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Fragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America By Cecilia Menjivar, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000, xviii + 301 pp. cloth US$48.00 (ISBN 0520-22210-5); paper US$19.95 (ISBN 0-520-22211-3)
Cecilia Menjivar provides a rich and timely ethnographic account of the informal social networks maintained by Salvadoran immigrants - a group that has received little attention in the academic literature - in Mission District, San Francisco. Menjivar defines informal social networks simply as the webs of family, friends, neighbours and others who provide material, financial, informational and emotional assistance on a regular basis (2). Menjivar's analysis of Salvadoran's social networks is revealing. Her findings challenge characterisations of social networks as fixed, monolithic aspects of the immigration experience. Her thesis is that Salvadoran networks are unstable, a result of the structure of opportunities in the United States. Structural constraints, such as immigration status, economic restructuring, accreditation and poverty, condition the resources that immigrants have at their disposal to assist family and friends. This point, Menjivar maintains, is conspicuously absent in earlier studies of immigrant social networks (33).
The book is divided into eight chapters and includes an introduction and two appendices. The introduction reviews Menjivar's research design and methodology. Menjivar's study is qualitative, based on 150 surveys and 50 intensive interviews conducted between 1989 and 1994. The appendices include personal notes on Menjivar's research experiences and detailed information about the backgrounds of her participants. Chapter one provides a concise discussion of how opportunity structures, social networks and social position intersect to affect immigrant life in the United States. Following that, Menjivar condenses 140 years of El Salvador's political and economic history into one coherent chapter, and answers the important question of why Salvadorans migrate. In doing so, she contextualises their motivations to move (economic restructuring, land appropriation and militarisation) by providing a clear understanding of the pre-migration experiences of Salvadoran migrants.
Chapter three describes Salvadorans' arduous journey through Mexico to the United States. This is an...