Salvadoran Transnational Families

AT SIXTEEN YEARS OLD, Daniel was only about four feet, eight inches tall. His fadedschool uniform, bony arms exposed, was evidence of his family's dire economicsituation. We spoke for over an hour in an empty, dusty room in thepublic school he attended in San Salvador, El Salvador. Tears welled up in hiseyes as he passionately described his father's many failed attempts to cross intothe United States and the injustices he faced during U.S. detention. Daniel wasmost emotional, though, when he reflected on how the situation affected himpersonally. With tears streaming down his face, he admitted that he had evenconsidered suicide. Daniel had not seen his father, Rodrigo, in years. Withoutthe financial support the family hoped would come from Rodrigo's migration,they were overwhelmed by poverty. Unable to make enough money toeat three meals a day, Daniel, a once-promising student, was frequently goingto school hungry. At school, he tried to focus on the subjects that were once soexciting to him, but stress overcame him, and high grades eluded him. And,to make matters worse, malnutrition had stunted his growth to the point thatfellow schoolmates regularly made fun of him, "At your height, you shouldbe in kindergarten!" Daniel remembered them taunting. "I feel so bad, soashamed. I should be taller, I should be stronger, but life has been bad to me."

Across the city, in a spacious home with modern appliances, I interviewedtwenty-one-year-old Xiomara. She was dressed fashionably, with danglingearrings and carefully applied makeup that complemented her reserved, yetconfident personality. Her mother, who had always been her closest confidant,had migrated to the United States three years earlier, following the 2001earthquakes. The natural disaster was devastating for her family. Xiomara'smother lost all of the merchandise in her neighborhood store and acquired animmense debt overnight. Migration became the only realistic solution to theirfinancial problems. After three years of separation, the consistent monthlysums from her mother had reduced the debt while allowing Xiomara to graduatefrom a private high school and excel at a private university. She lookedforward to completing a college degree in a few years and was generally optimisticabout her future. But financial stability came at great emotional cost.As she reflected on the family separation, she articulated the great tensionthat weighed her down, "Given the context, let's say that it's going well ...The only thing is my mother's companionship. That's something no one canreplace."

The transnational family strategy is, at its core, a response to economiccircumstances. Parents migrate in search of better wages to send as remittancesto their children. Collectively, remittances have become a mainstay ofthe national economies of several developing nations—including El Salvador.Migrants work hard to send sums of money that add up to relative stabilityfor their country as a whole. At a more intimate level, remittances are also therealization of a families' survival strategy. Amid dire situations, migrationbecame the most plausible solution for parents. They left children behind becausethey were hopeful that opportunities for work and higher wages wouldallow them to sacarlos adelante (uplift their families) from afar.

But not all families fare equally well. Some, like Xiomara, can thrive. Theyhave access to greater academic opportunities and live more comfortably thanever before—even if they have to pay an emotional cost for such stability. Others,like Daniel, cannot catch a break. Here, too, children miss their parentsterribly, but they have nothing concrete to show for the family's sacrifice. Thisbook examines why there are disparate experiences of family separation. Ituncovers some of the ways U.S. immigration policies and multiple genderedprocesses intersect and move fluidly across national borders to stratify transnationalfamilies, creating differential economic and emotional experiencesfor both parents and children.

In the twenty-first century, transnational families are not uncommon amongU.S. immigrants from Latin America. Thousands of migrant parents negotiatefamily life and responsibilities across borders. Yet it is rare to hear peoplediscuss the challenges openly and lovingly in shared community spaces. Thisis precisely what happened in May 2003, when I sat in the audience at an artspace in Los Angeles to witness the coming together of several artists who,like me, are children of Central American immigrants. Among the variousmoving performances about ethnic identity and the ever-present search for"home," the piece titled "Prosperity" was especially touching. In it, Salvadoranwriter, filmmaker, and performance artist Carolina Rivera portrayedthe role of an immigrant mother in Los Angeles whose children remain in ElSalvador. With limited props, she transported the audience into the world ofthis mother who lived by herself in a tight studio apartment with few belongings.Rivera poignantly revealed the economic and emotional pain of familyseparation through this mother who sacrificed a great deal in the UnitedStates—a country where she felt extremely lonely. She found courage and energyin knowing that at least her family in El Salvador was doing well. Butthe painful separation was most evident when she received graduation photographsof her children, whom she no longer recognized. Much of the audiencewas in tears.

