creator: Schmalzbauer, Leah Caroline
description- – Sociologists and anthropologists have focused considerable attention on contemporary transnational flows of capital, labor and culture, as well as on the ways in which communities create and maintain transnational ties. However very few have studied the specific role of the family in transnational processes and fewer still have looked at how families actually function in a transnational space. In this dissertation I address this gap in the literature by investigating how transnationalism impacts and structures daily family life and how transnationalism works as a survival strategy in which families use the difference in living costs between Honduras and the United States to support household consumption. Drawing on data I gathered in Honduras and the United States from one-week time diaries, in-depth interviews, participant observation and interpretive focus groups, I look specifically at the experience and prospects of transmigrant labor in the United States; the aspirations and consumption practices of transnational family members in the United States and Honduras, especially as they relate to the American Dream; and I explore the ways in which families negotiate caretaking responsibilities, both financial and emotional, while striving and surviving in a transnational space. This is the first daily life study of undocumented immigrants and the first transnational analysis of Honduran families.
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