INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY
Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 261±276 (1999)
Questions of Migration and
Belonging: Understandings of
Migration Under Neoliberalism
in Ecuador
Dr Victoria Lawson
Department of Geography, University of Washington, Box 352550, Seattle
WA98195, USA
ABSTRACT
Migration studies across the social sciences
are tackling exciting questions about the
importance of local narratives of migration
and the insights they can give on the
importance of dialectical treatments of the
places of migration. In this paper I explore
alternative understandings and experiences
of migration, drawing on in-depth interviews
with urban-destined migrants in Ecuador to
argue that mobility produces ambivalent
development subjects. Recent research is
retheorising the places of migration as
deterritorialised households, labour markets
and communities that explode singular
concepts of uniform and contiguous origins
or destinations of migration. Building from
this work, I argue that in contrast to a
dualistic and discrete treatment of the
relationships between origins and
destinations, migration research can develop
a nuanced, imaginative, dialectical
understanding of the interplay of identity
and subjectivity, of desire and longing,
across the places of migration. By
foregrounding these dialectical relationships
between places and people, we can begin to
disrupt the central tenets of modernisation,
assimilationist approaches, and so mount a
critique of the coherence of national projects
* Correspondence to: Dr V. Lawson, Department of
Geography University of Washington, Box 352550,
Seattle, WA 98195 U.S.A.
Contract/grant sponsor: National Science Foundation.
Contract/grant number: SBR 9511129.
CCC 1077±3495/99/040261±16 $17.50
of modernisation in places such as Ecuador.
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Received 17 January 1999; Revised 17 June 1999; accepted 28
June 1999
Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 261±276 (1999)
Keywords: Ecuador; identity; migration;
neoliberalism
INTRODUCTION
M
igration studies across the social
sciences are tackling exciting ques-
tions about the importance of local
narratives of migration and about the insights
that can be derived from a dialectical treatment
of the places of migration. In this paper, I draw
on recent calls for a critical epistemology of
mobility in feminist and post-structural stu-
dies of migration (Findlay and Graham, 1991 ,
Silvey, 1997; England and Stiell, 1997; Silvey
and Lawson, 1999). This work argues that
dominant conceptualisations of migration
have frequently been limited by their embedd-
edness in discourses of economic development
and by their lack of attention to historically and
culturally produced identities and meanings
(Rouse, 1992 Halfacree and Boyle, 1993; White
and Jackson, 1995).
Furthermore, internal migration research
has frequently employed dualistic conceptua-
lisations of the places of migration, and this
has limited what we can know about migration
processes. The literature abounds with dualis-
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
262
tic conceptions of origin/destination, work-
place/homeplace, rural/urban and moder-
nised/unmodernised (Rouse, 1992; Smith and
Guarnizo, 1998). Recent research is retheoris-
ing the places of migration as deterritorialised
households, labour markets and communities
that explode singular concepts of uniform and
contiguous origins or destinations of migration
(Momsen, 1992; Pessar, 1994; Hondganeu-
Sotelo, 1994). Building from this work, I argue
that in contrast to a dualistic and discrete
treatment of the relationships between origins
and destinations, migration research can de-
velop a nuanced, imaginative, dialectical un-
derstanding of the interplay of identity and
subjectivity, of desire and longing, across the
places of migration. By foregrounding these
dialectical relationships between places and
people, we can begin to disrupt the central
tenets of modernisation, assimilationist ap-
proaches, and so mount a critique of the
coherence of national projects of modernisa-
tion in places such as Ecuador.
In this paper I explore alternative under-
standings and experiences of migration. I draw
on in-depth interviews with urban-destined
migrants in Ecuador to argue that mobility
produces ambivalent development subjects.
By recognising that migrants are not simply
in destinations in an absolute sense, but that
they have af®liations to other less economic-
ally integrated, often rural places, the ambi-
guities and complexities of modernisation for
the migrants themselves can be understood. In
the case of migration to Quito, migrants often
move from predominantly agricultural com-
munities and so have limited exposure to the
neoliberal/modernisation discourse of `city
and city life as progress'. Through this case
study, I examine migrants' multiple motiva-
tions for mobility and their ambivalence about
the process. I draw on insights from the
transnational migration literature in order to
think through the implications of an increas-
ingly contradictory context of economic mod-
ernisation and its impacts upon the sense of
possibilities and belonging of migrants.
The transnational literature has fore-
grounded two key theoretical insights that
enrich internal migration research (Rouse,
1995; Mitchell, 1997; Smith and Guarnizo,
1998). Firstly, this research highlights the
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
V. Lawson
incessant dialectical interplay of desires, af-
®liations, identities and subjectivities in multi-
ple sites in order to reveal the complex
processes of belonging, exclusion and af®lia-
tion that are produced through migration
(Grasmuck and Pessar, 1991; Rouse, 1992,
1995). Secondly, transnational research expli-
citly disrupts theorisations of an enduring,
coherent national project of citizenship. For
example, this work examines the implications
of expanding transnational capital ¯ows, mass
media, migration ¯ows and supranational
institutions reaching to far-¯ung corners of
the globe. Research is concerned with under-
standing how pre-existing forms of democracy
and nation are weakened by transnationalism
as new questions of citizenship and belonging
emerge in this transnational world. As one
example, this work looks at how communities
from peripheral nations are reincorporated
into the national imaginary of their sending
countries through mechanisms such as `hon-
orary ambassador' and dual citizenship
schemes (Glick Schiller and Fouron, 1998). In
essence, these authors ask, if nation-states are
playing a more subordinate role in an increas-
ingly globalised world, then how are relation-
ships of class, gender, ethnicity and belonging
to be reproduced and restructured?
These insights raise questions about the
coherence of other national projects such as
neoliberal modernisation within peripheral
nations, and suggest ways that internal migra-
tion research can reveal contradictions within
national projects of economic modernisation.
