Transnational Communities: Their Emergence and Effects Among Latin American Immigrants in the U.S.

这是一项关于涉及美国和拉丁美洲国家的跨国社区的出现的研究。跨国社区是由移民创造的，他们在国家之间反复来回流动，利用这种流离失所现象来实施复杂的经济战略。跨国社区可以被定义为移民人口中其主要职业活动需要跨越国界进行远程接触的行为者的总数。在大多数情况下，这些联系涉及移民的原籍国，他们的目的主要是经济上的。然而，随着跨国网络的发展，它们也开始涵盖社会和政治活动，并涉及第三国。这项研究将探讨这种新现象的起源、特征和影响，因为它在萨尔瓦多和多米尼加移民中发展起来，这两个群体是近年来抵达美国的最大群体。回返、移徙、给家人汇款以及对留下来的亲人的赞助都是熟悉的事件，过去都被研究为移民与其祖国之间持久联系的表现。目前的新发展是这种联系的扩散，以至于发送和接收地区成为统一的社会结构，涉及的地区获得了超越传统移民的地位。为解决这一现象，该项目将开展一项综合初级数据收集工作，涉及美国的移民社区和两个派遣国选定的城市。两个阶段的数据收集将得到国家科学基金会的支持。首先，将在每个移民群体的两个集中区和每个派遣国的两个城市与举报人进行面谈，以确定跨国企业的范围和范围。在S第二阶段，将在美国的四个目标社区进行跨国企业家调查和正常移民的匹配样本。由此产生的数据文件将包括在8个不同外地地点进行的2300次访谈。这项研究将通过绘制跨国社区出现背后的社会网络并检验关于成功的跨国企业家网络结构的假设，大大增加我们对这一新的与移民有关的现象的理解。由于跨国社区将跨越国界的人口联系在一起，它们在现代世界的增长是全球变化的一个重要方面，将对世界的社会、文化、经济和自然环境产生重大影响。

This is a study of the emergence of transnational communities involving the United States and Latin American countries. Transnational communities are created by immigrants who engage in a pattern of repeated back-and-forth movements between countries, using such displacements in order to implement complex economic strategies. Transnational communities can be defined as the sum total of actors in an immigrant population whose prime occupational activity requires long-distance contacts across national borders. For the most part, these contacts involve the immigrants' countries of origin and their purpose is primarily economic. However, as transnational networks develop, they come to encompass social and political activities as well, and to involve third countries. This study will examine the origins, characteristics, and effects of this novel phenomenon as it has developed among Salvadoran and Dominican immigrants, two of the largest groups arriving in the United States in recent years. Processes of return migration, the sending of remittances to family members, and the sponsorship of kin left behind are all familiar events that have been studied in the past as manifestations of the enduring ties of immigrants to their home countries. The novel development at present is the proliferation of such ties to the point that sending and receiving areas become integrated into unified social structures and those involved acquire a status that transcends that of conventional immigrant. To address this phenomenon, this project will conduct an integrated primary data collection effort involving immigrant communities in the United States and selected cities in the two sending countries. Two phases of data collection will be supported by the National Science Foundation. In the first, informant interviews will be conducted in two areas of concentration of each immigrant group and in two cities of each sending country in order to identify the extent and range of transnational enterprises. In the s econd phase, a survey of transnational entrepreneurs and a matched sample of regular immigrants will be conducted in four target communities in the United States. The resultant data file will comprise 2,300 interviews in 8 different field sites. This research will add considerably to our understanding of this new immigration-related phenomenon, by mapping the social networks underlying the emergence of transnational communities and testing hypotheses about the structure of networks of successful transnational entrepreneurs. Because transnational communities link populations across national boundaries, their growth in the modern world represents a significant aspect of global change that will have great consequences for the world's social, cultural, economic and natural environment.