Moral emotions and power: voices of senior returnees

Abstract

The present document aims to reflect on power as an analytical dimension and the emergence of moral emotions in the migrant trajectories of older people from Durango, Mexico. With a qualitative-phenomenological look, I approached 25 people over 60 years of age (men and women) who lived and / or worked in the United States in previous stages of their life regardless of their immigration status (residents, citizens, undocumented), and who also had return experience (definitive, rest, temporary) in both urban and rural areas. The information gathering techniques were ethnography, in-depth interview and observation. Among the main results, it is noted that shame and humiliation are intense emotions that are built on the migratory journey, and that they are embodied and experienced from the power relations present in the North American context. Consequently, in the speeches of the participants the domination of some social groups over others is noticed, whose marginal position is almost always occupied by the migrant, which evokes the public disturbance (real and imagined) of their own incompetence and of the devaluation of themselves.