The discourses and practices of neoliberalism
have penetrated deeply within postcolonial
nations. They are reworking mobility through
impacts on rural and urban economies and on
the wider national project of free trade. I argue
that all places are touched by globalisation,
that the neoliberal model is creating transna-
tional ¯ows into, and inside, peripheral coun-
tries, and that these ¯ows are reworking local
job markets, rural/urban relations and iden-
tities associated with the `modern' subject. The
latter may refer to a sense of belonging to
`modern Ecuadorian society', or some transna-
tional image of a free trade world. Adapting
the substantive questions emerging from
transnational research, I pose questions about
the af®liations and adjustments associated
Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 261±276 (1999)
Migration under Neoliberalism in Ecuador
with the intensi®cation of transnational forces
inside a peripheral nation.
In Remaking the Nation, Radcliffe and West-
wood (1996) examined the ways in which
neoliberal modernisation has had material
effects on the ground in Ecuador, which have
fomented extensive migration ¯ows and have
reworked popular af®liations with places
within the nation. I draw on their work here
to consider the ways in which constructing a
`modern' nation relies upon a discourse of
urban progress, and I examine the implications
of this discourse for migrants. Progress is
sought by urban-bound migrants through
educational opportunities, work in the city
and involvement in urban politics. These
material and discursive processes of neoliber-
alism are the backdrop to how migrants
interpret their own mobility, and yet, despite
their embeddedness in the project of economic
development in Ecuador, these migrants are
contradictory subjects, whose identities and
experiences have been produced as much
through the disruptions of modernisation as
through its promises.1
Theorisations of migration emanating from
marginalised migrant subjects have rarely
informed Anglo understandings (King et al.,
1995; Silvey and Lawson, 1999). Following
Silvey (1997), I examine the complex ways in
which migrants themselves conceptualise
place as a constant presence with multiple
meanings and impacts on their migrant lives.
While migration is often prompted by eco-
nomic motivations, the migration literature too
frequently stops there, and:
`[E]conomic relations are often still under-
stood as based solely or primarily on class,
with other social divisions such as gender,
race, ethnicity and sexuality treated as
epiphenomenal or of secondary impor-
tance. Similarly, class experiences are
viewed as separate from, rather than
shaped in historically speci®c ways by,
cultures and communities that are in-
¯ected with ethno-national, gendered,
racialized and sexualized meanings.'
(Creese and Stasiulis, 1996: 6)
All of the people I interviewed are low-
income working people who have lived in
Quito for less than seven years. These people
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
263
have typically been excluded from theory
production, and I seek to change that here.
Speci®cally, drawing on their accounts of their
migrations and the places with which they
most identify, I explore how migrant narra-
tives provide a critical reappraisal of neoliberal
modernisation and central assumptions within
much migration theorising.2
This argument is developed in three sec-
tions. Firstly, I discuss the epistemological and
theoretical basis for the importance of migrant
narratives in extending theorisations of migra-
tion. The second section draws from in-depth
interviews with migrants to Quito to explore
migrants' sense of belonging and regional
af®liation, identity formation through migra-
tion, and experiences of alienation and disrup-
tion in their lives. The paper concludes with a
retheorisation of the role of the places of
migration in the construction of migrant
identities. Building from this, I discuss how
these migrant stories begin to open up a
critique of neoliberalism by contrasting its
rationalities and narratives of progress with
the ambiguities and contradictions of migrant
experiences.
TOWARDS A CRITICAL EPISTEMOLOGY
OF INTERNAL MIGRATION
As suggested above, recent migration studies
have raised two inter-related issues of impor-
tance to internal migration research. The ®rst
raises a set of substantive questions about the
coherence of national projects of neoliberal
modernisation within peripheral nations, and
suggests that studying the reformulation of
identities through migration may reveal these
disruptions and contradictions. The second
issue concerns recognition of the incessant
dialectical interplay of desires, af®liations,
identities and subjectivities in multiple sites,
in order to reveal the complex processes of
belonging, exclusion and af®liation that are
produced through migration. I argue that
strong links exist between place and identity
formation; that qualitative research can reveal
migrant experiences and identities; and that
migrant understandings of mobility can guide
theorists in reexamining the concepts of
development that underpin much internal
migration research.
Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 261±276 (1999)
264
Within geography, migration has frequently
been theorised as occurring in public spaces
such as the job market, the workplace and
public spheres of politics and consumption.
The internal migration literature abounds with
conceptions of origin/destination, workplace/
homeplace, rural/urban and modernised/un-
modernised (Lewis, 1955; Ranis and Fei, 1961;
Lowry, 1966; DeJong and Gardner, 1981).
Embedded in these dualisms are a series of
assumptions about the subjects of modernisa-
tion.3 Modernisation thinking, employing neo-
classical economics theory, underpins much
migration theory, and assumes the eventual
total incorporation of development subjects
into modernised spaces (Harris and Todaro,
1970; Sabot, 1979; Falaris, 1982). Speci®cally,
migrants are assumed to take on homogeneous
identities as rational actors, maximising utility
by voting with their feet to move from back-
ward to modern places in response to econom-
ic opportunities in destinations. As Escobar
argued about development discourse (1995:
35):
`The organizing premise was the belief in
the role of modernization as the only force
capable of destroying archaic supersti-
tions and relations, at whatever social,
cultural, and political cost. Industrializa-
tion and urbanization were seen as the
inevitable and necessarily progressive
routes to modernization.'
These assumptions about the centrality of
economic motivations for migration, and the
economistic epistemology of modernisation
theory, foreclose certain sorts of questions
about migrants and migration. As Rouse
(1992) argued, migrants are assumed to choose
to be fully incorporated into destinations that
are de®ned as modern spaces in which prior
cultural forms, af®liations and identities are
erased. These assumptions then automatically
disallow questions about continued cultural
and political af®liations with other places,
contradictory or alienating experiences in
destinations, and processes of discrimination
which systematically shape access to economic
opportunities.
In this study, I employ migrant narratives to
challenge dualistic understandings of the
places of mobility and modernisation within
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
V. Lawson
peripheral nations. I focus on migrant narra-
tives as a way to destabilise dualistic concepts
of place because, following Kirby (1996), there
are relationships between social, material,
psychological and discursive spaces in which
identity and subjectivity are produced, gen-
dered and transformed. Kirby examined the
epistemological and theoretical linkages be-
tween place, space and identity. She argued
that the Enlightenment conception of the
Cartesian subject as empirically knowable,
undivided, whole and located unproblemati-
cally in space, is still a dominant conceptuali-
sation.
