Mobility, Memory, and Kinship among the Ludar in Mexico

Abstract

The Ludar, originally from Central Europe, arrived in Mexico at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Today, each family group moves within Mexico and towards the border with the United States, following different mobility regimes. The configurations of these family groups change, as they aggregate or separate from other groups in the circulation they practice. This organisation, which seems to have existed since their first transatlantic voyages and in the Americas, implies the implementation of strategies, always unfinished, in their relationship with the non-Ludar population. The casa designates the collective space, dynamic in time, where kinship relations are woven. Based on a long-term ethnography among the ludar of Mexico and focusing my attention on the reconfigurations of the kinship unit, I question the modalities of transnationalism experienced in everyday life without crossing national political borders.