Guatemalan-Origin Children’s Transnational Ties
Guatemalan-Origin Children’s Transnational Ties
This chapter examines whether attachments to young immigrants’ parental homeland persist beyond the immigrant generation, and what factors might foster or hinder such ties in the long run. It is based on experiences of Maya indigenous and non-indigenous Guatemalan immigrants residing in Los Angeles with an empirical focus on religious practices and language use. The study demonstrates that ethnicity shapes the ties that young immigrants can forge (with their parents’ efforts) and what orientation to the parents’ places of origin they will hold. Global forces and lifestyles also influence the young immigrants’ perceptions of and ties to their homeland. Finally, the US government, through policies to limit movement across borders, shapes in critical ways the children’s orientation to the host society. With important differences by ethnicity, in general, the children’s generation is not as inclined as the parents’ generation to engage in transnational ties.
Keywords: transnational ties, Guatemala, Maya, indigenous, non-indigenous, Los Angeles, religion, language
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