Introduction

In Mexico, women aged 15 and over study an average of 9 years, the average for men being 9.3. In general, the population of both sexes finishes basic education, however, women do so with a 0.3% lag (^{National Women’s Institute (INMUJERES, acronym in Spanish), 2015}). According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), out of every 100 people who enroll in primary education in the country, 21 complete a bachelor’s degree; Likewise, Mexico is the country with the lowest percentage (17%) of people between ages 25 and 64 who have attended university, when compared to the average of the member countries (37%) (^{Valadez, 2018}). On the other hand, “the proportion of young adults (25 to 34 years old), who completed higher education is 23% in 2018, below the OECD average (44%)” (^{OECD, 2019, p. 2}).

According to figures from the Mexican Youth Institute (IMJUVE, acronym in Spanish), in Mexico, there are 37.5 million young people between ages 12 and 29 (10.8 million are between ages 15 and 19 and 10.7 million between ages 20 and 24), representing 31.4 % of the population. Nearly half of the young people in Mexico live in poverty (^{Redacción Animal Político, 2018}), and so economic conditions are a crucial factor for Mexicans to enroll and stay in Universities.

On the other hand, an amendment was made to the third article of the constitution in May 2019, setting forth higher education as a human right that must be guaranteed; therefore, this educational level is now mandatory (^{Political Constitution of the United Mexican States, 2019}, Third Constitutional Article, amended). However, for the 2018-2019 school year, the total coverage of higher education in the schooled modality (not including postgraduate studies), is only 33.9%. In this regard, the statistics for the same school year show that the total coverage in the state of Hidalgo is 38.8%, this percentage placing it above the national average; also, women reach 39.7% and men 37.8% (SEP, 2019). In addition, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI, acronym in Spanish), Hidalgo ranks as the sixth state with the lowest average income per household, this state of things being stressed in its rural areas (the mean national average quarterly income for families is 49,610 MXN, yet the average income of rural families in Hidalgo is 29,744 MXN) (^{Ameth, 2019}). In this sense, women in the state of Hidalgo access higher education to a greater extent than men do, the economy becoming a key factor for them to remain in university, which is why it is essential to investigate the economic strategies they deploy to stay within the educational system.

To study the economic dimension of rights is a priority in current times (^{Cruz, 2019}). It should be noted that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims at establishing the structural conditions that would allow for a culture of equality. For its part, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has set forth economic autonomy as one of the three strategic dimensions for women’s autonomy, defining it as one that “[... ] is linked to the possibility of controlling assets and resources” (UN & ECLAC, 2016, p. 36). However, in the words of ^{Howard-Hassmann (2011}), women’s economic rights are precariously protected in both developed and developing countries.

On the other hand, Mexico’s rural areas have experienced conditions of poverty, violence, high birth rates, and the impoverishment of agricultural activities throughout the 20th century; to this should be added situations of unemployment, impunity, and economic crisis, and so this population finds migrating to the United States an alternative to their economic precariousness (^{Durand, 2016}). It should be taken into account that:

The migratory process between Mexico and the United States is a centuries-old traditional social phenomenon [… ] that takes place between neighboring countries sharing a border spanning more than 3,000 kilometers. [… ] No other migration flow to the United States from a single country has lasted more than 130 years (^{Durand, 2016}, pp. 18-19).

Migration from central Mexico, wherein the state of Hidalgo is located, increased in the decades of the eighties and nineties, migration being massive in the latter decade; in previous years the population of the said area used to migrate to Mexico City. However, the contraction of the labor market caused this internal migration to change into international migration (^{Durand, 2016}).

^{Massey (2016}) stated that the current migration of Mexicans to the United States is not massive as it was in previous decades. Under the Bracero program of 1950, each year about half a million Mexicans legally entered the United States to work, of which 10% obtained a permanent residence visa. From the 1950s to the 1970s, half a million Mexicans acquired legal visas, both temporary, and permanent. In 1993, the militarization of the United States-Mexico border increased pace; consequently, the migration of Mexicans decreased since 2000, and so the massive migration of undocumented Mexicans that took place during the 1980s and 1990s did not repeat. Therefore, most of the remittances that are sent to Mexico come from people who migrated in the non-recent past.

Due to all of the above, Mexico is in third place among the countries with the highest entry of remittances (^{World Bank, 2019}). And the state of Hidalgo is in 14th place in the entry of remittances among the 32 Mexican states (^{Banco de México, n.d.}).

