrant women in the origin community help sustain family life across international borders through emotion work acts while also taking into consideration the consequences of what happens when emotion work does not work. There are two reasons for this focus. First, most scholarship focuses on migrants while less attention is devoted to non-migrant women who are vital to maintaining transnational ties despite remaining in place. Second, a focus on non-migrant women reveals how the provision of emotion work changes over time as they attempt to keep the family connected despite the lack of physical co-presence and extended years of separation which can strain couple relationships. Drawing on interviews with 59 women in Guanajuato, Mexico, we ask, how does the outmigration of men affect how women do emotion work to sustain relationships across borders? How does emotion work change when couples experience marital strain as a result of living apart for extended periods of time? What do women’s narratives reveal why they do emotion work and what would happen if they did not? We argue that the maintenance of transnational families requires that women engage in emotion work that is essential for labor migration and family stability, but promotes the idea of women as the primary emotion work managers that support men’s traditional masculinity as breadwinners.

Literature Review

Gendered Emotion Work in Family Life

Decades of scholarship have highlighted the importance of unpaid household work and childcare for the maintenance and reproduction of family life (Bianchi, Sayer, Milkie, & Robinson, 2012; Devault, 1999; Hochschild, 1979, 1983; Oakley, 1974) while also noting that emotion work is essential in this process (Daniels 1987; Erickson, 1993; Williams, 1988). As with household work and childcare studies, women are seen primarily responsible for what Hochschild (1983) coined emotional labor and emotion work.³ Emotion work consists of offering positive encouragement, providing compliments, engaging in acts of affection and expressions of well-being, and communicating feelings⁴ (Erickson, 1993) to elevate self-esteem and produce positive emotions with partners (Umberson, Thomeer, and Lodge, 2015). According to Erickson (2005: 339), “Offering encouragement, showing appreciation, listening closely to what someone has to say, and expressing with another person’s feelings (even when they are not shared) …” is emotion work “of the highest order.” Research has shown that, although emotion work is central to family life and marital well-being, it is rendered “invisible” because it occurs in private spheres and is done by women (Daniels, 1987; di Leonardo, 1987; Erickson, 1993; Hochschild, 1983).

Erickson (2005) argues that emotion work, more so than household labor and childcare, is closely tied to constructions of gender. There are many studies that support the idea that “doing gender” is social rather than biological (West & Zimmerman, 1987) which provides insights on women’s emotion work overload. For example, Pfeffer (2010) finds that ideas about who should perform emotion work are tied to gendered construction of self among women partners of transgender men. Thomeer et al. (2015: 19) find that wives did emotion work on husbands despite being health-impaired while men did not and concluded, “notions of traditional masculinity preclude some husbands from providing emotion work even when their wife is health-impaired.”

Women are seen as the primary emotion managers in families because, as Hochschild (1983, p. 163–165) notes, they share a “subordinated social stratum” because they lack resources so “they depend on men for money, and one of the ways of repaying their debt is to do extra emotion work—especially emotion work that affirms, enhances, and celebrates the well-being and status of others.” Because emotion work is gendered, it can be a source of stress due to its “continual nature and constant sharing of emotions” and the lack of “reciprocal sharing of feelings” among partners (Umberson et al., 2015: 548). While US-based family scholarship finds that gender expectations help explain the inequities of household work, childcare, and emotion work acts between men and women, we don’t know how these processes are further complicated when partners are not physically co-present. Goffman (1966, 1967), Collins (2004), and Turner (2009) all highlight the importance of physical co-presence as it allows individuals to interpret each other’s verbal cues and body language and then adjust behavior to manage interactions. In a study of commercial fishing and long-haul driving families, Zvonkovic, Catherine, Humble, & Monoogian (2005) hypothesize that gender inequality in household labor and emotion work may intensify when one family member is absent for extended periods of time, a focus that has been central to transnational family scholarship.

