Source Document Analysis 2

Jared Wilkerson

Fall 2008 or Spring 2009

Beyond Remittances: Husband Migration and its Effects on Wives in Rural Mexico

Journal of Inquiry

Volume 4, 77-96

1. What is the source’s stated purpose (the argument or thesis)?

Husband migration has a negative effect on wives’ gender roles

2. What evidence does the author provide to support his or her main argument? How is the author attempting to logically prove his or her thesis and how does this affect the organization of the document?

                  He has looked at other studies and done many of his own in-depth studies of rural Mexican towns with high migration rates and has interviewed large amounts of people to see how it has effected them.

3. Who is the audience? What does the author assume the audience already knows about the topic?

                  The audience is probably Mexicans and Americans. The audience knows that there is a lot of migration from Mexico to the United States.

4. Describe the author’s methods (i.e. how does the author know what he or she knows)?  In your opinion were they appropriate why or why not?

The author spent 6 months visiting several different rural villages. He interviewed 56 women, half of whom were “senders” and half lived with their husbands. I think this is a pretty good study for his time and resources. 56 is a decent sized number and it’s also good that he could do his study in more than one village.

5. To what other sources (theorist, researchers, artists) does the author refer? Explain the specific ideas the author draws upon from these other sources to support his or her own argument (the theoretical framework).

                 

                  He refers to other researchers who have done the same kind of study and received more or less the same results. Some results were different, but in these he pointed out that they did not have a very big group that they surveyed. His goal was to take what other people had already learned and take it just a little bit further.

6. What are the connections between this source and your project? How useful or applicable is this source’s approach to your own project? How is yours new and different? 

            There is some relation between this and my own project because it is looking at human relations and how they (or the lack of them) change people. My approach will probably not be quite the same, but I will still want to do interviews with people.