Migration Networks and Processes of Community Transformation: Arvin, California and Woodburn, Oregon

Abstract

IntroductionBiologists, sociologists, anthropologists, economists, and communication theorists alike have, over the past four decades given increasing attention to network phenomena, developed greater understanding of their functioning, and created powerful analytic tools for describing the configuration of networks and the consequences of that configuration for social life (Newman, Barabasi, and Watts 2006; Gladwell 2000; Buchanan 2002). There is widespread acknowledgment of the very important role played by social networks in facilitating migration (Mines 1981; Massey et al. 1987; Massey and Garcia-Espana 1987; Alarcon 1988; Kearny and Nagengast 1989), in structuring social and economic transactions (Lomnitz 1961; Hagan 1994; Hagan 2004; Portes and Bach 1985; Portes 1995), and mediating individual interactions (Menjivar 2000), personal life strategies (Wilson 1998), and communication behavior.However, despite widespread interest, and strong ethnographic research, most notably Lynn Stephen's research on transnational Oaxacan networks in Oregon (Stephen 2007) as well as important work by other researchers focusing on transnational indigenous communities migration to and settlement in rural U.S. communities (Anderson 2004; Burns 1993; Kearny and Nagengast 1989), there is the need for further focused attention of the role of Mexican and Guatemalan migration networks in shaping civic life and change-especially in the context of rural U.S. communities and transnational migration. 2 Such research holds promise, both theoretically-by generating a deeper conceptualization of the complex notion of community and, in practical terms, by enhancing visualization regarding proactive strategies to facilitate social, civic, and political integration with or without the impetus of comprehensive immigration reform legislation. A crucial requirement is that social policy development not be based entirely on macro-level analyses of social and economic trends but incorporate, also, careful examination of the micro-dynamics of social integration at the individual, family, neighborhood, community, and transnational village network level.I do not propose to undertake such a daunting task in the current paper. What I do examine are two crucial aspects of migration network functioning in the civic life of rural, predominantly Mexican, settlement communities in the western U.S. studies in the New Pluralism project.3 The first facet of immigrants' migration/social network functioning relates to the evolution of these networks over time and their role in shaping civic life and supplying leadership over multiple generations.4 The second facet has to do with interactions among multiple Mexican migration networks, which facilitate immigration to the migrant-receiving communities in the rural United States and how these affect the dynamics of life. I conclude with a discussion of the implications these have for sound social policy to integrate immigrants into U.S. life.5Why is it important to give attention to the apparently arcane mathematics of network theory and the apparent fuzziness of ethnographic research as part of social policy deliberation regarding the prospects and strategies for integration? One important reason is that the default of integration which underlies current policy analysis is dangerously simplified into a model of which includes two bundles of residents-the native-born and the immigrant population. Then, presumably, by reliance on analyses of important characteristics (e.g. educational attainment, age, earnings) of each population such as those put forward by George Borjas and other economists committed to risky reductionism, it is argued that it will be possible to rationally shape sound immigration policy and sound social policy. Despite their seductiveness, such analyses are deeply flawed, due in part to uneven quality of the datasets used by such ivory tower analysts and due in part to modeling strategy. …