Gender Inequality in the Migration Process

Family migration scholars have noted that women manage and sustain transnational households through the provision of paid and unpaid work (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994; Kanaiaupuni, 2000; Parreñas, 2005; Schippers, 2007; Schmalzbauer, 2015). When men migrate, women take on new roles and responsibilities, such as managing property, household finances, children’s education (Arias, 2013; Boehm, 2012) and paid employment (Kanaiaupuni, 2000; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994). Scholars argue that these new roles and responsibilities may disrupt traditional gender roles enabling women to develop autonomy and power in household decision-making (Arias, 2013; Barajas and Ramirez, 2007; Boehm, 2012; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994).

However, some studies cast doubt on this empowerment thesis. For example, Salgado de Snyder (1993: 398–399) finds that non-migrant women experienced psychological stress as new roles clashed with traditional gender expectations. Meanwhile, Barajas and Ramirez (2007) argue that although “gender egalitarianism” may be increasing for Mexican women on both sides of the border, they found that gender practices (i.e., household work) are unequal between men and women. Bever (2002: 215) argues that women reinforce gender inequality by seeing “women’s activities as subordinate to… men’s activities” within the household. Parreñas (2005: 68–69) found that women contributed to family life through “intensive mothering” while men were seen as “good providers” which “frees men of…emotion work required in the family.” Transnational family scholars such as Abrego (2014), Dreby (2010), Menjívar & Agadjanian (2007), and Schmalzbauer (2011) have all discussed how gender constructions of femininity around sacrifice, care, and nurturing may help explain why women may feel compelled to engage in extra acts of emotion work.

The Role of Emotion Work in Transnational Families

In Mexico, Hirsch & Wardlow (2006: 81) find that ideas about marriage have been transformed to “relationships in which the ties that bind are perceived to be primarily those of affection, rather than obligation.” Emotional intimacy is important for marital relations (Dreby 2009, 2010; Hirsch, 2003; Hirsch & Wardlow, 2006; Parreñas, 2005; Rosas, 2014). Rosas (2014) finds that partners separated by international borders used romantic songs, letters, and photographs to mitigate the emotional pain associated with long distance relationships. Francisco-Menchavez (2018: 12) asserts that transnational families use Facebook and Skype “for an exchange in skills and knowledge as well as care and communication” as a way of sustaining relationships virtually.

The process of being physically separated inserts new stress and strains on marital and family relationships which may lead to increases in emotion work. Once abroad, long distance communication creates “gaps in information” which can lead to misunderstandings between partners over financial and marital matters (Arias, 2013; Carling, 2008: 1462–1463; Dreby, 2010; Mahler, 2001: 606). McKenzie & Menjivar (2011) found that women in Honduras believed that receiving remittances and gifts were symbols that they had not been forgotten by husbands and sons. Hirsch, Muñoz-Laboy, Nyhus, Yount, & Bauermeister (2009) demonstrated that greater emotional intimacy in transnational households had a negative impact on the number of men’s extramarital partners abroad. Men’s sexual infidelity when living apart is well documented (D’Aubeterre & Eugenia, 1995; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994; King, 2007; Mahler, 2001). However, there is a double standard to sexuality that accepts men’s infidelity yet leads to tighter controls of women’s behaviors and harsher scrutiny by family and community (Arias, 2013; Menjívar & Agadjanian, 2007). As a result, one study has documented the growing risk of union dissolution endangering the financial support that women and Mexico have depended on for more than a century (Frank & Wildsmith, 2005). Given the strain associated with divided families, studies report that non-migrant women with immigrant spouses experience more loneliness, sadness, crying, and difficulty sleeping when compared to women in non-migrant families (Nobles, 2011: 242).

To summarize, our knowledge about emotion work comes through the study of US-based families where face-to-face interaction shapes women’s emotional provision. However, women who remain in origin communities face many challenges to providing emotion work including having limited information, knowledge, and experience about the lives of their US-based spouses. We ask: how does the outmigration of men influence the emotion work that is expected of female spouses that remain in origin communities, and how might it change over time as a result of the structural vulnerability associated with a compromised legal status and prolonged separations? We then investigate what the responses from women reveal about what happens if they did not do the emotion work that was expected of them. Previous studies document that women play an integral role in connecting their husbands to family and community (Alicea, 1997; Aranda, 2006; Kanaiaupuni, 2010) and emotion work may be one mechanism by which they do so.

