Socorro Torres Sarmiento

Sarmiento examines employment strategies, family structure, and the transnational relationships involved in income-generating strategies among Mexican immigrants in Southern California.

Using ethnographic interviews, Sarmiento studies how globalization affects ordinary Mexican American immigrants, shaping their families and daily lives. Even as families are divided by borders, they try to remain cohesive units. Globalization challenges immigrants to restructure their families, gender roles, and even their political boundaries. The unstable working conditions of immigrant men are decisive for the form in which families organize their income-generating strategies. However, women are key to the family economy in that they subsidize low wages through paid and unpaid work on both sides of the border.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Considerations in the Analysis of International Migrant Labor and the Impact on Family Structure
3. Research Methodology
4. Tzintzuntzan Historic Socio-Economic Development and Migration
5. Tzintzuntzeno's Migratory Experience: First Stage
6. Economic Restructuring and the Migrant Labor Market in Southern California
7. Tzintzuntzeno Families and Working Conditions
8. Tzintzuntzeno Women and Income-Generating Strategies
9. El Gasto: Social and Economic Strategies for Survival
10. Concluding Observations
    
References
Index