Making Ends Meet

Using ethnographic interviews, Sarmiento studies how globalization affects ordinary Mexican American immigrants, shaping their families and daily lives. Even as families are divided by borders, they try to remain cohesive units. Globalization challenges immigrants to restructure their families, gender roles, and even their political boundaries. The unstable working conditions of immigrant men are decisive for the form in which families organize their income-generating strategies. However, women are key to the family economy in that they subsidize low wages through paid and unpaid work on both sides of the border.