The UN and ECLAC (2016) propose that the impact of remittances should be analyzed not only in relation to the macroeconomy but also as it pertains to the dynamics of the family economy.

^{Giorguli and Serratos (2009}) argue that “6% of young Mexicans are directly exposed to migration through the absence of a family member or by receiving remittances, and 30% live in municipalities with high or very high migratory intensity” (p. 339). Previous studies have focused on the positive effects of international remittances on investment in household education in Mexico (^{Acosta & Caamal-Olvera, 2017}; ^{García & Cuecuecha, 2020}; ^{Giorguli & Serratos, 2009}; ^{López-Córdova, 2006}). As can be inferred, quantitative research on the subject predominates. Yet few studies investigate migration and remittances from a gender perspective (^{Munster, 2014}). A qualitative approach will allow us to understand the subjectivities configured in relation to remittances and the economic agency and university education of women.

Remittances can generate economic agency in those benefiting from them and their family group; the economic agency is “the ability to make independent economic decisions, based on the willingness and the ability to make them” (^{Htun, Jensenius, & Nelson-Núñez, 2019}, p. 199). Therefore, it implies women adopting an active position in the face of limiting situations.

Thus, the purpose of this research is to analyze the economic agency that university students acquire through the support network that revolves around international remittances. For this, five individual and in-depth interviews were conducted with students of the Law Degree of the Actopan Higher School of the Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo, Mexico. We studied remittances as a support network system for young women to be able to stay in university despite their economic precariousness; the data analysis was carried out under a gender perspective, specifically pertaining to sorority, understood as solidarity among women for them to reach better living conditions. This work aims at contributing to migration studies as a reference on the relationship between sorority actions and the destination of remittances in the education of women belonging to areas of high migration flow to the United States, such as the Mezquital Valley, located in the state of Hidalgo. Thus, the originality of this work lies in its contribution to knowledge on the relationship between remittances, gender, economic agency, and higher education, approached from a qualitative methodology.

Contextual framework

The Mezquital Valley is located to the west of the state of Hidalgo, characterized by semi-arid geography; although it has an irrigation system, it only supplies water to one area in the region. As for its population, the Hñahñu indigenous group is representative of the region (^{Rivera, 2000}).

This region stands out for its high international migration flow in the 1990s, which intensified from the year 2000 “[… ] positioning the state in second place among the states with the highest growth rate of migration to the United States” (^{Scale, 2006, p. 11}). From January 1995 to February 2000, 62,160 people from Hidalgo emigrated to that country, of which 48.6% came from the Mezquital Valley, 82.5% men, and 17.5% women (^{INEGI, 2004}). By 2010 “28 municipalities in Hidalgo were identified with high and very high degrees of migratory intensity, 15 of them in the Mezquital Valley” (^{Quezada, 2018}, p. 3). Thus, it is possible that given the dynamics from 30 years ago (characterized by a high migration flow from the Mezquital Valley) a pool of migrants stayed in the United States and throughout that time managed to grow their economy, allowing them to now send remittances to their relatives in Mexico.

Remittances as an economic support network

A support network is defined as “[… ] a well-defined set of actors —individuals [… ]— linked to each other through a social relationship or set of relationships” (^{Lozares, 1996}, p. 108). The network approach understands social structures as constituted by the relationships that link social units, and so its goal is understanding the behavior of the actors based on their position within the structure, this way the various social constraints, opportunities or supports that individuals experience or have access to can be identified (Lozares, 1996).

As in themselves, remittances are “private monetary transfers that migrants make, either across borders or within the same country, to individuals or communities with whom they keep ties” (IOM, 2006, p. 199). Thus, receiving remittances is an economic support network for a sector of the Mexican population. In this regard, ^{Canales and Montiel (2004}) point out that remittances serve the purpose of closing gaps of economic inequalities in the families that receive them. Therefore, remittances cause an economic effect in receiving countries, as they allow those households receiving them to circumvent poverty (^{Orozco, 2013}). These resources are generally intended to cover expenses in the following order: sustenance, health, education (^{Bonilla, 2016}; ^{Deere, Alvarado, Oduro, & Boakye-Yiadom, 2015}). A lesser percentage is invested in businesses, in the case of Mexico corresponding to 1% (^{Deere et al., 2015}).