`[The] world still runs on the idea that
ªnormalº ideal subjects are standardized
(though individualized), self-enclosed,
self-determining, mobile and autono-
mous.' (Kirby, 1996: 39)
This conceptualisation of a subject that is
separate from its stable environment has
important implications for the ways in which
Western theory has understood the migrant,
her relationship to place and her decision-
making about mobility. If the separation
between individual and place is clean and
complete, then leaving an `undeveloped' place
(to which she has no more meaningful con-
nection than income level) is straightforward.
In Enlightenment epistemologies of the indi-
vidual, rational subject, there are clear bound-
aries between the migrant and places such that
other forms of being in places, and non-
economistic ways of understanding places,
are deauthorised. Looking at pre-Enlighten-
ment conceptions of these issues in Medieval
Europe and pre-Columbian America, Kirby
argued for `¼ another type of spatial media-
tion, one based on narrative, that promoted a
subject-in-process divided neither from emo-
tions nor from the omnipresent demands of
daily existence' (Kirby, 1996: 41). She exam-
ined the dissonance between European and
Native American conceptions of space and
place in relation to Europeans colonising
`undeveloped spaces'. Kirby argued that:
`There may prove to be different forms of
relating to space than those implied by
mapping, ones that continue to be prac-
Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 261±276 (1999)
Migration under Neoliberalism in Ecuador
ticed today by those people who literally
cannot afford to separate themselves from
the ground: the indigenous, the indigent,
women (until recently) and especially, I
think, children'. (Kirby, 1996: 64)
If, indeed, place and identity are mutually
constructed as Kirby suggested, our under-
standings of mobility need to engage with
syncretic, more complex understandings and
interpretations of place. Thinking through this
critique of Enlightenment understandings of
the individual suggests the importance of
examining contextually situated and cultu-
rally, produced knowledge. Demographic mi-
gration theory, and the ways in which
population geography has constructed mi-
grant and place, does not embrace the com-
plexity of identity construction undergone by
migrants with complex/ambiguous relation-
ships to modernised spaces. This is well
illustrated by a recent quote from Portes
(1997: 803, emphasis mine):
`People's subjective orientations are cer-
tainly important and represent a legiti-
mate ®eld of study but, unless a theory
speci®cally refers to them (such as theories
of ethnic identity), it is improper to make
them a standard of evaluation.'
A key product of this version of population
geography is that migrants are objects of
study±or data-points in the analysis±and that
knowledge is universal rather than historically
and culturally constructed (see Silvey and
Lawson, 1999). These issues are important
because in such formulations of migration
research there is no potential for local subjects
to disrupt our theorisations. Indeed, Portes
goes so far as to suggest that it is `improper',
suggesting a normative judgement on the
nature of `appropriate' data.
Post-structural scholars of migration are
destabilising this dualistic approach to theoris-
ing the places of migration. This is exempli®ed
in work on the migrant household (Momsen,
1992; Staeheli and Lawson, 1995; Lawson,
1998), the domestic and external divisions of
labour in which migrants work (Radcliffe,
1992; Brydon, 1992) and the communities of
which migrants are a part (Smith and Guarni-
zo, 1998; Rouse, 1995; Szanton Blanc et al., 1995;
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
265
Mountz and Wright, 1996). This work reframes
research questions and argues that social
processes such as nation-building, the norm-
ing of heterosexuality, gender and ethnic
discrimination are central to understanding
migration processes, and that these are often
obscured under dualistic frameworks. For
example, research on the formation of transna-
tional households reveals that multiple mem-
bers in diverse locations remain part of the
income-pooling unit and may continue to
exercise control over household dynamics
and decisions that affect who migrates and
with what consequences (Grasmuck and
Pessar, 1991; Momsen, 1992; Pessar, 1994;
Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994). Research on immi-
gration of domestic workers from diverse
origins into Canada illustrates that racialised
constructions of nationality are employed by
the Canadian state to incorporate immigrant
women into different segments of the work-
force (England and Stiell, 1997). Transnational
researchers are examining the regimes of
power that regulate economies and discipline
people in the late twentieth century; the forms
of control that shape people's wants, desires,
values and beliefs with regard to consumption
and self-representation; resistance to the pro-
ject of globalised modernisation, urban pro-
gress, national belonging and the extent to
which migrants maintain plural identities
despite migration (Szanton Blanc et al., 1995;
Smith and Guarnizo, 1998).
Building from these insights, I argue for a
dialectical conceptualisation of the relation-
ships between origins and destinations (and
other binary representations of the places of
migration). This conceptualisation must arise
from indigenous or locally produced under-
standings of place and mobility which can
disrupt coherent national (or international)
discourses of `development'.4 By looking at
understandings of place and mobility for
migrants who come from less economically
developed and often rural places, we can shed
new light on the contradictions of modernisa-
tion through the narratives of the migrants
themselves. This work has begun within
development studies (Shrestha, 1995; Escobar,
1995; Crush, 1995 ; Marchand and Parpart,
1995). Marchand (1995) argued that low-
income women in Latin America are fre-
Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 261±276 (1999)
266
quently silenced in the debates over gender
and development, even by feminists. She
illustrates how some women have been ex-
cluded from theory production and agenda-
setting because they have been constructed
discursively as `Third World Women', as
backward, pre-modern and unable to contri-
bute to feminist debates. Marchand (1995: 64)
argued that `¼ we need to ®nd ways in which
poor, working-class women's feminine con-
cerns can actively participate in the production
of feminist theory.' She concluded that one
critical way for Latin American women to
intervene in development debates is through
their testimonies, since these testimonies are
political statements. As such these narratives
provide a site for the expression of identities
that can reveal new readings of development
agendas. A related example is Shrestha's
(1995) account of growing up in Nepal during
the development decades. His story power-
fully reveals the social constructedness of
development and the contradictory nature of
his own identity and experience of the process.