Methods

The study takes place in Las Flores (pseudonym), Guanajuato, Mexico, a community located in a municipality of 80,000 residents which has a long history of men who have migrated seasonally to Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, or Minnesota. Given the long history of seasonal migration, the community was selected as a research site given that transnational families are the norm rather than the exception. We draw interviews with 59 women that were conducted between 2012 and early 2014. The interviews were conducted by the Primary Investigator, who has conducted one decade of research in this community, and a local research assistant who lived an hour away but grew up in the community. The sample was restricted to women whose spouse was either currently living in the US (86%) or had returned to Mexico within the past 5 years (14%), though many other household labor migration strategies exist.⁵

The interview guide was designed to collect basic demographic information (age, education, work history, etc.), the frequency of communication between couples, decisions about what to say or not say to their spouses, what they expected to hear from their spouses, as well as if, and how, communication was different when their spouse was living abroad. We also asked about communication between a respondent’s spouse and his children and family. All interviews were conducted in Spanish, usually in the homes of respondents, and tape-recorded. Interviews lasted between 45 minutes and 3 hours. The study was approved by our university’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). While we did not ask questions about the legal status of spouses in the USA to protect their confidentiality, respondents often wove the topic into their responses.

Family life exists largely “behind closed doors,” limiting the opportunity for researchers to observe behavior (Matthews, 2005). While one limitation of interviews is that they rely on self-reports, the narratives we present reveal women’s cultural understandings about marriage and family life. As such, the responses represent women’s perceptions and the meaning that they attached to their emotion work acts. Interviews were supplemented with observations about family and everyday life outside the home. We also lived in the community during the entire data collection process, which allowed us to observe women as they conducted day-to-day activities. Finally, we attended quinceañeras, weddings, and family gatherings. Our participation at these events enabled us to observe emotion work in play, such as texting one’s spouse in the USA during a quinceañera to help them feel connected to this cultural event. Finally, the principal investigator has an ongoing mixed-methods study that examines the work and social lives of migrant men many of whom live away from their spouses and children. While we do not draw on this data for this paper, it nonetheless helps us to contextualize the findings.

Data Analysis

Each interview was transcribed verbatim and translated by trained Mexican undergraduate students. Once interviews were transcribed and verified for accuracy, the data were transferred into ATLAS.ti where they were analyzed and coded multiple times using inductive and deductive coding techniques. First, we coded the data for demographic background (age, marital status, education, etc.). Second, we coded deductively by drawing on theoretical and conceptual categories from the “emotion work” literature. For example, we coded “emotion work acts” when a woman spoke about enhancing the emotional well-being of family members which yielded subcodes depending on the direction, intention, and outcome of women’s efforts. Third, we conducted “open-coding” by creating concepts about how emotion work acts emerge from the migration process such “suppressing feelings.”

Participants

The average respondent was 37 years old, had completed just over 8.5 years of education, and was married/cohabitating (about 15.58 years) with three children. Women received about $212 per week from US remittances and a third (33.3%) reported working for pay. Husbands had migrated to the US anywhere between 1 and 29 times, with an average of 8 migrations (because of the high volume of migration, 14 respondents could not provide an answer). Finally, roofing (65%) was the primary USA occupation of male spouses. It is worth noting that roofers experience many job hazards, wage theft, and constant migration within the US. This instability may explain why emotion work is so central to the lives of these families.

Findings

Placing Oneself in the Shoes of Others: Skilled Emotion Work

As we have seen, emotion work—perhaps more so than housework—is gendered (Devault, 1999; Hochschild, 1983; Zvonkovic et al. 2005). Our respondents expressed that they felt responsible for emotional management when communicating with their husbands, requiring them to be adept at facilitating emotional expression, knowing the emotional needs of others, and having insight into how to manage needs. However, we found that the emotion work that women reported had to be tailored transnationally, taking into account both the needs of family in Mexico and spouses in the US. This is what made emotion work especially laborious.