In regions characterized by traditional migration to the United States, this activity is more commonly carried out by men, on average from the age of 15, a situation that can encourage women from these communities to enroll in higher education (^{Sawyer, 2015}). In Mexico, a culture of migration has been developed, encouraging migration to the United States among young men, thus in some places said migration is considered a rite of passage derived from non- migrant men imitating those who migrated in the past, and so young men tend to drop out of school due to the aspiration of working in the United States (^{Kandel & Massey, 2002}).

For its part, the OECD points out that “remittances are not linked to a higher level of schooling in most countries” (^{OECD, 2017, p. 34}). Studies confirm that remittances are seldomly invested in education: among receiving families, education is not a priority item for allocating this capital (^{Airola, 2007}; ^{Corona, 2007}; ^{Mora & Arellano, 2016}; ^{Sawyer, 2015}). Research on eleven Latin American countries showed that remittances have a positive effect on attendance to higher education, except in Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic (^{Acosta, Fajnzylber, & López, 2007}).

However, the data in this article cast doubt on the previous statements, since they show that remittances are a key element —either provisionally or permanently— for young women to attend university.

Agency and Economic Rights of University Students

The American Convention on Human Rights (Pact of San José) of 1978, in its chapter II on economic, social, and cultural rights, Article 26, section on progressive development, sets forth the following:

The States Parties undertake to adopt measures, both internally and through international cooperation, especially those of an economic and technical nature, to achieve progressively, by legislation or other appropriate means, the full realization of the rights implicit in the economic, social, educational, scientific, and cultural standards outlined in the Charter of the Organization of American States as amended by the Protocol of Buenos Aires American Convention on Human Rights (Pact of San José, 1978, p. 9).

Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights (ESCR) were only recognized relatively recently, and the mechanisms for their effectiveness are still undergoing a process consolidation and development (^{National Human Rights Commission, Mexico (CNDH, acronym in Spanish), n.d.}). These rights include:

The rights to an adequate standard of living, to food, health, water, sanitation, work, social security, adequate housing, education, culture, as well as a healthy environment (^{CNDH, n.d.}).

In this regard, the Mexican government acknowledges economic well-being as one of the human rights of women; consequently, if the aim is to guarantee the human rights of this population, understanding the social structures that condition the family economy and dynamics becomes essential (National Women’s Institute, 2016).

The Ibero-American Convention on the Rights of Youth (^{International Youth Organization (OIJ, acronym in Spanish), 2008}) specifically sets forth in its Article 34 the commitment of the signing countries in terms of developing measures that allow guaranteeing the economic rights of youth in rural and urban areas. Along the same line, Article 29 posits the right to professional training for young people. The principle of interdependence establishes the link between rights in such a way that certain rights have an impact on others, as it happens in this case with young people’s economic rights and those of access to education.

Prior to the above, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (^{Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), 1976}), outlined in its Article 13 the right to equal access to higher education, which must eventually become free; however, this is not an overarching reality, and consequently, students have to make use of social resources such as financial support networks if they are to achieve enrollment in universities. Thus, the exercise of economic rights is essential for young women to hold on to the possibility of staying in the educational system, thus acquiring higher employment qualifications.

Regarding agency, ^{Burkitt (2015}) questioned reflexivity as its central element, since in his paradigm agency is assumed as an individual possession, and he argues relationships to be at the core of reflexivity. He posits that agency is a relational phenomenon, which is why it arises from the interdependence resulting from the interactions and joint actions of human beings as a whole, in turn, focused on emotional aspects. According to this paradigm, people never confront the structure by themselves alone, committed as they are in social relationships, and therefore they not only answer to their interests but also the needs of other people. Due to the foregoing, the author defines agency as actions that produce effects on others depending on personal ties involving feelings of loyalty, affiliation, trust, identification, ambivalence, among others. He proposes that social relations be viewed not only as those that allow or constrain agency but also as those that make up structure and agency (^{Burkitt, 2015}).

Specifically, the economic agency “is the ability to make independent economic decisions, based on the willingness and the ability to make them” (^{Htun et al., 2019}, p. 199). Agency implies the actions undertaken to obtain resources and the decisions that are made about them, this empowers people to generate social changes or in their economic condition.

On the other hand, autonomy is essential for the exercise of rights (UN & ECLAC, 2016). ^{Howard-Hassmann (2011}) argues that one of the consequences of economic globalization is the greater economic autonomy of women due to the impact on the living standards of millions of them; however, this dynamic also constrains their human rights. This author also establishes an implicit relationship between agency and autonomy, in such a way that without agency and autonomy the exercise of human rights is not possible (see Figure 1).

