Leisy Abrego's Double Movement Analysis

The double movement concept can be difficult to understand within the new global economy because most consider markets and social life to be separate, but they are not. As Polanyi explains, “[Individuals do] not act so as to safeguard [their] individual interest in the possession of material goods; [they] acts so as to safeguard [their] social standing, [their] social claims, [their] social assets.” (Polanyi [year]:48) To understand how this affects the everyday individual, one must consider that which is considered most valuable to the individual's social ties – family. Although the Western ideal is one of selfishness for the sake of sustainability and investment, family and capital are often deeply interlocked, as both provide stability
in both the social and financial aspects of modern life. This double movement of social ties and capital connecting directly to culture create a push and pull of sacrifices one must make to maintain balanced levels of both; a balance which is usually not balanced at all, with the majority of sacrifices being more costly on a personal level than a financial one. These types of sacrifices can be seen through various stories of family: the traditional sense of a family, mothers/fathers/brothers/etc., through coupling and marriage, or through a nontraditional sense of family. In this way, personal sacrifices for capital play a crucial part in keeping family bonds healthy and thriving. Within the context of the traditional family, sacrifice and capital, one must be aware of commodity labour and how that labour creates capital through remittances, but also the creation of transnational families which are often displaced on a long-term basis from one another.
Though we often hear of these instances through Mexican workers in the United States, and through Filipino housekeepers globally, there are other instances of this within Leisy Abrego's discussion on Salvadorean families and transnationalism. As Abrego states, it is often the female family members (usually mothers) who are most wanted for overseas labour, however “It is estimated that 4 out of every 10 children in El Salvador grows up without one or both parents because of migration” (Abrego [year]:1072). These remittances, though effective for providing financial stability within the home overseas, create deeply conflicting ideals of what it means to be a parent, and what it means to have a parent, as both the child and parent(s) create different realities for one another at the cost of acquiring capital. The results of Abrego's study of Salvadorean families concluded that “on average fathers had been apart from their children 12 years compared to mothers’ 10 years.” (1075) Within this time frame, these parents create new, less conventional families overseas, specifically single mothers who are often employed by individuals with children (1076) and the children they leave behind often have to find other places to get emotional support, such as grandparents and aunts (1078). Within this sacrifice, children get the blunt of the unbalanced deal; although there are pro's such as school and financial gains, Abrego also admits that most families had unstable remittances, while others lost their emotional ties to each other such as those who found new spouses overseas
(1079-1080). In Cuba, the link between capital and family is much more obvious than that of El Salvador, with the sacrifices of the individuals involved are much less obvious. Unlike with Salvadorean families, remittances are sent between an embraced family member from a foreign country (yuma), and not through families already established. The creation of this type of family signals an important value on the commodity an accepting family, in which homosexual foreigners visit Cuba as a way of escaping the pressures of their unaccepting families and cultures at “home” through sex work of local Cubans. Although these remittances create financial stability for the Cuban family involved, and personal stability for the foreigner, there is a sense of extortion and manipulation that follows; it's almost as if the individual sending remittances is taken advantage of at the promise of an accepting family of which he is expected to provide for. We see this in Stout's account of Orlando, whereby he moved his Cuban “family” into a new home and provided a significant amount of financial benefit to them, but his “mother” acted in an ungrateful way because she believed they needed more (Stout [year]:21). It's difficult to understand this type of situation in Polanyi's “double movement” terms, but by understanding that these exchanges occur due to cultural differences, and through both financial and personal commodities of labour and wealth, it is no different than any other exchange of goods and services, and is merely an expression of those affected by their cultural inequalities; Cuban families with their lack of income and financial stability, and foreigners with their lack of social support and status. Through the exchange of sex work, both parties get a benefit; with social support being realized in the short term and imagined in the long term, and financial support being imagined in the short term, but expected in the long term.