Gender and international labor migration: a networks approach.

Matthei, Linda Miller

Females have outnumbered males in legal immigration to the United States since the 1930s (Houston, Kramer, and Barrett, 1984), yet until recently issues of gender have received relatively scant attention in the cumulative body of research on migration. Migration researchers have largely overlooked the female component of migrant streams under the assumption that women migrate as dependents of male breadwinners and are thus only passive participants in the process (Pessar, 1986; Simon and Corona DeLey, 1986). The androcentric assumptions that characterize international labor migration scholarship thus (unwittingly) convey the message that when it comes to migration "women [do] little worth writing about" (Pedraza, 1991: 304).(1)

Though labor migration may once have been the relatively exclusive domain of men, iris no longer. Even in Latin America, where migration streams have long been dominated by males, there is a clear trend toward greater female participation in labor flows to the United States (Fernandez-Kelly and Garcia, 1988; Donato, 1994). Perhaps the best indicator of women's increasing role as labor migrants in their own right is their willingness to assume the risks associated with undocumented migration. Despite long-held and oft-repeated contentions that undocumented migration flows to the United States "are composed overwhelmingly of adult men" (Portes and Bach, 1985: 69, see also Massey et al., 1987: 124), 43% of amnesty applications under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 were made by females (Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1990: xxiv).(2) Recent world-system analyses indicate, furthermore, that secondary sector employers in the U.S. increasingly target immigrant women rather than men as a source of low-wage labor (Sassen, 1988; Fernandez-Kelly, 1994). Given these findings, we must begin to consider the broader implications of a trend in which women migrate and men are increasingly the ones "left behind."

In this article I briefly examine the contributions of world-system analyses in bringing to light the significant economic role that female labor migrants play in the U.S. economy. However, I argue that such macro-economic analyses have failed to east much light on women as actors in the migration process. I also question the adequacy of approaches that focus on the household as the appropriate unit of analysis in migration research. Though "household strategies" approaches seem to hold promise for bringing human agency back into the migration process, I point out that abstract theoretical models that purport to explain household economic behavior often obscure the role that women play in migration.

I argue instead that an analytical approach that focuses on migration as a gendered process of transnational network-building can help us to move toward a more socially and culturally grounded conception of a modern world-system in which men and women respond to the macro-economic forces that shape and constrain their daily lives. Although the social networks approach has a long history in migration research, and has generated many studies that document the role played by transnational networks in generating and sustaining migrant flows, little attention has been given to women's participation in the building and maintenance of the ties that link migration sending and receiving communities.

A large body of cross-cultural research illustrates that "women-centered" networks serve as significant conduits for the exchange of material goods, services, and employment information in developing societies. I argue that, expanded transnationally, women's networks play a similar role in international migration, linking women who remain in sending communities to remittances and women who seek to migrate to employment opportunities and childcare, and, in some cases, paving the way for a potential return to their communities of origin.

World-System Approaches to Migration

The historical-structural approach developed in world-system analyses provides a powerful conceptual framework for the analysis of global processes that give rise to and structure international labor migration. Unlike "modernization" approaches that explain migration flows as the cumulative responses of individuals to "push" factors (e.g., overpopulation and unemployment) in their places of origin and unrelated "pull" factors (e.g., high labor demands) at potential migration destinations, world-system approaches focus explicitly on the structural inequalities that link societies in a single system, the capitalist world-economy (Portes and Walton, 1981; Sassen-Koob, 1981). Migration, from the world-system perspective, is generated by the penetration and expansion of capitalism and acts as a mechanism for the allocation of labor in the global economy (Sassen-Koob, 1981).

Since the 1980s, historical-structural research has documented an increased demand for female immigrant labor in U.S. cities as a consequence of global restructuring of the production process (e.g., Sassen-Koob, 1984; Morokvasic, 1983). In short, the large-scale relocation of manufacturing to nations in the periphery where wages and operating costs are lower has resulted in the loss of blue-collar manufacturing jobs in the core. Thus, the kinds of jobs once sought by male immigrants have largely disappeared, while at the same time female migrants are sought out for employment in the burgeoning low-wage service sector and the garment and microelectronics industries (Sassen-Koob, 1981, 1984; Fernandez-Kelly and Garcia, 1988). As a number of studies illustrate, employers view immigrant women as an ideal source of labor, citing their presumed docility and willingness to accept tedious, and often temporary, low-wage jobs (Hossfeld, 1994; Fernandez-Kelly, 1994).

