In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

120 | 5 “I Got the Job:” Family and Work Support Everything is going well . . . the girls are very well. Claudia starts kindergarten in September, and Miranda is currently in fourth grade. . . . How is your cutie pie? He must be big. I am still working at the bank. I’m saving money right now; I want to buy a condominium. Just waiting for the prices to start falling a bit. . . . The market right now is overrated. How is everything with you? I’m still a personal banker. In April, a new branch is opening in Needham, and I will be applying for assistant manager. This will be the first time I try out for this position. I’ve been wanting to do it for a while, but the hours and the locations for the position as assistant manager posted were too far. I’m still taking classes at [New England College of Finance]. I’m happy that the bank pays for the courses. Seems like a long road, but I’m sure I’ll get there. Slowly but surely. It’s tough when you work full-time and have a family. But it’s worth every sacrifice. I’m looking to see if I can go to Bentley for my bachelor’s in finance. Hope to hear from you soon. I miss talking with you. This quotation is from Camila, whom I initially met when she was eighteen years old. As I began to write this chapter, she answered an e-mail I sent asking how she was doing. It had been more than a year since we last communicated, and I was pleased by her quick response. Camila is happy and stable, but she is also saving money to buy a condominium and continues to take advantage of her employer-sponsored tuition reimbursement program by enrolling in college-level courses with the longer-term goal of pursuing a bachelor’s degree in finance. As usual, she had her eye on a promotion , and three weeks later, she announced in another e-mail titled “Silvia ! I got the job. Can you believe it?” where she explained that she was now the assistant manager of her bank’s busiest branch. Family and Work Support | 121 Camila’s easygoing personality and persistent self-propelling agency, or high efficiency and willingness to make social mobility a reality, come across clearly in this e-mail. Camila is of average height and has a slim build. She has long, straight black hair and an olive complexion. Camila is very pretty and was once chosen to model. Her e-mail also reveals the reasons Camila, who just turned twenty-six, is the young woman who most clearly exemplifies four components of my Social Flow framework. She is (1) a self-propelling agent (SPA), (2) socially positioned through a network characterized by support and leverage, (3) embedded in an efficient community, and (4) well embarked on a trajectory toward social mobility. In the context of networks, support means ties to other people who help individuals “get by” or cope with the demands of everyday life and other stressors; leverage describes ties that help individuals “get ahead” or change their opportunity structure. An efficient population is one in which the number or concentration of SPAs is high enough to allow the formation of support- and leverage-providing networks through interaction. In these terms, an efficient population is one that can sustain social positioning. Camila is not alone among the Latin American women living in public housing who, rather than being socially isolated (as much of the poverty research has shown about African Americans), have developed supportive relationships: those that provide emotional and instrumental help and leveraging ties that open access to opportunities through their social circles. In fact, almost half of the women I interviewed for this study have an extensive network of supportive relationships, which enables them to have a balanced and healthy life while providing them with leveraging ties that create advancement opportunities. Through Josefa and Lisa, I explored in previous chapters how women negotiate support-based and leverage-based social positioning. Their stories demonstrate that opportunities can come through support networks as well as those that offer leverage. This difference, when compared with the pattern found in African American women living in concentrated areas of poverty, reflects the magnitude of the effect that several generations of exclusion and marginalization have created. In this chapter, I describe how Camila, Eva, and Elena negotiate support and leverage networks...

Share