Through a discussion of being a member of a
poor family, and his own aspirations of
becoming modern and his transformation
through a Western education, Shrestha reveals
the discursive power of development to trans-
form individuals, families and societies. His
narrative is important because it illustrates
how people living in non-Western places, and
daily experiencing the transformations of
development, are both caught up in, and
critical of, these discursive and material
processes. His account is an autobiography of
development in which the power of develop-
ment to recategorise people and places as
`backward' `poor' and `in need' are graphically
and personally revealed. Shrestha's account
also illustrates powerfully the politics of
theorisation. Shrestha has tenure inside the
Western academy, is ¯uent in English, and has
access to writing and publishing such that his
account has emerged and is legitimised. The
challenge is to incorporate the insights of those
who have not become insiders in the West and
to incorporate their understandings in theore-
tically informative ways. Marchand notes that
the decision by informants to give testimonies
is a site of agency and a moment in which
critiques of development theory and agendas,
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
V. Lawson
as well as the complex and multifaceted
identities of informants, are expressed.
Similar work is only just beginning within
migration studies. A few studies are incorpor-
ating migrant voices into re-examinations of
concepts of `development' which underpin
much migration theorising (White, 1990; Skel-
don, 1995; Silvey, 1997, 1999). These works
reveal the ways in which migration is pro-
duced by development, in both material and
ideological forms, through Western interven-
tions in Southern localities (Escobar, 1995;
Shrestha, 1995). Silvey's (1997, 1999) work on
migration to an export processing zone in
Sulawesi focused on migrants' own narrations
of development in their `developed' destina-
tions. She illustrated how migrants both
embrace and counter the economic develop-
ment agenda of the Indonesian state. Silvey's
interviews revealed that migrants respond to
job opportunities in export processing zones,
and that women migrants in particular are
attracted to new levels of economic and spatial
independence. At the same time, the migrants
express deep ambivalence about their new
lives, where familial supervision is replaced by
industrial discipline, and freedom for young
women is sometimes narrated as immorality.
Silvey's work revealed that national develop-
ment discourses of independence and material
well-being are both embraced by the migrants
and yet are simultaneously experienced in
contradictory ways. Silvey's ethnographies of
development discourse reveal not only the
ways in which migration is structured by
national development narratives, but also the
ways in which the Indonesian economic
development agenda is reinforced by the
willingness of young people to migrate into
export processing zones. Silvey's work em-
ployed ethnographies of development and
migration to think through ways in which
development operates both materially and
discursively in the Indonesian context. I draw
on Silvey's approach, employing in-depth
interviews with rural-to-urban migrants to
understand how they interpret the places they
came from, and where they now are. I examine
how migration to Quito shapes their sense of
inclusion/exclusion from development pro-
cesses, how gender identities are reworked
through migration, and the extent to which
Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 261±276 (1999)
Migration under Neoliberalism in Ecuador
economic inclusion impacts on the cultural
identities of migrants.
MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN
ECUADOR
Migration can reveal the contradictions within
development discourse and practice because
of the very dislocations and displacements of
people it produces. Ecuador has experienced
dramatic neoliberal restructuring in the 1980s
and 1990s which has fomented rural to urban
migration, driven by declining rural econo-
mies throughout the country (Peek, 1982;
Schodt, 1987). Between the 1950s and the
1990s there have been massive movements of
people to the largest metropolitan areas. Urban
growth rates in Ecuador during this period
were high and steady at 4% per year (Radcliffe
and Westwood, 1996). These movements oc-
curred in the context of a rapidly transforming
political economy. This context is relevant in at
least two ways. Firstly, the systematic erosion
of peasant agrarian lifestyles by economic
modernisation over the last 50 years has
transformed the rural landscape and driven
large numbers into the cities (Peek, 1982;
Lawson, 1988; Brea, 1991). Secondly, the
discourse of modernisation and neoliberalism
that has been deployed in the process of
nation-building has shaped how Ecuadorians
think about their life-chances and possibilities
(Radcliffe and Westwood, 1996; Radcliffe,
1996). These processesÐboth material and
discursiveÐare the backdrop to the ways in
which migrants interpret their own mobility.
And yet, despite their embeddedness in the
project of development in Ecuador, these
migrants are contradictory subjects, whose
identities have been produced as much
through the disruptions of modernisation as
through its promises.
A starting premise for this analysis is that
migrant identities are constructed in both
origins and destinations and through the
process of mobility itself. Because migrants
have complex af®liations to places that are
differentially incorporated into the Ecuadorian
development process, migrants' own interpre-
tations of migration will open alternative
readings of development discourse and prac-
tice. This approach follows Cant (1997) who
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
267
examined the intersections of place of origin
and identity formation for gay and lesbian
migrants in Britain. The life stories recounted
in his book suggest barriers to a total reinven-
tion of identity as a result of migration, and so
illustrate how origins are deeply implicated in
the process of understanding who migrants
are and how they experience destinations. The
migrants whose ideas are discussed here
participated in my research in 1996 and 1997
in Quito, Ecuador. In 1996 I was part of a
research team that conducted a survey of
migrants who had moved to Quito in the
preceding six years.5 In the summer of 1997, I
returned to Quito and worked in collaboration
with Ecuadorian colleagues to identify a
subsample of migrants with whom we con-
ducted in-depth tape-recorded interviews. In
total, 20 in-depth interviews were recorded. I
draw here on four of these interviews with
migrants living in different neighbourhoods in
Quito. This group includes working class and
poor people of mestizo and indigenous ethni-
cities. These in-depth interviews are not
intended as a basis for generalisation, but
rather are intended to suggest alternative
readings of the places of migration and
development.6
Political Economies and Place Identities
The highlands of Ecuador are still charac-
terised by extremely unequal land distribu-
tion, despite land reform efforts in the 1960s
and 1970s. In the 1970s, 77% of farmers held
less than 5% of the agricultural land, with the
majority of them farming less than one hectare
(Lawson, 1988). While land reform did little to
redistribute land substantially, it did trans-
form agrarian labour relations. Haciendas and
semi-feudal labour arrangements were abol-
ished, and small plots were established for
those `relieved' of hacienda work. Since the
1970s, agriculture in highland Ecuador has
become ever more fully integrated into the
international circuits of investment and pro-
duction, with capital-intensive crops becoming
more and more important. This is most vividly
seen throughout the Andean highlands where
food crops are being replaced by the produc-
tion of cut ¯owers for export. The displace-
ment of many small producers from hacienda
Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 261±276 (1999)
268
lands also led to an exacerbation of intensive
farming on marginal lands, such that soil
erosion has been another signi®cant deterrent
to making a living in small-scale agriculture.