The documentation of immigrant women's growing economic role in the U.S. labor market represents a significant contribution to migration research. However, feminist scholars argue that the narrow economic approach used in most world-system analyses presents an impoverished view of women in international migration and in the world-system in general (e.g., Ward, 1993; Grasmuck and Pessar, 1991; Pedraza, 1991). In such analyses gender distinctions in labor migration are often deemed significant only in that women represent more, and men less, exploitable sources of labor. Missing in most of these studies is any sense of women's agency in the migration process. As Mirjana Morokvasic (1983: 18) pointedly notes, "the woman remains silent and invisible, present as a variable, absent as a person."

The Household as Unit of Analysis

Efforts to reintroduce human actors who strategize and respond to political and economic pressures have led some migration researchers to adopt a "household strategies" approach to migration (Wolf, 1992). In these studies, households are typically conceptualized as bounded units of production and consumption that pool and control resources (including labor) and make joint decisions regarding their allocation (Wood, 1981; Smith, Wallerstein, and Dieter-Evers, 1984; Schmink, 1984). Migration is thus viewed as a collective strategy intended to ensure the economic viability of the domestic unit through the strategic allocation of labor.

Although the concept of household strategies suggests human agency in the migration process, too often the household is treated as a monolithic, altruistic unit in which individual members subsume their own interests and desires for the good of the collectivity. As a result, the household itself is transformed into a social actor that marshals resources and strategizes to send selected members off into the migration circuit, while the conflicts and negotiations characteristic of real domestic relationships are left unexamined.

Feminist scholars have been particularly critical of the household model's lack of attention to the unequal gender distribution of resources and women's lack of access to power within the household (e.g., Beneria and Roldan, 1987; Blumberg, 1991; Wolf, 1992). The household approach, they argue, overlooks the conflicts inherent in domestic relationships, and as a result women are portrayed as nurturers and nest-builders - the ultimate altruists - who selflessly forego their own needs and desires for the sake of the family. Consequently, any woman "who seeks a paying job, earns a wage, or migrates is interpreted as doing so as part of a household strategy" (Wolf, 1992: 12).

The inadequacies of a generic household model have become increasingly apparent as researchers try to apply theoretical assumptions to "real-life" situations. Cross-cultural studies of migration sending communities illustrate that households (and household members) simply do not always behave like the model assumes they should. Although the household model posits discrete, independent units, ethnographic research indicates that household members often exercise rights and are subject to obligations that extend beyond the household (Guyer, 1981; Whitehead, 1978; Stack, 1974). In addition, sometimes relationships with extra-domestic kin are stronger and more enduring than the marital ties that link men and women in households (Guyer, 1981; Kerns, 1983). Moreover, numerous studies indicate that informal networks of social support play an especially critical role among women in less-developed societies. The arbitrary selection of the household as the locus of migration decision-making and organization, therefore, may obscure rather than cast light on women's agency in the migration process.

Migration as a Process of Network-Building

The role that social networks play in fostering migration is well documented (for a brief summary of the research, see Massey et al., 1987: 5). However, to date there has been relatively little attention to women's participation in migration networks - presumably because researchers still tend to assume that women who migrate are either "sent" by their parents or "brought" by their mates.

When women migrate, the standard argument goes, they do so as dependents of males or they tap into already established male networks. A study of Mexican migration by Massey et al. (1987), for example, is representative of this position. The authors dismiss the notion that females might play any active role in their own migration, especially if it involves surreptitious entry:

...most men are reluctant to allow their wives and daughters to undertake the hazardous crossing of the border without documents, and women are usually afraid to try. When women do go to the United States, it is usually only after a male relative has gone before her to arrange legal documentation or, at least, safe passage across the border.