In the decade that has followed, transnational families have appearedmore frequently in U.S. political discourse and been more visible in the publiceye. In the spring of 2006, hundreds of thousands of immigrants and theirsupporters marched in cities throughout the United States advocating for immigrationreform. Los Angeles, home to the largest concentration of LatinAmerican (and Salvadoran) immigrants, witnessed two of the most massivedemonstrations. In four miles spanning Pico-Union to Miracle Mile, the record-breakingmultitude flowed through the city streets carrying signs callingfor "Legalización para los indocumentados, reunificación familiar, solucioneshumanas para problemas humanos" ("Legalization for the undocumented,family reunification, humane solutions for human problems"). The historicmarches helped suspend a draconian immigration bill in Congress. But theissue of family reunification, articulated so vividly in these demonstrations,continues to be at the heart of Latino immigrants' daily struggles.

Representations of transnational families have also captured the heartsand minds of moviegoers and readers. The movie Bajo la misma luna (Underthe Same Moon) portrayed the heartbreaking experiences of a Mexican transnationalfamily, and the best-selling nonfiction book Enrique's Journey documentsthe agonizing attempt of a Honduran boy to reunite with his mother.Like these portrayals, Sacrificing Families also captures the tragedy of thesefamilies' living arrangements, but it delves deeper and uses a wider lens tosituate transnational families in a larger structural context and to shed lighton the patterns of inequality in their well-being. Why do parents choose toleave their children? What are these families' experiences of long-term separation?And why do some fare better than others?

Transnational Families and Inequalities

It is not immediately evident why discrepancies arise in transnational families'well-being. From the work of various scholars, it is clear that most transnationalfamilies seek migration and family separation as survival strategiesthat take advantage of global inequalities in wages; mothers and fathers practiceparenting from afar through remittances, gifts, and weekly phone calls;children play a role in supporting or challenging these arrangements; and thebulk of the care work in both sending and receiving regions falls on women.It is still unclear, however, whether and why some transnational families farebetter than others.

As a first step in examining inequalities, scholars have uncovered transnationalfamilies' internal discrepancies in quality of life and subjective experienceof time apart. In her important study of Mexican transnational families,for example, sociologist Joanna Dreby teases out some central incongruitieswithin these families—particularly how time flies for migrant parents whowork long hours in the United States but goes slowly for children who growup awaiting reunification with their parents. This mismatch in time leads topainful and prolonged separations when families yearn to be reunited. SociologistLeah Schmalzbauer points to another internal inequality as seen in theclass formation of migrant Honduran parents and their nonmigrant children;while parents live in poverty to remit, their children use remittances to attainmore comfortable lifestyles. Not willing to share the details of their sacrificesso as not to worry their children, parents inadvertently create a superficialprosperity that their children come to expect, no matter how unrealisticits maintenance. These are important details about the experience of familyseparation across borders, but their emphasis on inequalities within transnationalfamilies largely misses the structural forces that contextualize familyseparation in the first place. This book aims to extend the vibrant scholarlydiscussion on transnational families by examining inequalities across transnationalfamilies. What are the various patterns of inequalities and differentiatedexperiences of transnational families? And what processes create andsustain these?

One logical place to begin this inquiry is in the work of international migrationscholars who examine why some immigrants fare better than othersin the United States. Three of the most commonly cited explanations forinequalities in socioeconomic integration of immigrants are human capital,"the skills that immigrants bring along in the form of education, job experience,and language knowledge"; social networks; and length of residencein the receiving country. How much they know, whom they know, and howlong they've lived here all help determine how quickly and how favorably immigrantsmove up economically in the United States. With higher levels ofeducation, for example, immigrants should qualify for better-paying jobs; themore friends and relatives they know in the United States, the more peoplethey can rely on to help them find housing and work; and the longer they livehere, the more they have learned about how to navigate opportunities andchallenges in this country. By extension, these factors should also explaintransnational family members' economic well-being.

Like other immigrants, parents in transnational families rely on economicopportunities in the United States. The difference, however, is that much oftheir earnings is earmarked for remittances. Those remittances, in turn, makeup the majority of their families' monthly budgets in the home country. Oneway to examine inequalities across transnational families, therefore, is tofocus on variations in the flow of remittances.

