Survival of the Knitted Immigrant Social Networks in a Stratified World [Hardcover]

Through this ethnography of West Indian social networks in New York, London, and the West Indies, Vilna Bashi shows how migrant life is patterned, structured, and regulated to provide critical financial and emotional support. She develops an important new general model of transnational immigrant network organization, the hub and spoke model, in which select veteran migrants (hubs) act as migration experts and send repeatedly for newcomers (spokes).Survival of the Knitteddetails the ongoing importance of networks throughout the resettlement process. Network hubs use their connections and reputations to find jobs for immigrants and to influence their housing choices. They shape the migrants' experience of racial hierarchies and social stratification in a new country. As Bashi expertly shows, geographic mobility is a vehicle for socioeconomic and cultural mobility, but in ways more complex and network-dependent than the standard migration story would tell. Until I read Vilna Bashi's work, I didn't fully appreciate how transnational social networks could be mobilized so dynamically by migrants in destination as well as origin communities. Her elucidation of the hub-and-spoke structure of destination-centered migrant networks represents a major advance in our understanding of international migration and the social structures that sustain it. Using immigrants' own words, Bashi shows how immigrants organize social networks that offer mutual financial and emotional support and help an entire ethnic group navigate systems of socioeconomic stratification. Overall, Bashi'sSurvival of the Knittedprovides a comprehensive, compelling and original contribution to the field of international migration. By exposing the structure and functioning of the hub-and-spoke migrant social network, and connecting black migrants' life chances to systemic racism in the American social structure, Bashi introduces a fresh perspective that brilliantly captures the dynamic and compllSÑ