Ethnographic studies that focus explicitly on gender, however, indicate that despite the concerns and protests of husbands and parents, Mexican women do engage in undocumented migration, often arranging passage on their own or through female relatives and friends (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994; Curry-Rodriguez, 1988, cited in Hondagneu-Sotelo; Simon and DeLey, 1986). Other studies based on research in the Dominican Republic (Georges, 1990), Malaysia (Stivens, 1984), Portugal (Brettell, 1996), Turkey (Davis and Heyl, 1986), and the English-speaking Caribbean (Foner, 1986) provide further evidence that women play an active role in organizing their own migration. Cross-cultural research also reveals that women often use migration as an avenue of escape from unhappy marital relationships (e.g., Chavez, 1992; Grasmuck and Pessar, 1991; Foner, 1986). Foner (1986: 139), for example, notes that it is common for married Jamaican women to migrate before their husbands do, and some use the opportunity to "bring about or formalize a separation." For these women the decision to migrate is certainly conditioned more by their ability to marshal support and assistance through transnational networks of kin and friends than it is in consultation with and the aid of household members.

Employment Access Through Social Networks

The role that social networks play in linking male migrants to jobs is well documented in the existing migration literature, but there has been little research on the job-seeking strategies of immigrant women. The research that does exist, however, suggests that women, like men, rely on same-sex kin and friends to find work once they arrive in the United States. In my own research with Garifuna immigrants in Los Angeles, for example, I found that women tend to find initial employment through female kin and friends, most often in some sort of domestic service. Caces (1987) reports similar findings among Filipino women in Hawaii and points out that women who already have some work experience sometimes provide informal training to new arrivals or provide them with contacts at private employment agencies. Several studies also note that women are sometimes able to arrange live-in domestic jobs through kin and friends prior to their arrival in the United States (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994: 92-93; Miller, 1993:150-151; Chavez, 1992; Foner, 1986).

Although migrant women's social networks are clearly effective in linking them to jobs upon arrival in the United States, dependence on same-sex ties may also have a downside. Studies among U.S.-born women indicate that "when women gain jobs through female contacts, these jobs are likely to be sex segregated, female, and low paying since women's networks tend to lack the heterogeneity of those of males" (Smith-Lovin and McPherson, 1993). Thus, although unskilled and inexperienced immigrant women who would otherwise find it difficult to get jobs clearly benefit from the use of ties to other women, for skilled and professional women same-sex networks may not be so beneficial. Women who pursued careers as secretaries and teachers in their home communities often find that their networks in the U.S. link them only to low-wage service jobs as domestics and nurse's aides (Colen, 1986: 48; Miller, 1993; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994). Again, research in this area is nearly nonexistent, but it would be interesting to see if immigrant women who do tap into male networks or use formal methods of employment acquisition find a wider array of opportunities available to them.

Settlement and the Persistence of Transnational Ties

In general, migration researchers argue that as migrants accumulate time in receiving societies, they begin to put down social and economic roots. As they buy homes, make friends, and raise children in the U.S., the argument goes, they begin to view themselves as "settlers" rather than "sojourners," and their ties to their communities of origin gradual weaken. These arguments are consistent with more general findings in social networks research, which indicate that geographic distance and infrequent contact increase the difficulty of maintaining strong ties (Granovetter, 1974; Wellman and Wortley, 1989).

Recent research - mostly by anthropologists - suggests, however, that social and economic ties between migrants and the folks back home often persist over extended periods of time. Contrary to the notion that the orientation of migrants changes from home to host society as time goes by, Basch et al. (1994) provide substantial evidence that even immigrants who have spent decades in the U.S. often have deep commitments and substantial involvement in the cultural, political, and economic spheres of their nations of origin.

Why do some migrants continue to nurture these transnational ties long after they have seemingly settled in the United States? Despite the strong demand for immigrant labor, for many migrants - especially undocumented ones - life in the U.S. is fraught with uncertainty. Their status as "foreigners," which is often coupled with racism, social isolation, and persistent fears of deportation, makes them reluctant to burn their bridges to their homelands. Thus, they "keep their options open" by maintaining social and economic safety nets in their countries of origin (Glick Schiller et al., 1992:11).

Gender and Social Networks

Though critical of theoretical approaches that fail to give adequate attention to issues of gender, feminist scholars themselves are sometimes guilty of perpetuating a one-dimensional image of women as "passive victims" of patriarchal domination (Beneria and Roldan, 1987; Wolf, 1992). In focusing almost exclusively on the negative consequences women experience as a result of capitalist penetration of developing economies, feminist efforts to "bring gender in" to migration research have often produced analyses that emphasize women's economic dependence on males (e.g., Ward, 1985). According to this "woman as victim" approach, women lose power and resources because their access to the social and economic support of kin back home is cut off when they migrate (see Ward, 1985; Boyd, 1986). Yet can we assume that the ties that link women to their kin are really that brittle?

