English Proficiency and Trust Networks among Undocumented Mexican Migrants

• Author: Nadia Y. Flores-Yeffal
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716219855024
• Published date: 01 July 2019
• Date: 01 July 2019

ANNALS, AAPSS, 684, July 2019 105

DOI: 10.1177/0002716219855024

English

Proficiency and

Trust Networks

among

Undocumented

Mexican

Migrants

By

NADIA Y. FLORES-YEFFAL

855024ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYEnglish Proficiency and Trust Networks among Undocumented Mexican Migrants

research-article2019

This study explores whether being a member of a

migration-trust network (MTN; social structures that

immigrants create to manage the challenges of undocu-

mented status) affects the acquisition of English lan-

guage proficiency among undocumented heads of

household who migrate to the United States from

Mexico. The analysis shows that human capital accu-

mulation and interactions with non-Hispanic white

Americans are important to learning English in this

migrant population. But it also suggests that member-

ship in an MTN can inhibit the acquisition of English

language proficiency. I use Mexican Migration Project

data and other accumulated research to argue that

being undocumented and participating in MTNs can

deter migrants from assimilating into American main-

stream society: a lack of legal status among many first-

generation Mexican immigrants pushes them toward

survival strategies that rely on MTNs.

Keywords: migration-trust networks; collective effi-

cacy; social capital; undocumented immi-

gration; paisanos

Research shows that Mexicans, like genera-

tions of immigrants before them, inte-

grate into U.S. society over time and across

generations—a tendency that is most clearly

demonstrated by comparing the children of

immigrants (i.e., second-generation immi-

grants) to their first-generation immigrant par-

ents (Waters and Pineau 2015). Some scholars

nonetheless argue that Mexican immigrants

today are not assimilating as fast as first-gener-

ation European migrants did at the turn of the

twentieth century (Huntington 2009). A major

Correspondence: nadia.flores@ttu.edu

Nadia Y. Flores-Yeffal is an assistant professor of sociol-

ogy at Texas Tech University. She is the author of

Migration-Trust Networks: Social Cohesion in Mexican

US-Bound Emigration (Texas A&M University Press

2013). Her recent work examines the causes, social pro-

cesses, and consequences of undocumented migration to

the United States and El Salvador.