From the Maguey to concrete: migration and transition fo housing Otomí

Abstract

Economic globalization is transforming the world. Influencing in the reorganization of spatial and societal structures, it tends to dispel traditional concepts such as urban, suburban, periurban, non-urban, rural, which hinders the definition of divisions between them. Intensified by globalization, migration has generated changes principally in developing countries. Seen as a strategy of survival, migration is much more than the displacement of individuals, it connotes the assimilation of knowledge and new rules of behavior, embodied in one of the motives for which one migrates: housing. In the case of typical otomí housing, previously produced with leaves of maguey it has experienced transformations and adaptations in time, accentuated with greater intensity following the migratory practice of its people towards USA. Today it becomes a totally different housing in the techniques and construction materials, the morphology, the conception, organization and use of their spaces.