There is a large body of cross-cultural research that indicates that "women-centered" networks play a critical role in facilitating the flow of goods, services, and information in industrialized and developing societies. "Gynocentricity,...the tendency for females to be more emotionally involved and active in kinship interaction than males" (Poggie and Pelto, 1976: 249, quoted in Yanagisako, 1977: 216), has been described in a variety of research settings, Yanagisako, in her study of women-centered networks among Japanese-Americans, observes that women, as "kin keepers," maintain closer communication with kin than males do. According to Yanagisako, women "know the details of kin ties and facilitate communication among households and other groupings of kin" (1977:211). Stivens argues similarly that among middle-class women in Australia, kinship is "women's business." She adds, moreover, that even when men are the family's financial managers, women often have "considerable say" in the flow of economic aid between families (1984:189). In her classic study of kinship networks, Elizabeth Bott (1957) also describes a "matrilateral stress" in some of the kinship networks of working and middle-class Londoners and suggests that women's efforts to ensure some measure of economic security may motivate them to foster kin ties. As Bott puts it: "Husbands and fathers might die or desert, but women could use their maternal kin as an informal insurance policy for themselves and their children" (1957: 138).

A substantial body of cross-cultural research suggests that extra-domestic networks play a particularly critical role in the economic survival of families in less-developed societies. In her study of the exchange networks of Mexican shantytown residents, Lomnitz points out that most families "have literally nothing. Their only resources are of a social nature: kinship and friendship ties that generate social solidarity" (1977: 3). According to Lomnitz, women are key actors in the networks that facilitate the flow of goods and services between households:

The shantytown woman is rugged and accustomed to hardship. She knows her role is essential in the social fabric, especially in the networks of reciprocal exchange on which her economic security depends.... The woman, through her role in centralizing networks of reciprocal exchange, is often the key to survival.

Neuhouser reports similar findings among urban immigrants in Brazil, where sporadic access to employment and income prompts families to engage in exchanges of gifts, loans, and childcare. Like Lomnitz, Neuhouser argues that women are usually the anchors of such networks, "and men often become involved only as a function of their relationships to women members" (1989: 698-699).

Female-led networks are not unique to Latin America; ethnographic studies from less-developed societies throughout Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean document similar patterns of network-building by women seeking to assure an adequate flow of resources into their households in economically unstable environments (e.g., Stivens, 1984; Guyer, 1981; Wong, 1984; Barrow, 1986).

Given these findings, can we assume that the pressures motivating women to build support networks disappear when they migrate? Do migrant women turn over responsibility for the maintenance of transnational ties to their husbands and brothers? What of nonmigrant women - do they limit themselves to local sources of support when members of their networks migrate? Despite the lack of explicit attention to gender in migration networks, there is evidence to suggest that both migrant and nonmigrant women play strategic roles in maintaining transnational networks.

Building and Maintaining Transnational Networks

To date, there has been little research done on nonmigrant women. In those studies that have focused on their experiences, moreover, they are typically portrayed not as actors in the process, but as victims of it - they are merely the "women who wait" or "the women left behind." Women do, of course, experience social and economic hardships as a result of extensive male out-migration, but there is increasing evidence that they do not simply sit back and suffer in silence. In a recently published study, Pierette Hondagneu-Sotelo says, for example, that Mexican wives left behind by their migrant mates often use their ties to other women to subvert their husband's authority and initiate their own migration to the United States:

Return migrant women and sisters and friends in the U.S. encouraged women to go north and helped write letters imploring their husbands for permission to migrate; when this strategy didn't yield results, they lent money for travel costs and coyote assistance, sometimes unbeknownst to the men. In some cases...husbands, much to their chagrin, did not learn of their wives' and children's migration until after the fact (1994: 72).

Of course, not all women migrate, but many still assiduously cultivate their ties to migrant kin in the United States in order to establish a flow of remittances. Since income-generating opportunities for women are usually limited in migration-sending societies, they often ensure a regular flow of money and goods by offering to care for the children of daughters and sisters who have left to find work or join their mates in the United States (Soto, 1987; Miller, 1993). Although this practice of "child fostering" is most often associated with the English-speaking Caribbean and various African societies, it is also a generalized strategy among Puerto Rican and Dominican migrants (Soto, 1987; Georges, 1990). It appears that child fostering is becoming increasingly common in Mexico also as women join their male counterparts in international labor migration. Chavez (1992:122), for example, notes that "most" single mothers leave their children with their mothers, sisters, or other relatives for varying lengths of time while they work in the United States.

