Kids at Work

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Emir Estrada. Kids at Work

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KIDS AT WORK

General Editors: Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Victor M. Rios

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Segmented assimilation theory brought a much-needed analysis to the context of reception, such as the U.S. racism against immigrants of color, and the level of co-ethnic ties in the receiving country. Portes and Zhou also highlight the importance of the changing structure of the economy. For example, they contrast the factory and industrial jobs once available for European immigrants, which offered ladders for upward mobility, to the growing service economy, which does not offer a living wage or job security. The assumption is that informal sector jobs are always exploitive. However, a new body of literature has shown how seemingly impoverished jobs can be viable platforms of social mobility.44

Measuring “upward” or “downward” mobility is beyond the scope of this research.45 This study shows the processes by which children and parents who work together as street vendors develop strategies that buffer against downward mobility. This research challenges the top-down or parent-to-child acculturation model consistent with normative American beliefs of how children should be socialized. Children are normally thought to be dependent, socialized recipients of “cultural capital” from their parents.46 In the immigration literature, as Barrie Thorne and Marjorie Faulstich Orellana have indicated, children are often framed as dependent “luggage,” or something that parents simply bring with them.47 Children are not viewed as full social actors and continue to be relegated to separate spheres of family and school that are largely excluded from paid work. This top-down, passive model is also present in segmented assimilation theory, which is problematic because it overlooks the resources that exist in working-class Latinx families, especially those resources that come from children.

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