In the words of ^{Howard-Hassmann (2011}), autonomy lies in the ability of a person to make decisions based on their interests, in this case applying to the economic decisions made in families receiving remittances that provide economic agency to university students in the Mezquital Valley region, a state of things that may influence the exercising of economic rights by these women, and their ability to access and/or continue attending higher education institutions.

Source: Own elaboration based on ^{Howard-Hassmann’s theory (2011}).

Figure 1 Relationship Between Human Rights, Autonomy, and Agency 

It should be clarified that the relationship between autonomy and agency is determined by the women’s country of origin, that is, women’s decisions are constrained by the economic reality of the place where they live (^{Howard-Hassmann, 2011}).

Methodology

This paper stems from a broader investigation entitled “The economy of university students in the Mezquital Valley.” Sixteen in-depth interviews were conducted with female students of the Law Degree of the Actopan Higher School of the Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo, Mexico. Hereby the content of the interviews with five participants is analyzed, in which remittances were identified as an economic support network (see Table 1).

Actopan Higher School is located in Daxthá, a community in the municipality of Actopan, in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico. This school belongs to the Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo and was established in 2000. It currently offers degrees in Psychology, Law, Business Creation, and Development, Graphic Design, as well as High School education. The Law student population was selected for this research because it is the degree with the largest enrollment in this educational center, and in which women predominate by 61.3% (Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo, 2020).

The sample was selected following inclusion criteria: single women, without children, current students of any semester and shift of the Law Degree, ages from 18 to 24.

Individual interviews were approximately two hours long each and were carried out in September and October 2019. All the young women participated voluntarily and signed informed consent, their names and those of others given in their testimonies have been changed for confidentiality reasons.

The interviews were guided according to the following question: How has your financial situation been since you enrolled in university? These young women were asked to make a timeline accounting for the following: were we to trace a line in time from when you were born until today, who would be there that has supported you financially? Or else, who has paid for your expenses?

All interviews were audio-recorded and later transcribed. The data were analyzed by means of the content analysis technique, which aims at understanding how individuals shape reality through language since according to ^{Bardin (2002}) meanings are “the main material of content analysis” (p. 33).

The analysis of the collected data reveals five types of support networks that young women partake in through remittances sent by their maternal uncles —who migrated to the United States—, providing them with economic agency: 1) Remittances as a support network aimed directly at the young woman, 2) Remittances as a support network for parents’ labor instability,

3) Remittances as a support network upon the unexpected lack of provision from the father, 4) Remittances as a support network needed due to sporadic provision from the father, and 5) Remittances as a support network upon unexpected expenses at home.

Results

The data in this work show that remittances are a key element —provisionally or permanently— for young women to acquire the economic agency and attend university. A factor benefiting them is the one found by ^{McPherson, Smith-Loving, and Brashears (2006}): women, compared to men, have a significantly higher number of relatives in their social networks. Given this, mothers make use of family support networks to obtain remittances, thus encouraging their daughters to attend university. In this case, they fall into the category of “home related to migration,” a term used by the Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF) in the 2005 Household Survey on Migration in the State of Hidalgo (^{Rivera & Quezada, 2011}).

Mothers of migrants are the ones receiving the remittances, for the most part, followed by spouses (^{Bonilla, 2016}). In Latin America, patterns have been found showing that single or married migrants (who do not trust their wives) send remittances to their mothers. Married men commonly send them to their wives (^{Deere, Alvarado, Oduro, & Boakye-Yiadom, 2015}).

Consanguineous kinship ties are organized in kinship lines, formed by a consecutive series of degrees, among which the following can be identified:

Ascending line. It links someone with those from whom it is directly descended. Example: Mother or father, it is the existing link by consanguineous affiliation with the man or woman of whom one is a child.

Collateral line. The series of degrees existing between people who have a common ancestor, without descending one from the other. Example: sibling, […] niece/nephew, is the existing collateral line link with the daughter or son of a sister or brother.

(^{INEGI, 2012}, pp. 7-8).

“In the equal collateral line [… ] siblings [… ]. In the unequal collateral one [… ] the uncles and nephews” (^{Federal Civil Code, article 156, section III, 2020, p. 21}). The kinship link between a migrant and his mother corresponds to the ascending line. The kinship link between a migrant and his sister corresponds to the equal collateral line. The kinship link between the migrant uncle and his niece corresponds to the unequal collateral line.