All of this has been coupled with a series of
problematical policies for pricing and agricul-
tural credit which were aimed at modernising
the agricultural sector (Lawson, 1988). Migra-
tion has been the inevitable result, and yet
despite the harsh dif®culties of rural life,
migrants express ambivalence about their
new lives in the city.
Manuel is a 36-year-old married man and
father of six children from Cacha, a small
village near a provincial town in the Sierra.
Manuel's ®rst language is Quechua, he is of
indigenous descent, and left his family farm to
come to Quito. Upon arrival in Quito, Manuel
worked in construction and made a good
wage, and this allowed the family to build a
two-room house in a new neighbourhood that
is emerging south of Quito. Recently he lost
this job, and he now works selling vegetables
in a Quito market-place with his wife, for a
much lower income. Despite owning a home in
the city, he speaks of life being better in his
home town, and of wanting to be buried there.
Manuel spoke of his soul and identity as being
fully located back there, while he lives in Quito
out of economic necessity and for the future of
his family.
`When my children are older they will stay
here in Quito. But for myself, I will lose my
spirit here. When suddenly something
happens [I die] my family will not bury
me here, my death and my body belong
back there on my land [mi tierra], that is
how it must be. My family cannot leave
me here. It is simply that you are either
native to Quito, or you lose yourself here.'
(Manuel, personal interview)
Regional or provincial identity has remained
very distinct for many of the migrants with
whom we spoke. Despite having made the
move to Quito for economic betterment, a
common theme among our interviews was
that the foundations of identity ± in¯uences of
places from which people moved ± are not
erased by migration; indeed, our interviews
suggest they may be reinforced. Strong links to
homeplaces have been found in other research.
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
V. Lawson
Gugler (1991, 1997) identi®ed strong links to
rural homeplaces among urbanward migrants
in Nigeria. He noted that even wealthy urban
migrants with secure lives in the city often
remain closely linked to rural places by land
ownership, kinship ties, and involvement in
rural community organisations. Gugler inter-
prets these connections largely in political-
economic terms as a safety net should life in
the city turn bad. Listening to Manuel suggests
additional interpretations:
`Well, you see, two of my children were
baptised here [in Quito]. They have their
godparents here and so everything for
them is here. Then, for myself, I cannot say
that I am going to live back there [in
Riobamba] or that I live only here. We live
in both places? (Manuel, personal inter-
view)
While he hopes to return to his land when he is
older, at the same time he fully expects that his
children will make their lives in Quito. Manuel
has constructed his life as across places,
connected by his mother and older brother in
his home village, and his children in Quito.
Since his arrival in Quito, he or his wife travel
back to Riobamba every month to visit the
family and help with their farm. When asked if
he could choose, would he prefer to live in
Quito or back in Riobamba, Manuel said,
`Well, now while I am young, I can work here,
but once I am a little older, my life is back there
[Riobamba]'. Manuel sees Quito as a place of
economic opportunity for building a future for
his children, but his spiritual space, where he
hopes to live out his life and die, is his home
province of Riobamba. Despite a long-term
migration to Quito, Manuel has not severed
ties of identity, family and future in Cacha. His
interpretation suggests that migration can be
¯uid rather than permanent and that origins
and destinations cannot be thought of as
discretely left and arrived in, but rather as
integral to his life, now and in the future.
Manuel's relationships to Cacha and to Quito
are not de®ned solely through his individual
income-earning ability, but rather are de®ned
through his identity as an indigenous man
with strong and enduring relationships to his
extended family and to his spiritual and
cultural identity, rooted in Cacha.
Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 261±276 (1999)
Migration under Neoliberalism in Ecuador
Manuel's sense of place is syncretic and
complex; place is not interpreted in a static
way. His ideas about living simultaneously in
two places resonates with recent work by
Rouse (1992) and Basch et al. (1994) who
identi®ed bifocality, wherein migrants move
so frequently across national boundaries that
their life-worlds are neither `here nor there' but
always both here and there. Similarly, Mountz
and Wright's (1996) study of migrants to
Poughkeepsie, New York, from San Agustin,
Mexico, identi®ed a transnational community
in which daily life in both places is constantly
in¯ected by processes, exchanges and interac-
tions between people in these far¯ung loca-
tions. Manuel's experience suggests that
bifocality is equally important for analysing
internal migration, affecting his sense of
belonging, identity and future. I argue that
this desire, expressed by Manuel, to maintain
family and community across places, suggests
some important limits on linear and progres-
sive readings of the project of economic
modernisation.
Modernisation and Marginalisation
In Remaking the Nation, Radcliffe and Westood
(1996) examined the ways in which massive
migration ¯ows in Ecuador have reworked
popular af®liations with places within the
nation. I draw on their work here to consider
the ways in which constructing a `modern'
nation is bound up with a discourse of urban
progress and the implications of this discourse
for migration. Progress is sought by urban-
bound migrants through educational opportu-
nities, work in the city and involvement in
urban politics. The two largest urban centres of
Ecuador, Quito and Guayaquil, are repre-
sented in popular culture as symbolic of the
elite, modernising vision of the country. A
pervasive regionalism between the coast
(Guayaquil) and the highlands (Quito), each
diverse and complex regions of many settle-
ments and rural economies, are distilled into
stereotypes of people and lives in these two
cities. Popular sayings reinforce a dichotomy
of people and the cities themselves. Quoting
Radcliffe and Westwood (1996: 110), `Guyaquil
residents says that QuitenÄos are dull, early-to-
bed, snobbish, hierarchical, old-fashioned and
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
269
conservative. The highlanders describe their
port counterparts as rough, loud and like
monos [monkeys]'. These myths centre on the
two metropolitan areas as the dominant
representations of each region, and in the
process reinforce the idea that rural places
are less central to the national project (Rad-
cliffe and Westwood, 1996). Relatedly, they
illustrate how places deemed central to the
modernising nation are represented in the
national imaginary in museums and art gal-
leries. Many of the paintings of historic
national events portray places in Quito ± again
reaf®rming the centrality of the capital in the
project of economic and political modernisa-
tion.