As the primary emotional managers, women took on the role of communicating emotional support for others and often had the responsibility of facilitating emotional expression when they communicated (via phone or text messaging) with their spouses. When asked why this was the case, we often heard something along the lines of “los hombres son secos” (men are dry) when it came to expressing feelings. This did not mean that men did not engage in emotion work, but rather women felt responsible to care emotionally for their husbands when living abroad. Cecilia (age 42), who recently celebrated her 25th wedding anniversary, expressed frustration that she was the one who had to express emotional anguish:

I have to take the initiative because I am the one who has to tell him that I miss him a lot, that I love him, that I need him, that I desire to be with him. It is then that he begins to open up… Why is it that I am always the one who has to start?

By taking on the role of emotional facilitator, Cecilia reveals the gendered dimensions of emotion work when both parties exchange love and support. Women like Cecilia were disappointed that they had to create the space for emotional intimacy and effectively ‘ask’ for men’s emotional expression. Why did women such as Cecilia feel the need to initiate emotional bonding in their relationships? Jacqueline (age 30) best summarized it when she said, “that you love them, because if you don’t tell them” then pauses, “they begin to distance themselves.” The women knew of many examples in the community where marriages had failed as a result of living apart for years. Therefore, women saw emotion work as helping to keep a marriage stable during unstable times and to keep remittances flowing to origin.

Being an effective emotional manager was one responsibility that women reported fell on their shoulders. To do so, women were expected to know the emotional needs of others and have the insight into how to manage those needs. When describing the conversations with their spouses about work and life in the USA, participants described how they were able to sense “when things were off” with their husbands through the tone of their voice, the words they used, or how they avoided certain topics. Malé (age 28), whose husband migrates yearly, learned to recognize her spouse’s needs: “…when he calls by telephone, I knew what was up, when he was well, when he was not well, when there was something with him. It was in his voice.” Women recounted how reading their spouse’s voice helped them assess their emotional needs from far away. Sera (age 41) speaks about the needs to listen to voice: “The voice tells you when he is tired, when he has not slept well, when he does not want to talk.” Victoria (age 42) realized that it was important to “…know his mood and know him well… and do things that he likes and not do things that he does not like.” This translated into a careful selection of topics to discuss while communicating with a spouse over the phone.

Migration presents new challenges in managing the emotional needs of far off others. In Mexico, non-migrant women do not have first-hand knowledge about what it is like to live in a foreign country, what it is like to live without family, and the hazardous that men face on the job. These factors present a challenge for women abroad because not only is emotion work expected of them, but the lack of face-to-face communication makes it challenging to know how to act and read body language. As Baldassar (2007: 392) notes, what is “underestimated and unacknowledged about this kind of [emotion] work is just how much skill and time is involved.” The skill of caring for other’s well-being comes with time and experience as women accumulate knowledge about their husband’s lifestyles. Mónica (age 24) said, “I have learned to listen because I used to fight a lot with him, so I have had to learn how to hear him and support him and also to put myself in his shoes.” She tried to understand what it meant to work from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and have to return home every day to an apartment crowded with men. By putting herself in her husband’s shoes, she became more skilled at providing emotional support from afar by accommodating his needs thought at a cost.

Mónica, like many women in our sample, believed that the emotional management of family life is primarily the responsibility of women who must enhance the well-being of others through evoking feelings. To place oneself in the shoes of others meant piecing together information obtained through calls, texts, and sharing with other women in similar situations. This shows that there were cognitive steps that women took to tailor their emotion work transnationally which made it emotionally and psychologically taxing. The women even had a name for what they felt they had to do to support their spouses across borders: palabras de ánimo (words of encouragement).

Palabras de ánimo to Mitigate Hardships

Emotion work and household work (i.e., cooking meals) are often bound together in ways that make them difficult to separate analytically (See England, 2005; Daminger 2019; Daniels, 1987; Erickson, 2005). However, long distance families requires the need to bring verbal emotion work to the forefront. Unable to provide instrumental and household labor directly to their husbands that is often seen as an expression of affection and love (Collins, 1994; Devault, 1999; Hays, 1998), the women detailed elaborate emotion work acts through verbal communication across thousands of miles that helped men cope with life abroad. Women explained how they used palabras de ánimo (words of encouragement) to emotionally support their husbands through loneliness as well as to provide emotional comfort as they struggled as immigrants in the US.