Child fostering provides nonmigrant women with a relatively stable source of remittances from migrant kin, but it provides other potential benefits as well. In addition to the money she receives, a woman who fosters the children of migrants builds a reservoir of social capital that she can draw upon to launch her own migration or that of her children. Moreover, since she plays a vital role in maintaining the ties that link potential migrants to kin in the U.S., she ultimately holds a good deal of power in determining which members of her household will be selected for migration (Miller, 1993).

The advantages of building and maintaining strong transnational ties are perhaps clearest for nonmigrant women. However, migrant women often face extraordinary social and economic pressures in the United States that make them equally eager to nurture close relationships with the folks back home. Concentrated in inner-city areas where crime rates, the drug trade, and gang activity have become facts of life, immigrant parents are increasingly reluctant to raise children in the United States (Basch et al., 1994; Gmelch, 1992; Miller, 1993). As a result, child fostering arrangements, initially devised as temporary mechanisms to free women from childcare responsibilities during their initial settlement in the United States, have become more permanent. Since women bear the primary responsibility for childcare, they typically set up child fostering arrangements with their own kin back home; they also make regular visits and phone calls to ensure that their children's needs are being met in their absence (Brydon and Chant, 1989; see also Chavez, 1992; Basch et al., 1994). As a result of their responsibilities as mothers, then, women are positioned to maintain closer contact with their home communities than are their male counterparts (Soto, 1987).

Although childcare needs clearly induce women to nurture ties to nonmigrant kin, economic pressures in the U.S. also make women unwilling to burn their bridges. For migrant women, employment in the U.S. only rarely offers financial security and upward mobility. Unlike immigrant males, who are found in a fairly wide variety of occupations in the U.S., about half of females are concentrated in two occupational categories - operatives and services (Sassen, 1988: 77). Often lacking educational credentials and employment skills, female immigrants are drawn into dead-end jobs in garment factories and electronic assembly plants where employers often view them as supplemental wage earners and pay them accordingly (Hossfeld, 1994; Fernandez-Kelly, 1994). Such plants are rarely unionized and, as a result, workers often have few benefits and little job security.(3)

Although the garment and electronics industries have become significant sources of employment for immigrant women, many still spend their working lives in the U.S. as housekeepers, aides to the elderly, and nannies in private homes. There are, of course, certain advantages associated with domestic employment. Jobs are widely available even during periods of economic depression, and they are relatively easy to find through women's personal networks (Foner, 1986; Miller, 1993). In addition, prospective employers typically do not ask for legal documents. Indeed, working in a private home may be the "safest" employment option for women seeking to avoid detection by immigration officials (Simon and DeLey, 1986).

Moreover, women who "live-in" needn't assume the expense of establishing their own households and can begin to send remittances home almost immediately. The advantages of domestic work may be apparent to men as well. For example, a man I interviewed in Belize offered the following assessment of live-in work:

It's a very profitable job - very profitable, I say, because that woman has a salary she receives, then she do not pay rent, she do not pay food, she do not pay utilities, etc., etc., - and that make it very profitable. So your income is an income. That's the way I see it. But it's not so with men, you know.

Despite the immediate advantages of domestic work, however, there are also significant risks. Because their employers are often aware of their undocumented status, domestic workers are vulnerable to a variety of abuses including sexual harassment, prolonged work days, sub-poverty level salaries, and, in some cases, complete lack of payment for their services (Foner, 1986; Chavez, 1992; Colen, 1986). The long-term risks involved in domestic work are most significant, however. With few (if any) formal benefits such as health insurance or retirement pensions, women who have spent decades working in the U.S. must often look to informal sources of support to offset the economic risks posed by extended illnesses, deportation, and periodic unemployment. Rather than depositing their meager earnings in savings accounts, some women invest in houses and small businesses back home where they can live more cheaply than in the United States and perhaps produce a small income as well (Miller, 1993; Basch et al., 1994). Others send regular remittances to kin in order to ensure that they will be welcomed back should circumstances force them to leave the United States. Shellee Colen (1986: 62) states, for example, that all of the domestic and childcare workers she interviewed in New York sent regular remittances to friends and family back home. She estimates, moreover, that remittances of money and gifts may account for 20 to 75% of domestic workers' incomes.