During the 1980s and 1990s in Ecuador, the
mass media have exacerbated the penetration
of consumerism and narratives of possibility
that encourage people to work hard for a richer
future. In the neoliberal present in Ecuador, a
key narrative is the linear progressiveness of
growth ± this image was maintained through-
out the debt-ridden 1980s by oil wealth. In the
1990s, however, there have been severe de-
clines in oil prices and an exacerbation of
government ®scal crises leading to the onset of
severe economic adjustments, which threaten
even the promises of modernisation (Lawson,
1995). Interestingly, some in-migrants still
believe that if things will not be better for
them in the shorter term, Quito does hold out
the promise of a better life for their children, as
argued by Manuel above and Genovena
below. As Radcliffe and Westwood (1996:
119) argue, (my emphasis):
`In contemporary Latin America the ex-
perience of migration is a democratic one,
in which large numbers expect to participate
as equals and in which ideas of belonging,
nation and position are all self-conscious
components in discourses around the
urban. Migration draws upon notions of
individual and family advancement, en-
gagement with national institutions
(schools, hospitals, public services, state
administrations) and ideas of progress
and development, and thereby occurs
within a highly loaded arena.'
Modernisation narratives rest on the idea
that migrants are incorporated into the `mod-
Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 261±276 (1999)
270
ern' economy and place of the city, and that
through hard work they can aspire to an
improved material life and cultural belonging
in the urban, upwardly mobile social classes.
However, even as the migrants we spoke with
aspired to succeed in Quito, they are ambiva-
lent about the project of modernisation. The
following excerpts illustrate how migrants
embrace Quito, but also how the notion of
urban progress is critiqued or subverted in
their words.
Shirley is a 25-year-old single mother who
migrated to Quito with her mother. They came
from Santo Domingo, a good-sized town on
the coast. They live in a shelter that they built
on to a community centre. This is a temporary
and unstable arrangement and they are only
able to stay there in exchange for watching
over and maintaining the community sports
grounds. Shirley works as a street trader
selling cosmetics and helps her mother sell
prepared foods from their home. Their com-
bined income is very low and also unreliable.
Shirley and her mother have been in Quito for
®ve years and yet the adjustment is still very
dif®cult. She explains that people are very
different in Quito and that it is very hard for
her to make friends. Shirley focuses on kinship
networks and feelings of being discriminated
against and alienated in the capital.
`The city has a great deal. The city is
beautiful. It has many nice places to go,
plenty of services. What happens is that
the people of Quito don't give anything to
the people from the provinces. They won't
give you the necessary helping hand. At
times it seems that there are no friends
here. Because of this it is not easy. Even
when you have an emergency, when you
have to go to hospital, you have to wait. ¼
There are people who arrive, who have
their contacts and in they go. So this is
what bothers me, this is what makes me
unsatis®ed, this injustice.' (Shirley, perso-
nal interview)
Shirley contrasts her social life in Santo
Domingo with her social life in Quito as a
complete switch. She talks later in the inter-
view about how different the people in Quito
are for her. She says that life in Quito has been
very dif®cult, that it is very hard to ®nd work
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
V. Lawson
without contacts. Shirley has kept her bank
account in Santo Domingo for the ®ve years
that she has lived in Quito, but she has no
desire to return to Santo Domingo, and when
asked where she would prefer to live, she
responded `¼ by the beach in the United
States!' Again, here we see ambivalence about
the place, but discussed not in terms of
modernisation, but rather in terms of social
networks and contacts that facilitate life and
work. Shirley expressed strong feelings of
alienation and described racism and elite
privilege as fundamentally shaping her life in
the city.
`It is more dif®cult to make friends, people
are more independent ¼ in the Coast it is
different, everyone hangs out with every-
one else ¼ here, not necessarily. Each
person has their own house, their own
friends, for their whole lives ¼ it is very
dif®cult to enter those groups, yes, I have
made very few friends in Quito.' (Shirley,
personal interview)
Shirley expresses deep ambivalence about her
experiences in Quito and so criticises general-
ised assumptions about opportunities and
assimilation for all.
Maria is a young woman from a small
coastal community near Santo Domingo. She
decided to leave her home to ®nd work and
came to Quito because of personal contacts
and perceived opportunities in the city. Maria
is married to a military man and, even with her
secondary education, has not worked since her
arrival in Quito, despite looking for work. She
and her husband live very modestly in a small
rented room with their young daughter. Maria,
with her dark complexioned mestiza appear-
ance, spoke of her feelings of alienation and the
dif®culties of life in the capital.
`¼ here in Quito, if you want to work, you
have to be QuitenÄo ¼ You have to be
QuitenÄo, you have to be from here. There
are those who say we are monos (mon-
keys). We are called monkeys. Because
they call people from the Coast monkeys,
yes, that's what they call us, those mon-
keys ¼ It is a type of insult. Listen, when I
go to apply for a job, they say to me ªwe
have already found a girlº. A person
Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 261±276 (1999)
Migration under Neoliberalism in Ecuador
applies for the job who is from Quito and
they get the job. This is how it is, it is ugly
and it hurts at times.' (Maria, personal
interview)
Despite coming to Quito in search of work, she
experiences racism in the city and presents a
critique of the assumptions of progress for all.
Both Shirley's and Maria's commentaries write
a different place from the `city as progress' and
instead foreground ethnic discrimination and
structures of privilege as central to under-
standing life in Quito. The meaning of place for
these migrants cannot simply be read off from
levels of income, or even their ability to ®nd
work per se, but must be understood in terms of
the processes of discrimination and exclusion
in Quito that in¯uence a migrant's access to
economic and cultural capital in her destina-
tion.
Genovena is from Latacunga, where she
lived until her late forties. She now lives in
Quito with her husband and eight children in a
large house they have built in one of the new
southern barrios of Quito. We asked her where
she would prefer to live if she alone could
choose.
`¼ myself I would like to live in Latacun-
ga where I was born, where I was raised.
