Resumen

PEREZ CASTRO, Ana Bella. ACTIVATING THE SIMBOLIC WORLD TO CULTURALLY HANDLE EMIGRATION. Chungará (Arica) [online]. 2007, vol.39, n.1, pp. 51-68. ISSN 0717-7356.  doi: 10.4067/S0717-73562007000100004.

Nowadays, emigration in Mexico is a social phenomenon reaching alarming proportions. Everyday, from every State in the country, young men and women make their way toward the United States in search of a job. Nevertheless, leaving behind family and hometown is not an easy thing, for those leaving, nor for those that stay. Thus, it is plausible to ask: How do the ones who leave and those who stay behind deal with emigration? I am interested in answering this question through the case of the people of the Huaxteca region, in Mexico. Ido so by applying the concept of symbolic forms proposed by John B. Thompson in order to emphasize the social uses of appropriation and transformation that the communities affected by emigration grant to these symbolic forms. In order to accomplishing this, I identify the different ways ideology operates as well as some of the typical strategies of symbolic construction. In this work, I refer to different approaches in order to explain migration. Also I refer to these approaches to explain specific aspects -in the case o/Huaxteca region- such as the social context as well as the diversity of sociocultural dimensions related to migration, and the symbolic ways the population deals with it

Palabras clave : Symbolic forms; emigration; beliefs; strategies; social organization.