Abstract
This chapter examines the settlement and mobility practices of farmworkers and families in the San Quintin Valley in Baja California, Mexico from a multi- and interdisciplinary perspective. Its goal is to open the ‘black box’ of interdisciplinary collaboration as research praxis to expose its nuts and bolts. The praxis of interdisciplinary research can be conceptualized as a process consisting of different stages requiring various approaches and research strategies. Each stage poses a distinct set of challenges but also presents opportunities for enhancing dialogue across disciplines. Interdisciplinary research means both specialization and defocalization, with each of these logics dominating in a different way at the stages of theoretical conceptualization and methodological construction examined.
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Notes
- 1.
The study presented is part of a larger project “Migración, Trabajo Agrícola y Etnicidad” (Migration, Farm Labor, and Ethnicity) conducted in Baja California funded by Conacyt and El Colef in Mexico. Ethnographic research was also funded by grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the National Science Foundation.
- 2.
Elaboration of the El Colef-Conacyt project, based on the General Censuses of Population and Housing, 1990 to 2010.
- 3.
In our research team, each member has not only a different disciplinary education, but also specializes in different areas of knowledge. The sociologist, Laura Velasco, focuses on studies of migration and identity processes, particularly of indigenous populations from Oaxaca migrating to destinations along the northwestern Mexican and southwestern US border regions. The demographer, Marie Laure Coubès, has studied employment along the northern Mexican border, particularly gender differences in labor markets and labor trajectories. The anthropologist, Christian Zlolniski, specializes in issues of labor and migration, particularly with respect to Mexican immigrant workers and communities in the United States.
- 4.
Elaboration of the El Colef-Conacyt project based on Observación de colonias.
- 5.
- 6.
In this sense it is important to recognize the work carried out by academics such as Juan Vicente Palerm (2010, 2002, p. 255) and Travis Du Bry (2007, pp. 15–18), who elaborate more diverse typologies of agricultural workers in rural populations of California using the criteria of length of stay, place of birth, and time and radius of mobility.
- 7.
According to Peter Schmitt-Egner (2002), regions are always part of a larger spatial unit that translates into distinct borders and vertical connections in a national or transnational context.
- 8.
For a discussion of the symbolic identity in the formation of regions, see Giménez (2009).
- 9.
We define the region as composed of four delegations of the Ensenada municipality (Punta Colonet, Camalú, Vicente Guerrero, and San Quintin).
- 10.
The EBIMRE’s household section documents family organization, including household tructure and domestic economy. In comparison with the camps, family organization in the colonias presents differences that we suggest are results of the settlement process, including the reconstitution of the nuclear family and the diversification of labor opportunities among household members.
- 11.
A detailed description can be found in Velasco (2011).
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Coubès, M.L., Velasco, L., Zlolniski, C. (2014). Residential Settlement and Mobility in the San Quintin Valley: Methodological Reflections on an Interdisciplinary Study. In: Rivera-Sánchez, L., Lozano-Ascencio, F. (eds) The Practice of Research on Migration and Mobilities. SpringerBriefs in Environment, Security, Development and Peace(), vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02693-0_2
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