Haciendo de Tripas el Corazón/Plucking Up Courage: Migration, Family Internal Conflict, and Gender in Veronica’s Story

Abstract

This article considers how migrants conceptualize and negotiate the emotional conflicts that accompany decisions to migrate. Such conflicts are a regular feature of migrants’ experience, informing how they understand the act of and reasons for migrating. The article focuses on the life of one mi-grant: a woman I call “Veronica,” whom I met during research on migration between Uriangato, Guanajuato, Mexico and Chester County, Pennsylvania. I argue that the analysis of discourse offers a particularly illuminating window into how migrants conceptualize and negotiate emotional conflicts. I place this discussion in dialogue with the literature on family internal conflict and gender in migration.Mexico-US migration ; discourse analysis ; emotion ; family internal conflict ; gender