The majority of spouses were employed as roofers in the USA, a dangerous occupation where men experienced catastrophic or fatal injuries (Chávez, et al., 2016). Migrant roofers also form part of a mobile labor force that requires extensive travel across state boundaries and living in crowded conditions with male co-workers in motels, trailers, etc. As such, they live for extended periods of time away from their families and seldom have time to form ties in the US, except with their co-workers who can come to be seen as family (Chávez, Edelblute, & Korver-Glenn, 2016). Sera (age 41) said her husband “had no set place [in the U.S.]” because his income depended on chasing disaster work which made it difficult for him to have stability.

To help mitigate loneliness, our respondents reported that they relayed words of love and support that came from themselves and their children. Elena (age 47) said that men expected to hear: “Well, that we [spouse and kids] love him a lot and that we miss him.” Liliana (age 31), whose husband has 14 years of migration experience, explained the power of words:

Well, I say yes, we always have to support them because he tells me, “I need you to support me to be able to survive over here because it is really difficult to be over here [U.S.].”

Gloria (age 24), whose husband left before the birth of their daughter, told us that every time her husband called, he complained about being lonely in the USA and wanted to hear romantic words:

What he likes a lot is for me to call him, “My love.” Sometimes I do not say it and [he responds], “You have not told me” he tells me, “Why not, my love? Are you mad?” I tell him, “No” … That is what he likes me to tell him, a lot, that I love him.

Women also highlighted the importance of words of support to help men deal with difficult working conditions and financial uncertainty. Sera recognized the arduous and tedious nature of repetitive roofing tasks that often took its toll on men’s bodies. Even though she could not be physically there to help him, she provided words of encouragement from afar:

Sometimes he gets home really tired and I tell him (over the phone), “It’s because if you were here I would give you a massage, I would give you medicine or something but you are far away, so you should take a warm bath and eat dinner because there is nothing else you can do.”

Sera’s explanation of how she would care for her husband if he were back in Mexico demonstrates the ways in which engaging in emotion work from afar means that women must untangle the verbal procurement of love and affection from the instrumental work they would perform to express love and affection. As a result, women intensify the verbal expression of emotion work because it is their way of supporting husbands rather than, for example, providing household labor such as preparing a meal.

Women also told their husbands to “hang in there” even when they were unable to send money to Mexico. Reflecting on her experiences, Jaqueline (age 30) disclosed that it is usually women who are the “strong ones” who must provide emotional support to deal with economic insecurity. She consoled her husband by talking through:

We are going to come out ahead. Right now he tells me, “It’s because I am going through this [problem] and I have to save money.” I tell him, “…we will come out ahead, soon we will come out of this and you will come back to be with us, and we will be fine…” I think that the ones who become stronger are the women. If we do not give them hope and give ourselves hope, we don’t come out ahead.

Many women also provided narratives that demonstrated how their emotion work played a central role in making migration possible. For example, Maria (age 58) believed that the power of her words made her husband’s migration possible. On his last migration, her husband was “a bit afraid” at the thought of having to cross the border. He was worried about crossing the border because of his age and health. However, she provided words of motivation that ultimately helped him make the migration decision: “Yes, because if I discourage… then it does not happen!”

Women also found themselves engaged in emotion work to help their husbands deal with the difficulty of precarious employment. Rosa described one time in which her husband was having difficulty finding work:

There was one winter season when they stopped working for two months… that is when he says, “Ahh, I want to return… I am not doing anything.” That is when I can tell that he is in despair.

