Economic Well-Being in Salvadoran Transnational Families: How Gender Affects Remittance Practices

This article examines how migrant parents' gender affects transnational families' economic well-being. Drawing on 130 in-depth interviews with Salvadoran immigrants in the United States and adolescent and young adult children of migrants in El Salvador, I demonstrate that the gender of migrant parents centrally affects how well their families are faring. Gender structurally differentiates immigrant parents' experiences through labor market opportunities in the United States. Simultaneously, gendered social expectations inform immigrants' approaches to parental responsibilities and remitting behaviors. Remittances-the monies parents send-directly shape children's economic well-being in El Salvador. I find that even though immigrant mothers are structurally more disadvantaged than immigrant fathers, mother-away families are often thriving economically because of mothers' extreme sacrifices. Key Words: Central American families, economic well-being, El Salvador, immigrant families, parenting and parenthood, transnationalism. Parents from various countries migrate to the United States in search of employment and wages to improve their children's lives (Dreby, 2006; Parrenas, 2005a; Schmalzbauer, 2005). Men and women, however, face differences in opportunities (United Nations Population Fund, 2006) that possibly lead to associated disparities in their transnational families' economic well-being. In fact, this study finds that children in Salvadoran transnational families may not always benefit equally from their parents' migration and the resultant remittances. Although some enjoy considerable upward mobility and economic stability, others continue to encounter the same economic challenges that led their parents to migrate, and others yet are struggling to barely subsist. As this article demonstrates, how children fare economically depends a great deal on their migrant parents' gendered opportunities and approaches to parental responsibilities. Transnational Families Transnational families are families whose "members of the nuclear unit (mother, father, and children) live in two different countries" (Dreby, 2006, p. 33). Their strategy of survival relies on the ability to maximize earnings by sending one or more of their core members to work abroad while some or all dependents stay in the home country (Burawoy, 1976). This is certainly not a new phenomenon among migration streams to the United States (Espiritu, 1997; Foner, 1997; Glenn, 2002; Lopez Castro, 1986; Massey, Alarcon, Durand, & Gonzalez, 1987; Robles & Watkins, 1993). Contemporary transnational families, however, face new contexts and are importantly characterized by a greater inclusion of women migrants (Donato, 1992; Gabaccia, 1992; HondagneuSotelo, 2003). The contemporary U.S. economy, with a large service sector in urban centers like Los Angeles, draws heavily on female immigrants (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2003) - many of whom are mothers. Given gendered family roles and expectations (Thome, 1992), transnational family experiences are likely to differ on the basis of migrant parents' gender. Recent studies of transnational families composed of migrant parents and nonmigrant children examine parenting practices (Dreby, 2006; Menjivar & Abrego, 2009; Parrenas, 2005a), survival strategies across borders (Schmalzbauer, 2005), children's roles and behaviors (Dreby, 2007), and the spatial fragmentation of caregiving (Ehrenreich & Hochschild, 2002; Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila, 1997; Landolt & Da, 2005). They demonstrate that families with migrant mothers often face great social stigma and that children have different expectations of their migrant parents by gender. Aside from their emphasis on gendered emotional experiences of separation, however, these studies generally forgo systematic examination of economic variability among transnational families. Consequently, they fail to expose the mechanisms that lead to differences in families' economic well-being. …