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

by Leisy Abrego

Widening global inequalities make it difficult for parents in developing nations to provide for their children, and both mothers and fathers often find that migration in search of higher wages is their only hope. Their dreams are with more money, they can improve their children's lives. But the reality of their experiences is often harsh, and structural barriers―particularly those rooted in immigration policies and gender inequities―prevent many from reaching their economic goals. Sacrificing Families offers a first-hand look at Salvadoran transnational families, how the parents fare in the United States, and the experiences of the children back home. It captures the tragedy of these families' daily living arrangements, but also delves deeper to expose the structural context that creates and sustains patterns of inequality in their well-being. What prevents these parents from migrating with their children? What are these families' experiences with long-term separation? And why do some ultimately fare better than others? As free trade agreements expand and nation-states open doors widely for products and profits while closing them tightly for refugees and migrants, these transnational families are not only becoming more common, but they are living through lengthier separations. Leisy Abrego gives voice to these immigrants and their families and documents the inequalities across their experiences.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Law, Politics, Race

268 pages, Paperback

First published January 29, 2014

Reviews

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sacrificing Families illuminates the multitude areas of life that are affected by illegality, a social and political construct meant to Latinos in their place. While most of us view legal status as a mere matter of bureaucratic clarification, to migrants, this categorization may confer life or death, a life of hardship or prosperity. From the outset, the concept of illegality makes it especially difficult for unauthorized travelers to cross national borders so that they are easy targets for smugglers, drug traffickers, thieves, police officers, and the military; when they arrive in the U.S., illegality makes them all the more vulnerable to predatory landlords and employers, resulting in diminished ability to remit and lower economic well-being of all members of the transnational family as they struggle to make ends meet in low-wage, dangerous conditions; overtime, illegality’s effects impact them emotionally as little things that provide great emotional relief (visitations and paths to family reunification) are closed off from them. Furthermore, the criminalization and greater risk of deportation associated with illegality eradicate any chance unauthorized immigrants and their families have at integrating socioeconomically in the U.S. In this way, the U.S. production of illegality creates structural inequalities in El Salvador by overcomplicating the visa application and approval process, which is the driving force in unauthorized travel to the U.S. and eventual misfortune of both settled migrants and their families and communities in El Salvador. By exporting the labor force in El Salvador, the U.S. plays its role in exacerbating global inequalities.

As is often the case in media narratives, U.S. economic and military involvement in fueling the Central American civil unrest that caused the “migrant crisis” in the first place is often ignored. Abrego aptly points to policies tracing back to the Reagan administration (that aimed to eliminate the “communist threat”) for plunging El Salvador into civil war. Perhaps fearing the popular people’s movement and the repercussions their call for an end to disparities and government repression might have for the American public, the U.S. began to train and fund the Salvadoran military with the purpose of quashing the movement (talk about democracy!). Since then, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed and many more have sought refuge in the U.S., although they are instead seen as criminal aliens and subsequently denied access to legalization. Again, the consequences of denying visas to migrants are made dangerously evident when they receive absolutely no legal protection at all stages of the settlement process. The numerous stories she provides are testament that national governments need to do better by political refugees and stop intervening in other country’s democratically-elected governments and instead work to eliminate global poverty, offer legal protection to migrants en route as well as political dissidents, and create trade policies that support sustainable economic development of the people not multinational corporations.

[Cate Tedford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good grief. This was heavy! I learned so much. The Salvadoran transnational family experience is diverse and heartbreaking and so worthy of our attention.

“Only policies that reflect a dramatic shift in how we value humanity will hold governments and corporations responsible, rein in their greed, and press them to act more reasonably to stop exacerbating inequalities and benefitting from the poverty of developing nations and disenfranchised peoples.”

“Are we comfortable being a country that legally enables human rights abuses of migrants? What are we willing to do to stop the sacrificing of these families?”