Comment: Naming the Problem in Nebaj
2010; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 37; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1177/0094582x09355433
ISSN1552-678X
Autores Tópico(s)Migration and Labor Dynamics
ResumoStall's essay is an important intervention in the scholarly discussion of the dynamics of migration and the chains that simultaneously link and oppress friends and families in transnational movement. Exploring the transformation of dreams of better work and remuneration into nightmares of default and dashed hopes, Stoll shows that the human commodity chain can be danger ously destructive as debt wreaks havoc on both sending and relocated migrant communities. He exposes the new problems of debt-financed migration in the case of one (atypical) western Guatemalan town, Nebaj, reaching widely to augment description with insights, analysis, and judg ments that open much terrain for debate. The description of what has occurred in Nebaj draws from Stoll's past and more recent fieldwork. He describes a community dislocated by the devastat ing military violence of the 1980s and subsequently revived with the unique aid created by an influx of international donors captivated by the Ixil people. The bonanza has contributed to an abundance of sources of credit, both formal and informal, that has led to a bubble economy, debt-financed illegal migration, and predatory lending. Interviews with 24 recruiters and/or moneylenders (in 2007 and 2008) and some 42 borrowers (in 2009) inform Stoll's often vivid narrative of the community's troubled realities. Dramatic accounts of Do?a Maria, Do?a Esperanza, and Do?a Sara's experiences, the trials and traumas of migrant husbands and sons, and the costs of a bursting bubble provide compelling evidence of the quicksand of easy credit and the smuggling of people. Ample as the portrait is, however, a tendency to make sweeping statements about Nebaj and the Ixil calls attention to what has been overlooked in Stoll's account. It is not clear, for example, how he knows that only a handful of the more than 3,000 Nebajenses who gone north have done so legally. And, if less than an estimated 30 percent of the house holds in Nebaj are involved directly in the activities that are the focus of the essay, how do the dynamics of debt-driven migration fit within the larger local context of the most bustling town in the region? Stoll emphasizes the agency of the Ixil when assuming that their shared desire to superar (get ahead) is a key part of the debt problem. The description of what has hap pened in Nebaj seems incomplete with regard to differences among Ixil and the views, voices, and self-perceptions of the agents that it presents. Further exploration of behaviors and personal agency is constrained by Stoll's efforts to place his case study in a scholarly context. The analytical framework and its theoretical underpinnings are not explicit or justified, how ever, and there are assumptions that affect his anthropological insights. For
Referência(s)