Abstract

ALVARADO, Emmanuel  and  NEHRING, Daniel. Intimacy, migration, and cultural change: Latinos and American Fertility. Estud. soc [online]. 2010, vol.18, n.36, pp.10-31. ISSN 0188-4557.

This article re-examines the relationship between fertility trends in the U.S. and massive Hispanic immigration in the context of wider processes of globalization, thus highlighting the ways in which local transformations of couple relationships, sexuality, and reproduction are enmeshed in a complex web of interrelated global social, political, economic, and cultural trends. Here, we argue that fertility trends in the U.S. need to be analyzed from a relational perspective that accounts for the interaction between local transformations of intimacy in the U.S. and wider, global developments. To exemplify the preceding argument, this article draws on qualitative research on transformations of intimate life among Mexicans in the U.S. and Mexico to illustrate the complex interaction between relevant social patterns and changes in intimacy and fertility in both parts of the world. We conclude that the long-term reproductive patterns of Hispanics in the U.S. will be highly dependent upon the dynamic interaction among cultural patterns of reproduction and intimacy, desired family schemas and the socio-economic prospects found in America and in the countries of origin of American-Latino ethnic groups in Latin America.

Keywords : fertility; United States; Latinos; culture; globalization.

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