Rosa explained the importance of being attentive to one’s husband and recognizing when things are not normal. To help alleviate negative feelings that come from unemployment, she offered words of encouragement so that he would continue to search for work and earn money to pay off the debt that they had incurred. Women offered many stories about how they helped their husbands cope with the economic difficulties of unauthorized work. Maria recalled the time her husband experienced wage theft. She described how she helped him cope with his feelings of frustration:

They did not pay him, and he was really sad so I said, “There is no point to worry about it now. Don’t worry. They did not pay you, but have you died of hunger? We are not richer nor poorer. Keep looking forward and don’t worry.” What else can I tell him? If I tell him [what I want to say], then I am going to further depress him and maybe I may make him do something that is not worth it. Women are here to support, to have our husbands’ backs.

Even though María was angry and worried about the impact of the lost wages on her family’s financial situation, she offered words of support to make her husband feel at ease. The physical separation that transnational relationships experience brings into sharp focus the importance of emotion work in affirming and enhancing the well-being of others and more specifically the role that palabras de ánimo play for Mexican transnational families when face-to-face interaction is absent. Unable to do instrumental work for their husbands, women reported performing palabras de ánimo that was tailored to their husbands’ emotional needs of being apart but at the same time reinforced gender roles of men as providers and women as emotional caretakers. These acts, while necessary for the reproduction of transnational family life, helped reinforce women’s disadvantages within the household which eventually took a toll on their well-being.

Unequal Emotion Work Communication

As we have seen, the effort to care for the emotional well-being of others (i.e., spouses and children) takes a lot of time, energy, focus, and skill. The process of doing emotion work as a result can be taxing on a person. Transnational family life takes an emotional toll on all family members because periods of separation run indefinitely (Abrego 2014; Nobles, 2011; Silver 2014). A theme that emerged was that women suppressed their own feelings, thereby placing the needs of their husbands and their children above their own. Paz (age 38) provides an example of the loneliness and sadness women often feel when their partners migrate yet are unable to share how she feels with others: “I used to feel…. really depressed. I could not feel anything. You feel that there is emptiness, that you are alone. You feel sadness and you don’t feel supported.”

When we asked women to describe their conversations with their spouses during periods of separation, many women described the need to “hide” their emotions. Laura (age 32) said that she hid her feelings so “he would not get sad or anguished [with my problems]. When I feel sad, I don’t tell him because I know he will feel bad.” Similarly, Maricela (age 38) commented, “Well there are times that I can tell he is tired from work because he sometimes gets home really late. And if he had not eaten or bathed I say, ‘Hang up and take a bath so you can rest.’”

She explained that when she sensed that her husband was tired, she would tell herself that it was not the ideal time for her to talk to him even if she felt a personal need to do so. The women also mentioned that they hid their fears about their husband’s trip across the border from Mexico to the US. Liliana described how she felt when he left the last time: “it felt ugly.” She elaborated:

Well, crying until you know that they have arrived [safely] on the other side [U.S.]. The days when you don’t know their whereabouts, well you don’t sleep because all you can think about is: where are they and how are they?

She said that since he was home this time, she tried to persuade him to stay a bit longer, yet he told her he had already decided to return for another year. Although she said she was supportive of his decision, she expressed frustration with impending emotional consequences for her and her children: “When he wants to return [to the U.S.], we will go through the same thing [again].” In fact, many women described suppressing their feelings to help mitigate an already emotionally difficult situation. Liliana described how she provides emotional support to her husband:

I always try so that he sees that I am strong because I will figure things out here. When he gets sick or something, I encourage him, tell him that we are with him, to keep moving forward that soon we will be together and other things like that to give him hope. We have to encourage them because it is difficult for them to be over there by themselves.

Like many other women, Liliana’s continuing suppression of her own emotional needs to manage her husband’s had negative emotional consequences for her. Many of the women reported feeling “helpless,” “abandoned,” and “depressed” without emotional support, and responsible for their own emotional well-being, despite having close family members nearby. Many women felt “helpless” when it came to the migration process because seldom was the act a household decision. Instead, men often made the decision without consulting their spouses. In some cases, we heard that men left without notifying their spouses until they reached US soil. For example, Mica (age 34) told us that sometimes she wanted to express, “the anger that I have when he leaves. Sometimes I tell him. Other times we talk, and I tell him, ‘Let’s change the conversation’” in an effort to avoid conflict.