But no, you see my roots, my children and
well, my husband. If they abandoned me I
would live in Latacunga, but if I did, what
would become of my husband and my
children here? It is for this reason that I
have decided to live and die with them
here [in Quito].' (Genovena, personal
interview)
In Genovena's case she preferred life in
Latacunga, and even stayed there for many
years after her husband moved to Quito. She
describes her work in agriculture, and life with
many of her friends in Latacunga, in contrast
to her experiences in Quito. Even though she
has been in Quito for ®ve years, she still ®nds
the city unfriendly.
`I used to leave [my house] in the morning
as I was invited to a potato dig, I went to
help dig potatoes and they gave me my
share, they gave me a sack of potatoes ¼ I
used to go and work in the maize harvest
and I would get my quintal of maize for
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
271
the day that I worked. I also used to go and
collect grass for my animals.'
`Now my sewing work makes me feel
rather sad. Because now I don't have
friendships to comfort me. Now that I
bring work home to sew, I sew here. I am
alone, it is lonely. I don't have anyone here
to organise, to talk with, to joke with, to
laugh with ± no-one.'
She spoke in similar terms of the changes to
her social life since her move to Quito.
`When I came here [Quito] I felt alone,
lonely, foreign. Sure, I saw my neighbours,
I saw ladies in my barrio, but still I felt
foreign. I never got to know them or
shared anything with them ± nothing. I felt
very bad.'
Genovena's experiences in Quito present a
critique of economistic assumptions ± that life
is improved because there is more work, or
more wage-earning work. Genovena's words
resonate with arguments made by Morokvasic
(1983: 23) over a decade ago (my emphasis):
`Whether the authors arrive at the conclu-
sion that migration emancipates, pseudo-
emancipates or strengthens the ªtradi-
tional tiesº, whether the evolution from
tradition to modernity is considered a
unilinear path or not, whether it is explicit
or surrounded with a number of cautious
remarks, the point of departure and the
point of arrival remain the same for all
these authors. Work as an ªattribute of
modern societyº is therefore a mediator, a
facilitator in the transition to modernity.'
Genovena worked before she arrived in
Quito, and she stresses that she preferred her
work back in Latacunga, and that being in the
city has been an experience of alienation that
has put her back inside her home rather than
an experience of emancipation. She also talks
about differences between life in Quito and
Latacunga:
`What I don't like here, and what I think
the government should do something
about, is the criminals. There are so many
criminals, and because of this I dare not
leave my house empty¼ It is much worse
Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 261±276 (1999)
272
here [than in Latacunga], back there you
could leave your animals sleeping in the
streets. But here, no! ¼ Another thing here
is that people drink too much liquor, this
worries me a great deal too. ¼. I wish that
they would change these things so that I
could live a more peaceful life. Because I
worry when I am going down the street
that I will be suprised by a drunk, and this
makes me very afraid.' (Genovena, per-
sonal interview)
Genovena is in Quito because of her family
obligations, but she does not prefer life in the
capital. The family feels that their home might
be in danger if left empty, and because
Genovena is wife and mother she is deemed
responsible for that space, and she is trapped
by her responsibilities to that home. Genovena
feels that she is trapped as much by age as
gender because of her role in the household,
because her daughters are freer to work and
move about the city. For her, many of her
personal freedoms have been removed and she
feels assailed and insecure, even walking in
her neighbourhood. Genovena's comments on
her life in Quito highlight the importance of
gendered power relations in shaping the
experience of destination places.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF PLACE AND
MOBILITY ± CONCLUDING COMMENTS
`Af®liations with multiple places are
cross-cut by relations of class, location,
gender, age and race in which a sense of
belonging is mediated through these
power relations and positionings. Popular
everyday expressions of relationships to
place and national `developed' space are
in themselves multiple, frequently contra-
dictory and contested.' (Radcliffe and
Westwood, 1996: 132)
Starting from the argument that dualistic
concepts of place reinforce the dominance of
economistic understandings of migration, I
argue here for a dialectical analysis (Harvey,
1996). By foregrounding dialectical relations
between places and people, migration research
can develop a nuanced and imaginative under-
standing of the interplay of identity and
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
V. Lawson
subjectivity and of desire and longing, across
the places of migration. These understandings
emanating from the narratives of migrants
themselves, can disrupt the central tenets of
modernisation, assimilationist approaches,
and can mount a critique of the coherence of
national projects of modernisation. The mi-
grant identities re¯ected in this analysis are
constructed through the process of mobility
itself in ways that incorporate and blend
multiple experiences of place simultaneously
(Sizoo, 1997). By posing questions about
migrants' sense of belonging, alienation and
identity formation, I argue that the multi-place
nature of migrants' identities reveals contra-
dictions within the dominant narratives of
neoliberalism ± such as the city as progress,
and migration as fully democratic. Migrant
ambivalence about Quito reveals some of the
limits of the rational discourses of progress,
and discloses neoliberal modernisation as an
unstable system in which discrimination, un-
even access to resources, and erasure of
alternative indigenous and gendered identities
persist.
The migrants interviewed here reveal deep
ambivalences about living in Quito, despite the
`city as progress' discourse so pervasive in
Ecuador. These interviews suggest resistance
and even reinterpretation of the view that
Quito represents a progressive space of devel-
opment ± an assumption about urban destina-
tions in much internal migration theory. These
ambivalent readings of Quito and the experi-
ences of migration are rooted in gendered,
racial and classed identities. Manuel, for
example, expresses a sense of self that is
continuous across places, and is bound up
with generations of his family. He acknowl-
edges and embraces the important role that
modernised Quito now plays, and he hopes
will play, in providing opportunities for his
children. At the same time, he argues that he
would lose his spiritual self if he remained
there permanently. These insights resonate
with Kirby's argument about a subject-in-
process ± indigenous people who can never
be fully incorporated materially or discur-
sively into the modern nation of Ecuador,
and who maintain their cultural and spiritual
identity through ongoing ties to their commu-
nities of origin.
Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 261±276 (1999)
Migration under Neoliberalism in Ecuador
While much migration theory foregrounds
economic aspects of migration, promising
assimilation and upward social mobility, this
is not a full story. Economic incorporation into
the capital city does not ensure a sense of
belonging. Shirley has a stable job, and Maria's
husband is employed in the military. Despite
these economic successes, Shirley and Maria
are both dark-complexioned CostenÄas who
speak of ethnic discrimination in the city. Each
of these women came in search of work and
increased economic opportunities, and in both
cases found the city inhospitable and discri-
minatory. Strong regional rivalries embedded
in the process of nation-building in Ecuador
play out on the bodies of these migrants. Their
experiences of racial discrimination have re-
worked their identities as ethnically marked,
and this has been a painful outcome of their
migrations. Here again, migrant experiences
call into question the economistic rationalities
of neoliberal modernisation discourse.
Genovena exempli®es the ambivalent sub-
jectivity seen in each of these migrant narra-
tives. She experiences Quito simultaneously as
a place of economic success for her family, but
also as a place of cultural and social isolation.
She speaks of different values in Latacunga,
expressed in stories about a life that revolves
around autonomy in her agricultural work.
Her experience of Quito is very different. Her
identity has shifted substantially, from inde-
pendent woman in Latacunga, to mother and
wife in Quito. She now has much less
autonomy, in part because of fears of crime
and the need to watch over their home while
all other family members are away working.
She migrated to Quito out of gendered obliga-
tion to her family, and is now trapped by this
role in the context of a more threatening urban
environment, even as her family is economic-
ally successful.
`Development' involves both the material
transformation of places and the discursive
construction of opportunities and possibilities.
The idea of `urban progress' that attracts in-
migrants is a discursive construction, rather
than a reality for all. Migrants' experiences
reveal the disjuncture between development
as discourse and their grounded experiences in
place. These interviews reveal that modernis-
ing spaces are not experienced similarly by all
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
273
residents. By talking with migrants, whose
identities are produced through processes of
gender, class, ethnicity and attachments to
different places, we go beyond national dis-
courses of neoliberal progress and reveal the
contradictions of modernisation, and the costs
of mobility in spiritual and human terms.
Beyond these experiential dimensions, these
narratives also reveal the contradictions within
neoliberal development, and the ambivalence
contained within the very discourses that
sustain the overall project (Bhabha, 1994; Rose,
1995). As Massey (1994) has argued, places are
made meaningful by the social relations and
understandings that bind us to them, or
alienate us from them. In each case, our links
to places can be theoretically meaningful.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was conducted under grant SBR-
9511129 from the National Science Foundation.
That support made this research possible and
is greatly appreciated. This research was
carried out in collaboration with Centro de
Investigaciones CIUDAD in Quito and with
invaluable research support from Ana Maria
Albuja, Lastenia Rumbo and Kim Van Eyck.
Without these collaborations, this research
would not have been possible. I am very
grateful for comments from Kim Van Eyck,
Katharyne Mitchell and my seminar partici-
pants, which have contributed substantially to
my thinking. All errors are mine.
NOTES
(1) The research reported here results from another
important collaboration with Andy Morrison
(Inter-American Development Bank), Elizabeth
Katz (Barnard College, Columbia University)
and Richard Bilsborrow (University of North
Carolina). We have been engaged in National
Science Foundation-funded research on gender
relations and migration in Ecuador. I am
indebted to these colleagues for the shape and
scope of this project.
(2) As a cautionary note, the `migrant' should not
be interpreted as a uni®able category in this
project. There is not some transhistorical subject
who can speak coherently about migration or
modernisation. Rather, just as identities are
invented or performed (Cant, 1997), there are
Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 5, 261±276 (1999)
274
individual stories and experiences of migration
that provide elements of insight and moments
of critique (Carr, 1994). In this paper I will
explore the complex and ambivalent experi-
ences of place that emerge from my discussions
with migrants, and from these insights I will
speak to the limitations of predominant con-
ceptions of place in the migration literature.
Furthermore, I argue that these ambivalent
experiences of place and mobility are situated
within a nexus of transforming political-econo-
my processes, as neo-liberalism during the
1990s has reshaped the economic possibilities,
as well as individual interpretations of origins
and destinations.
(3) Following Escobar (1995: 58) I use modernisa-
tion as a term to encompass a series of active
interventions in the economies of Southern
nations since the 1940s±beginning with moder-
nisation thinking and planning in the 1950s and
1960s, stabilisation and structural adjustment in
the 1980s, and now `market-friendly' develop-
ment in the 1990s.
(4) Cultural migration studies have had a long-
standing interest in indigenous epistemologies
of mobility (Chapman, 1969, 1970; Mitchell,
1969). However, in some of this work, culture
and understandings of mobility are understood
as coherent, self-contained wholes that emerge
in particular places. Other work has paid
attention to migrants' complicated self-percep-
tions and the unfolding of identities over time
(Lowenthal, 1985; Chapman, 1976) but has not
addressed how this complexity intersects with
modernisation processes and multiple power
relations. Furthermore, much of this attention to
non-Western understandings of mobility has
not been engaged as theoretically informative
by Anglo theorists.
(5) We conducted a random sample survey of 632
households and 1406 individuals, including
both migrants and non-migrants. In this overall
sample, we found 283 people who had migrated
to Quito in the last six years.
(6) These interviews were tape-recorded, tran-
scribed and then analysed through close read-
ing of the transcripts and listening to the tapes.
The theoretical and epistemological arguments
above guided me in identifying relevant ma-
terial. The interviews involved asking a series of
open-ended questions about places from which
people came, and with which they identify
most, and questions probing feelings about
Quito compared with other places in their lives.
Interviews were conducted in people's homes,
where I was accompanied by an Ecuadorian
Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
V. Lawson
colleague who was also deeply involved in the
conversation. Each interview was recorded in
one visit, and most lasted approximately one
hour. There was little opportunity in this
context for respondents to develop a substantial
level of familiarity with us or our project, and so
the interviews were relatively formal and quite
circumscribed by this context. The interviews
were openended, but guided by a protocol with
major subject areas to ensure that all respon-
dents addressed similar themes. All of the
quotes are drawn from these interviews and
they have been translated from the Spanish by
the author. I employ pseudonyms for all
respondents.
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