Although the kinship link between the migrant uncle and the niece is not a direct line (as is the case with the children of migrant parents), young women still benefit from receiving remittances over unequal collateral lines, from the economic support that their mothers get from their brothers (migrants in the United States). Although their finances are not entirely dependent on the remittances received, these can indeed influence a certain economic agency that allows young women to continue attending university. ^{Burkitt (2015}) argues that agency develops in social relations, which is evident in the support network established by the maternal uncles of the university students, where the interrelation of three actors is implied: the uncles, the mothers of the young women, and the students themselves. Sorority plays a fundamental role in this support network since it is an alliance that mothers establish with their daughters and allows young women to obtain the benefit of the remittances that their mothers receive; in this way, they can acquire economic agency. The support network fostered by remittances and the sorority of mothers as generators of economic agency and therefore of economic autonomy, and the consequent exercise of economic rights among young university students (see Figure 2).

Source: Own elaboration based on ^{Howard-Hassmann’s theory (2011}).

Figure 2 Support Network Through Remittances, Sorority, and Economic Agency 

Below are five modalities in which we identified this dynamic of economic support for university students in the Mezquital Valley.

Closing remarks

This study contributes to the knowledge about one of the effects of remittances in the households of the Mezquital Valley, Hidalgo, Mexico. It accounts for economic networks configured through the family bond between migrant men in the United States and their birth sisters, residents in the region of origin.

The mothers of these students established alliances with their migrant brothers and built a support network to improve the family economy or pay for unexpected expenses; or, to face contingencies due to the lack of provisioning of their children's father, for example, after a divorce, or temporarily due to addictive behaviors that prevent the father from providing for his family. Consequently, the characteristics of these remittances serve an auxiliary function in the economy of the women of the Mezquital Valley and their resonance in the permanence of their daughters in university.

In addition, the fact that mothers decide to manage the money so that young women can access university education is an action that in gender theory is called sorority motherhood. In other words, it is about the solitary support of mothers towards their daughters. Marcela ^{Lagarde y de los Ríos (2006}) states that sorority arises from the alliance between women as a result of the positive identification between them; it is the support that allows them to access fairer living conditions. In accordance with the above, the results of this work show the gender impact resulting from remittances.

Likewise, the autonomy of women demands that they “be able to choose, agree or ignore cultural prescriptions” (^{Howard-Hassmann, 2011}, p. 435). In this case, young women and their mothers, by not following the socially expected norm about staying at the lowest educational level for women in the region, achieve a certain economic autonomy through sorority. Mothers, through the economic agency granted to them by remittances, deliberately use this income to promote the education of young women. Thus, upon the occurrence of restrictive economic situations, the support networks empower the participants to exercise their economic agency and remain in university by means of international remittances, thus benefiting the economic rights as well as the access to higher education of young women.

Having a support grant —all participants are beneficiaries of a government program called Jóvenes Escribiendo el Futuro (Youth Writing the Future), which consists of a scholarship support through which beneficiaries receive 2,400 MXN per month (116.69 USD) (^{National Coordination of Scholarships for Wellness, Benito Juárez, 2019})— enables young women to cushion economic needs and continue their studies, an element that when combined with remittances, enables a certain level of economic autonomy among these university students of the Mezquital Valley.

It should be clarified that migrant uncles provide remittances to the extended family in order to create savings allowing for economic investment, although such is not common in Mexico, where remittances are generally used for current household spending, that is to say, for survival (^{Franco, 2001}). Thus, the cases presented in this paper show the advantageous position of these students compared to the common destination of remittances in Mexico. In addition, the results match the findings by ^{Kandel and Massey (2002}) regarding the effects of remittances: they cannot be generalized since they depend on the community under study. This research shows that a qualitative analysis through a gender perspective approach can provide accurate data on the impact of remittances in particular contexts.

On the one hand, the phenomenon of massive international migration to the United States taking place between 1995 and 2000 in the Mezquital Valley, and on the other, the establishing of the Actopan High School of the Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo in the year 2000 (located in this region), are likely the situation that 20 years later has allowed us to record one of the economic strategies that, based on remittances, contributes to the economic agency, access, and permanence of women in higher education in this area of the country. It will be necessary to inquire whether other areas with a rooted tradition of migration towards the United States present the same phenomenon. Future studies are proposed where remittances can be weighted as a hypothesis in the unequal collateral line kinship link, represented by young women in Mexican extended families. Likewise, investigating whether the effects of sorority and agency on the exercise of economic rights and the education of women are particular to the context analyzed or if they are replicated in other communities.

Translation: Fernando Llanas