Although the women expressed a desire to share their feelings and have them heard by others, gender expectations and their subordinate status had socialized women that their needs came second to their husbands’. Laura (age 32) told us “When I am sad, I don’t tell him because I know he is going to feel bad.” In particular, the fact that households struggle to make ends meet and that men see migration as one way to fulfill their role as economic providers means that women must walk a fine line between expressing their feelings or remaining quiet because they depend on their husbands for economic support so that they too can fulfill their motherhood role.

Emotional “Burnout”

As the primary caretakers in their families, and because of their subordinate position in the migration process as we shall see, women do emotion work to manage the stress and strains that migration places on family life. Scholars have suggested those who are responsible for the provision of emotional support in families may experience “burnout” (Hochschild, 1983; Wharton and Erickson, 1993). The emotional management required of the women in this study necessitated a great deal of energy because there were many unknowns in the migration process; communication frequency, remittance regularity, and expressions of love were not guaranteed, and to make matters worse, there was always the fear of infidelity. For women whose spouses had experienced long periods of living apart, years of intensive emotion work led to emotional withdrawal, apathy, or resignation. María (age 52), whose husband has migrated more than 20 times, found that over time she provided less emotional support to her husband. She expressed apathy about her marriage:

I’m kind of getting used to him not being here. We just communicate on the phone now. He asks about his children, about how they are, how they’re doing in school, and he communicates when he sends us money. I don’t care so much about him not coming back. The fact that he calls us and says hello is enough… we’re drifting apart.

For some women, the realization of a husband’s infidelity and their abandonment led to emotional burnout and eventually withdrawal. Maribel (age 33) told us that she spent years providing emotional support to her husband while he was in the USA, even when there were signs that her husband had been unfaithful. However, it was not until she had been “abandoned” that she finally “gave up emotionally” and stopped providing emotion work to her husband:

It wasn’t the same anymore, because he came back, but he didn’t come back [to our] home, he went to his parents’ house, so you start noticing it’s not the same anymore. During the 3 months he was here, he went to the house 2 or 3 weeks, but he chose to go back with his family. During that time, I got pregnant, but he didn’t care. That’s what typical sexist men say, they leave and they tell you that there’s no way for them to know it’s really their baby. He left with that mindset. I didn’t study, didn’t have a job… There were days when I was pregnant and I didn’t have anything to eat, I didn’t have food to feed my daughters…

“Giving up” was a theme that emerged, especially for women who had spent many years in transnational relationships. However, the idea of giving up did not happen overnight, but rather took years before women finally decided to withhold emotion work acts. Cuca (age 50) said that once she found out about her husband’s infidelity, “everything which existed came to an end” and said that “she had never thought about divorcing” before that time. As a result of the prolonged separation and an unknown reunification, some women had also grown skeptical of their relationships. Lourdes (age 41), for example, told us, “We are always polar opposites I would say. He would say ‘white’ I’d say ‘black’ we are never in agreement… we are no longer in harmony like we were before.” The physical distance over time translated into distance and disconnect within their relationships.

Nancy was only 18 years of age when she first married her husband. For years, Nancy supported her migrant husband even if it meant, “you sacrifice their company, the support, and the affection.” However, Nancy noted that with time her husband began to change, and he began to drink more regularly while in the US so they drifted apart. Nancy told us that, “Previously, yes, I used to silence a lot. I did not tell him what I felt but now no longer, now no. Currently, if he is in the wrong, I let him know. I let him know when I am mad. When I am sad. When I am happy.” Over and over respondents mentioned that they felt they did not feel free to share their feelings. Many of these women were young and likely moved in with their in-laws when they first got married so they did not feel that they could express what they felt. However, Cecilia reminded us that it is a process that changes with time. She felt silenced through most of her marriage. However, she experienced personal growth after taking a bible course where she was taught to,, “Open yourself up, even if it is not what you are supposed to do, express what you carry and what you feel…” That is the way in which I began to express myself.

These stories show that the dynamics of emotion work change over time for women as they experience burnout or marital issues associated with the prolonged maintenance of families across national borders.