No matter what kind of work they do in the United States, we might expect undocumented women to be particularly diligent about sending remittances home since apprehension by immigration officials might result in deportation. Simon and DeLey's (1986: 129) findings suggest that this is indeed the case. In their sample of Mexican women immigrants, 40% of undocumented women sent remittances, while only 23% of documented women did.(4) Additional research is needed to more fully uncover the extent of women's transnational remittances and the role they play in offsetting the economic uncertainty they experience in the United States. However, the limited evidence that is currently available certainly suggests that women actively nurture transnational ties.

Some Avenues for Future Research

In this article, I have pulled together research from a variety of mostly ethnographic sources to shed some light on the roles that migrant and nonmigrant women play as agents in international labor migration. Contrary to long-held assumptions in migration research that males are the primary actors in international labor migration, I have argued that there is substantial, though somewhat fragmentary, evidence that both migrant and nonmigrant women are actively involved and play a central role in building and maintaining the transnational networks that link migration sending and receiving societies.

There is, of course, still much work to be done before we can develop an adequate understanding of the role that gender plays in shaping the migration process. Research on the role that immigrant women's networks play in linking them to jobs in the United States is one area that clearly needs greater attention. We also need to learn more about the extent of women's remittances to their communities of origin and the various ways that money earned in the United States is used to build social and economic safety nets back home and pave the way for potential return.

Recently, interest in the broader implications of migrants' international networks has prompted a small group of researchers to examine the role that international social ties play in the development of "transnational enterprises" (Basch et al., 1994; Portes, 1995). The theoretical implications for world-system analyses are most clearly developed in a recent paper by Alejandro Portes. Briefly, Portes (1995:11-13) states that migrants are drawn to the U.S. by the demand for low-wage labor, but soon become aware that they are unlikely to achieve the "American Dream" given the restricted employment opportunities and low wages they face in the United States. To circumvent these restrictions, migrants have begun to tap into the resources available through their transnational networks in order to invest the resources they have accumulated in the U.S. in a variety of economic enterprises in the communities from which they migrated. Through periodic trips back and forth between their sending communities and the U.S., these transnational entrepreneurs not only sell their wares, but also recruit new immigrant investors. "What makes these enterprises transnational," says Portes, "is not only that they are created by former immigrants, but that they depend for their existence on continuing ties to the United States" (p. 13).

As Portes makes clear, the viability of these enterprises is dependent on the information and resources that can be marshaled through transnational networks. To date, the research on these transnational enterprises has focused only on immigrants undifferentiated by gender. Yet there is certainly reason to suspect, I think, that women may play a critical role if not so much as entrepreneurs themselves, then as "information brokers" linking individuals to opportunities. There is certainly fertile ground for further research here.

NOTES

1. Perhaps not surprisingly, most studies that have began to examine migration as a gendered process are done by female scholars (e.g., Sassen-Koob, 1981, 1988; Morokvasic, 1982; Fernandez-Kelly, 1981; Grasmuck and Pessar, 1991).

2. Though women's applications for amnesty nearly equaled those of males, far fewer women than men actually legalized their status under the IRCA provisions. Perhaps this is because women, who are more likely to have been employed in the informal sector as housekeepers and nannies, were unable to provide the documentation required for legalization.

3. The proportion of women who head households may, in fact, be substantial. Karen Hossfeld (1994: 74) reports that 80% of the immigrant women she interviewed in the Silicon Valley semiconductor industry were "the main income earners in their families." Simon and DeLey (1986: 128) also report that the undocumented Mexican women in their study were likely "to be on their own economically."

4. Though remittances provide a measure of security for migrant women, they can also become a substantial burden as the following interview excerpt with a Haitian woman illustrates:

Since I was a young girl, I supported my whole family, you hear? Now that I've come to N.Y., it's worse. I have bills here and there to pay.... If I quit my job now, what would I do for the bills here and in Haiti? Because once the month starts, in 15 days, they start watching the mail to see when I am sending the money. Well, I can tell you, if I leave my job, my whole family would die, because I'm the one who keeps them afloat (Kerner, 1991: 4, quoted in Basch et al., 1994).

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LINDA MILLER MATTHEI is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, East Texas State University, Commerce, TX 75429-3011.