Sacrificing Families: Navigating Laws, Labor, and Love Across Borders

I'd like to bring your attention to a new book by Leisy J. Abrego, assistant professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCLA.

Soon to be released by Stanford University Press, Sacrificing Families: Navigating Laws, Labor, and Love Across Borders, is about the experiences and well-being of Salvadoran transnational families. The author, Leisy Abrego, an assistant professor at UCLA, interviewed 130 members of these families -- including immigrant mothers and fathers in Los Angeles and young adult children of migrants in El Salvador. Relying heavily on the voices of her respondents, she compares their experiences to reveal the hardships and inequalities they live through. Contrary to popular assumptions about transnational families, she demonstrates that not all are doing well financially and most suffer emotionally through the separation to different degrees. Her analysis highlights the powerful role of U.S. foreign and immigration policies in creating the need for migration and shaping migrants' well-being. 

The chapters explore the reasons people left El Salvador, tying individual experiences to broader military, political, and economic policies supported by the United States government. They provide details about the difficulty of getting a U.S. visa and the increasing violence that unauthorized migrants face while in transit. Chapters also explore the different social expectations and legal possibilities that frame migrants' remitting behaviors. 

Trained as a sociologist, the author is a member of the 1.5 generation -- born in El Salvador, but raised in the United States. She is deeply familiar with the lived realities of the Salvadoran community in Los Angeles and in El Salvador and therefore brings a level of sensitivity to the topic, to balance out the numbers and figures that predominate in public discourse about transnational families.

You can purchase the book here and here.

You can also follow Leisy on Twitter at @AbregoLeisy.