Fragmented Ties

Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America

Bibliographic Data

ID10047189
AuthorsDavid P Lindstrom (0000-0003-4453-3506, Brown University)
Year2002
Volume89
Issue3
Pages1140
Publication date2002-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeREVIEW
Review ofFragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America, Cecilia Menjívar, 2000
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3092495
OpenAlexW2088308545
LanguageEN

One of the most important recent developments in migration scholarship is the increased attention given to immigrant networks. Studies of immigrants consistently identify social ties to other immigrants as playing an instrumental role in the migration and settlement process. For recently arrived immigrants, informal networks of family and friends in the place of destination provide financial, emotional, and social support that eases the process of immigrant adaptation and integration into the host society. In Fragmented Ties, Cecilia Menjévar presents a portrait of immigrant networks that is often at odds with the “overly romanticized notions of immigrant unity and solidarity” implicit in many of the depictions of immigrant networks found in the migration literature. Based on several years of fieldwork in the Mission District of San Francisco, the book examines the personal interactions, exchanges, and systems of mutual support that immigrants engage in and construct in going about the business of getting by in the United States. What Menjévar finds both confirms and challenges conventional perspectives on immigrant networks. Similar to what has been found for other immigrant groups, family and friends in the United States are a crucial source of the money, information, and personal contacts needed to make the long and arduous overland journey that undocumented Salvadorans make to get to the United States. Once they arrived in San Francisco, however, many of the newly arrived immigrants soon discovered the limits of what they could expect from family and friends. Rather than being conduits of continuing support and mutual exchange, ties with family and friends that had been strong in El Salvador became strained and conflictive; they sometimes weakened and even broke down. Although the immigrants created new networks of friends and acquaintances, those networks were unstable and unreliable, and the decision about whom to go to for help became contingent upon what was needed and who was in a position to offer it

Immigration · Interpersonal ties · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Solidarity · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law

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