Families Across Borders: Honduran Transnational Families in Pursuit of Survival.

This paper draws on qualitative data gathered in a longitudinal, two-country study to explore the survival strategies of poor Honduran transnational families, and to identify the structures that hinder their reunification. I argue that poor transnational families, defined as those divided between two nation-states, depend on alternative family structures and ideologies for their maintenance. Specifically, kin-networks provide the financial and caretaking support that enable families to utilize transnational strategies for survival and/or economic mobility, and to sustain themselves, often for many years, in a transnational space. Transnationalizing the family has emotional and economic repercussions for those involved. While economic remittances support the material well-being of families in the host country, transmigrants in the US suffer from low-wages, poor working conditions, and the loneliness of being away from loved ones. A challenge to assimilation theories of migration, this paper brings the literatures on transnationalism and the family into dialogue, exposing the transnational family as an inevitable expression of global Capitalism, and encouraging social scientists to rethink their basic notions of transnationalism and family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]