In the Salvadoran case, scholars and practitioners in the field of developmentcertainly look closely at the macro portrait of remittances. Collectively,international migrants reliably send portions of their wages to lovedones in their home countries, establishing what some see as a "migration-developmentnexus." Indeed, some policy makers are pursuing the idea ofusing these monies for development. This makes sense considering that, in2012, remittances to Latin America totaled nearly $64 billion—$3.9 billion ofwhich went to El Salvador. These monies are a significant source of externalfunding; they exceed the combined sum of foreign direct investment and officialdevelopment assistance to several Latin American countries, includingEl Salvador. From the perspective of government entities and aid institutions,remittances are untaxed, "free" funds that should be used more productivelyfor national development. This book argues that part of the problem with thisapproach is that not all migrants remit evenly, and not all recipients benefitequally. An analytical lens that focuses on inequalities across transnationalfamilies will demonstrate that the efforts of governments, the banking industry,and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to streamline the uses of remittancescannot presume a minimum baseline for any family. Furthermore,is it fair to expect transnational families to bear the burden of development?

Although these families often conceive of separation as mostly an economicstrategy, the realities of long-term separation also have profound andundeniable emotional effects on parents and children. Like most families,transnational families are expected to provide emotional support for theirmembers, but the geographical distance between parents and children canmake it very difficult to demonstrate love. Children are especially pained bytheir mother's absence, but do other dynamics also shape their emotionalwell-being? What are the affective tolls on various members of these families?And under what circumstances do some children learn to cope with long-termseparation? Because the emotional consequences of a parent's absencemay lower academic achievement, it is important to understand differencesin emotional well-being and the processes that contextualize these patterns.

The work of bringing in the state to explore intimate and gendered aspectsof migration is already under way. In her beautifully written analysis of transnationalMexicans, anthropologist Deborah Boehm uncovers the multifacetedways that U.S. policies produce and reproduce family intimacy and genderedexperiences of transnational life. As she traces the shifts in gender ideologiesand practices with every migration and return, Boehm underscores the fluidnature of these processes, even within single families. Similarly, geographerGeraldine Pratt compellingly reveals the role of Canadian policies in forcingFilipino families apart. In this case, the distance that separates migrants andtheir children proves to be quite painful and negatively consequential, eventhrough what are deemed just "temporary" separations. In Sacrificing Families,I draw on and extend these rich insights to better understand economicand emotional inequalities across transnational families. I demonstrate thatbeyond the most widely cited explanations of why immigrants fare as they do,immigration policies and gender are also influential and complementary processesthat complicate, amplify, and sometimes trump the effects of more traditionalexplanatory factors (that is, level of education, social networks, andlength of residency). A lens that focuses specifically on immigration policiesand gender, therefore, reveals a more complete picture of why some familiesfare better than others.

The Production of (Il)legality

Although public debates about immigration in the United States implicitlyassume that immigrants' legal status is an innate and static characteristic, thetruth is that nothing about an immigrants' position within or outside of thelaw is natural. On the contrary, illegality—the condition of immigrants' legalstatus and deportability—is historically specific and socially, politically,and legally produced. In its contemporary form, illegality has come to havean intimate and deep impact on all immigrants, as the potential for deportationis high, even if it is impossible to deport all undocumented immigrants.With very restricted paths to legalization, undocumented immigrants andtheir loved ones must grapple with the fear of deportation at every turn; this isa heavy burden that millions carry.

There have been moments in U.S. history when, in practical terms, undocumentedstatus had little meaning. For various periods of mass immigration,undocumented immigrants were able to obtain a driver's license andwork without the intense fear of deportation that now permeates immigrantcommunities. But, in the last few decades, undocumented status and illegalityhave gained broader significance. Immigrants categorized as "undocumented"or "temporarily protected" are targets of progressively more harshlaws and ever more hateful speech, all of which work together to criminalizeand dehumanize them and their families.

Beginning in the 1980s, at approximately the same time that massive migrationof Salvadorans began, the United States changed its contemporaryimmigration enforcement policies. No longer focusing only on relatively inconsequentialapprehensions at the border, the Reagan administration militarizedborder enforcement. These changes thwarted circular migration patternsand increased the settlement of entire families in the United States.For Salvadorans, who had to travel through multiple border crossings passingthrough Guatemala and Mexico en route to the United States, the new borderpolicies added yet another layer of barriers between migrants and their families.The Reagan administration also gave states more power to implementimmigration policies locally and, with the passage of the Immigration Reformand Control Act (IRCA) in 1986, established highly symbolic employersanctions that for the first time made it a crime for undocumented immigrantsto work. These changes set in motion the production of illegality inits current form.