Women who remain in origin communities engage in considerable emotion work with their immigrant spouses in an effort to keep the family connected emotionally. Gender ideology along with economic necessity shape how men and women contribute to the reproduction of the household. Emotion work is vital to the migration process, but its performative aspects from afar can have a negative impact on women’s well-being. Women do emotion work to sustain family life across borders, but there are no guarantees that their efforts will keep men connected to their families and communities over the long-term. Emotion work acts are not only cultural expectations of women, but represent survival strategies aimed at keeping some conception of the family intact and remittances flowing.

Discussion and Conclusion

US-based family studies have shown that the division of emotion work, much like housework and childcare, is gendered (Erickson, 2005; Hochschild, 1983; Pfeffer, 2010; Zvonkovic et al., 2005). Our research confirms that, like their US counterparts, non-migrant women in transnational families in Mexico are seen as responsible for the provision of emotion work within families. However, scholars who theorize about emotion work in family relations have focused primarily (though not exclusively) on physically co-present couples. Goffman (1966: 17) notes face-to-face interactions matter because of the “richness of information flow and facilitation of feedback” so that the closeness can lead persons “to be perceived in whatever they are doing.” In fact, scholars who study separated families have noted the importance of face-to-face communication in reinforcing the idea of family (Abrego, 2014; Baldassar’s, 2007).

What do we learn about emotion work from the lives of non-migrant women in Mexico? We outline four implications. First, women see emotion work as their duty and the efforts of emotion work heighten during stressful times associated with transnational life. Our study focuses on the experiences of couples where marriages/partnerships are put to the test on a regular basis because of the lack of face-to-face interaction that is central to the provision of emotion work. We found that a focus on transnational families helps us to shed light on emotion work that is intense and focused. Our research uncovered that emotion work requires the cognitive skill of imagining oneself in the shoes of others. This means carefully listening to what husbands share over the phone and gathering information so as to provide emotion work that helps mitigate the stresses associated with being an undocumented immigrant in the US. Previous scholars have noted that emotion work requires intensive time and energy but have overlooked the work that goes into imagining the needs of others who are not physically co-present. Second, emotion work in transnational families is the main form of support that women provide their physically absent spouses. The work women must do to maintain families across borders brings the emotional work into focus as women are no longer able to perform instrumental or household work directly for their husbands, so the focus on emotion work becomes central for understanding gender inequality in family life and in the migration process. Thus, emotion work becomes an expression of their love and commitment to the family during spousal absence and a means of survival.

Third, while emotion work helps to sustain families across borders (in our case, between husbands and wives), it can also be a source of tension because of the inherent inequities in household dynamics and the migration process. Over time, emotion work can lead to negative repercussions for women’s well-being and eventually burnout. The fact that women depend on their migrant husbands for financial support and the ever-present possibility of abandonment and infidelity help to explain why women may see emotion work as not only their duty, but essential for keeping the family together. Women feel responsible for doing emotion work because it is culturally expected of them and also because they depend on remittances. By doing emotion work, women reinforce men’s masculinity (particularly that their main contribution to the household is through income) but must do so to obtain money which allows them to fulfill their own motherhood responsibilities of sustaining the family financially and emotionally.

Fourth, the emotion work that women engage helps to connect origin and destination communities through communication. By focusing on the experiences of non-migrant women, we provide some insights as to why some families remain connected while others do not. Waldinger (2015: 65) states “Communication may reveal that neither migrant nor stay-at-home is fully aware of the other’s reality, thus heightening the impact of absence.” Over time, communication between origin and destination may dissipate as tastes, motivation, and desires shift for migrants from the origin to the destination, creating conflict. However, the emotion work that women provide helps to keep men connected to the family and community, though over time the ties may weaken.

In closing, women’s emotion work should not be interpreted to mean that men abstain from emotion work. Studies have shown that immigrant men do emotion work with their children, but gender constraints may lead men to overemphasize their breadwinning role (Dreby, 2010; Schmalzbauer, 2015) which may entail hiding their emotions (Walter et al., 2004). However, because of women’s status, they engage in emotion work to sustain labor migration and family stability, but their acts reinforce unequal gender relations within transnational families.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Note

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