1.1 Leticia and Lorena
Leticia, aged 44, a Peruvian migrant from Lima, suggested that the ideas and beliefs transferred to her by her mother largely reflected the societal mores of the period in which her mother had been raisedâincluding scorn for female-headed households: âMy mother divorced before I was born ⊠she was fearful, she told me that as a woman without a man you could not live well. She believed ⊠that a woman on her own is not worth taking any notice of, that a woman needed a man to support herâ.1 Notwithstanding the dominance of these gendered societal beliefs, when asked what she had learnt she should be and do as a woman, she stressed how her mother had taught her to assert her agency and autonomy: âShe taught me that a woman should ⊠try to please people, but at the same time to ensure to do what she wants. To be diplomatic, extremely polite, but at the same time firm. Not to let others get away with things ⊠my grandmother could strike a person down with a single look!â
Leticia had enjoyed a relatively privileged social standing in Peru marked by ethnic, class and educational status, which facilitated her entry into the tourism industry. However, terrorist activity (at its peak during the 1980s) led to a sharp decline in this sector, prompting her to migrate to the UK. As her mother, Leticia divorced her first husbandâthough later remarried an Irishman and had a daughter, Lorena, who was 14. Notwithstanding the discrimination that migrants from Ireland have faced historically in the UK, Leticia benefited indirectly from his comparatively higher socio-economic status, which eased her entry into English cultural life and extended her social networks.
Leticia confided that her mother had always wished for her to become a lawyerâa career that she had eschewed whilst living in Peru. Somewhat to her amusement in the UK, Leticia was offered a job offering legal advice in a grassroots organisation. However, she revealed that her earnings were lower than when she had been working in Peru and additionally that her contract was short-term and insecure. In terms of housing she described the flat she rented as âinadequateâ due to persistent damp, though she felt fortunate to own a property in Peru that had formerly belonged to her mother.
Though she regretted that she had been unable to fulfil her motherâs dream of completing a university degree, Leticia held this aspiration firmly for Lorena and was actively promoting it. First, she planned to sell the property in Lima in order to move her daughter to a different London borough with better schools. She adopted a non-taboo attitude to establish trust with Lorena, urging her to consult her on any matter troubling her in preference to seeking advice from peers: âI tell herâif youâve done things youâre ashamed of, Iâve done worse and you are not going to shock meâ. Further, she was eager to cultivate in Lorena the same independence of mind that her own mother had fostered in her: âI want her to become independent and to manage things aloneâ. When asked what ideas she was most actively instilling in her daughter, she suggested it was to be âhard-headedâ and to make the most of opportunities that she and her husband had been able to provide. Lorena had been born and raised in the UK and spoke fluent English. Leticia spoke, for example, of stimulating Lorenaâs interest in drawing by buying her art materials whilst also extending her cultural capital by taking her to galleries in London. Interestingly, Lorena corroborated Leticiaâs account closely, suggesting that she enjoyed open communication with her mother and regularly sought and adopted her advice:
She also suggested that her mother protected her from the night scene within and outside London: âShe [Leticia] wants to take care of meâall my friends go out to places like Croydon ⊠[but itâs] not very safe. She tells me that when I have children Iâll only let them go to safe places and wonât let them go out on their ownâ. When asked what Lorena would like to pass to her own children should she have a family in the future, she suggested commonalities in the transmissions passed by her mother: âLet your children socialise a bit, but not that much, but let them go with their friends but be with them, but avoid peer pressure, donât let them go into drug taking. How to behaveâif on the street donât start screaming for no reason. Tell someone if youâre upsetâŠ. She [Leticia] explained these things in a way to make me understandâand put this all into my headâ. Lorena revealed she was to pursue a career in the arts after completing her studies in the UK. Interestingly, Leticia was more privileged than most of the migrants who were mothers that feature in this book who had by contrast partnered with other low-income Latin Americans and were mainly employed as cleaners. Similarly whilst Lorena had unusually been born and raised in the UK with an English-speaking father who understood the school system and could afford to offer her extra-curricular activities (including dance classes, pony riding and Irish dancing), most daughters felt that their education had been repeatedly interrupted as part of international migration processes, knew little English on arrival and were comparatively more materially deprived.Sheâs taught me a lot about what to do in social situations, when you go out donât talk to strangers, help with schoolwork. Most migrants who are mothers cannot provide this as are working all the time and in any case cannot speak English ⊠social stuff like who you should be friends with, who is good or bad, what to do in certain situations. What not to doâdonât expose yourself to strangers, be polite to others and nice but do not forget to be yourself; donât be cautious of what others think of you or what people say. What to doâexpress yourself, make sure you meet the right peopleâif you make a negative friend avoid them because they will spread that negativity to you ⊠be confident, be independent. If you want something do it yourself. Donât count on others.
This portrait of Lorena and Leticia illuminates the central ambition of this book which is to bring together understandings of intergenerational transmission (IGT) that are not solely related to the transfer of material goods, but also include âpsychosocial transfers or assetsâ (such as norms and beliefs that are socially constructed and central to the lives that people value), reflecting a more holistic concept of human-centred development. This book is also informed by human wellbeing theory, which brings together interdisciplinary insights in such areas as cross-cultural psychology, health and the economics of happiness. This approach is based on conceptualisations of wellbeing developed by Deci and Ryan (1985, 2000), McGregor (2007), McGregor and Sumner (2010), Ryan (1995) and White (2008) which attempts to integrate material and psychosocial dimensions. In this conceptualisation the material domain is concerned with the objective conditions that typify a personâs situation (such as income, employment and health status) whilst the psychosocial domain includes both perceptual dimensions (norms, values, perceptions and experiences) and relational dimensions (including intimate relations as well as broader social relationships). By extension, in this book the terminologies âmaterial transfersâ and âpsychosocial transfersâ are used to reflect this conceptualisation.2 Interestingly, despite greater engagement of development theorists with human-centred development (including a growing focus on concepts of happiness being integral for national policy (Layard 2005) and a move beyond development as economic growth to a focus on âa human life worth livingâ relating to non-economic aspects such as emotions and including what people feel they can do and be, Nussbaum 2011), the literature on I...