Abstract
The nonstop discourse around immigration in the United States often focuses on policy reform. Such discussion often frames immigrants as passive people crossing a porous border without proper documentation in search of work. That is, immigrants are framed as cogs and wheels in a machine: interchangeable, emotionless, and simply filling niches in the U.S.’s labor market to the determinant of Americans. Leisy Abrego’s Sacrificing Families shatters this overarching perspective with her in-depth study of Salvadorian transnational families. These families span thousands of miles, involve billions of dollars in remittances, and importantly, are people working within a tenuous relationship between their sending and receiving nations. Abrego’s volume uncovers the intricacies of life among transnational families from parents’ decisions to and experiences while they immigrate, to what happens when they settle in the United States, and the familial outcomes in different nations. Furthermore, Sacrificing Families provides an engaging discussion that informs social scientists interested in many areas such as families, gender, and race and ethnicity, global political economy, and the sociology of emotions, among other interests.
From the beginning, readers are hit with the gut-wrenching reality, as they follow these families’ risky endeavors for a better life. Sacrificing Families examines the difficult decisions for families to split across borders in search of better-paying work, oftentimes so that they and their children can simply survive. From the heartache of leaving a child to the dangerous paths they take to the United States, Abrego illuminates how the U.S.’s immigration policies affect immigrant parents every step of the way. The text presents a broader discussion of the power of remittances from the migrant parent to their families in El Salvador and how gender ideologies shape how these parents are seen among their communities. Abrego uncovers the sacrifices that mothers make for their children such as risking sexual violence on their trip North, immediately taking low-wage jobs so they can send remittances quickly and consistently, how they sacrifice their own health to send money for their children to eat, and disconcertingly, how these sacrifices are disproportionately framed as what a “good mother” is supposed to do. Anything less is seen as a failure of motherhood for these women, while men are given more leeway and independence, buttressing powerful expectations and stereotypes of parenting.
This study details other aspects of well-being overlooked in many studies of transnational families, that is, emotional well-being. Sacrificing Families describes how these families fight for happiness in a global political economy that is attempting to structure their life outcomes for them. Despite the extreme unhappiness among the children, and the low-paying, back-breaking work parents endure, Abrego finds that many of these families push forward and find ways not only to survive but also to thrive. Not all of these stories are of success, but Abrego’s research indicates the emotional labor these families are involved in during their everyday lives to understand their situations, and their pursuits to improve their families’ positions as they hold on to the hope that they will one day be able to reunite.
Abrego also engages in the complexities of how (il)legality is structured into Salvadorian transnational families’ lives. Abrego is quick to note, discussions of legality is more than the simplistic perspective taken in popular discourse. (Il)legality is a structure that limits the pathways these families can take to improve their lives. The book uncovers how migrant parents are filtered into various immigration pathways and categories through a structure dictated by U.S. policies, which influence how parents must live and work to provide for their families. Despite the structure and culture of (il)legality, Salvadorian transnational families’ efforts indicate how they actively resist these constraints by continually working to improve their lives.
Sacrificing Families presents the ongoing challenges Salvadorian transnational families incur at multiple stages of their endeavor to provide a stable, fulfilling life for themselves and future generations. This volume provides an intimate examination of how the global political economy values power and dismisses humanity in the name of policy and profit. Abrego documents not only the sacrifices of families, but how families are sacrificed in this larger system. Despite the varied economic and emotional outcomes for these families, Abrego’s research indicates the strong desire and even more intense efforts to make a better life in the face of adversity. For many of these families, it is not simply a desire to provide better lives for future generations that they immigrate and push the boundaries of (il)legality, but immigration represents their attempts to preserve an ideal and right that families should have a humane and sustainable future.