Working with la familia: a study of family work relations among Latina/o children and adolescents who work with their parents as street vendors in Los Angeles

2014-07-30This dissertation is the first study to look at the participation of children in a Latino racialized and gendered informal occupation in Los Angeles—street vending. Relying on qualitative methods, including 66 interviews with parent and child street vendors, two and half years of participant observation and ten months of in-depth shadowing with five street vending families, this dissertation addresses four research questions. How do children contribute to their immigrant parents' street vending business and household economy? How do the children experience and evaluate the many different job tasks they do in street vending? What are the intergenerational dynamics that emerge when children work alongside their immigrant parents? How do these children balance their street vending work and school responsibilities, and what educational and occupational aspirations do they hold? ❧ This dissertation demonstrates that the children of Latino street vendors in Los Angeles play an important role in their family’s social and economic incorporation. The first part of this dissertation shows that children enter this racialized immigrant occupation as a result of their parents’ accumulated disadvantage, including their undocumented status, lack of employment opportunities in the formal sector of the economy, and the negative context of reception. ❧ Informed by the sociology of childhood and intersectionality theories, this study contributes to the knowledge of working class Latino immigrant families in the United States and prompts a re-visioning of segmented assimilation theory. This dissertation suggests that working together with la familia serves as a buffer against dissonant acculturation and downward assimilation. This research focuses on the processes of family work relations and reveals that the youth’s work with their family provides financial resources for the family and the children; sets the context for children to actively use their American generational resources to help their parents and themselves; increases parental control and child agency and; strengthens family bonds as children develop an economic empathy with their parents. These findings broaden our understanding of childhood. The work experience of these young vendors demonstrates that in contemporary U.S. society, multiple variants of childhood need not result in pathology, downward social mobility or other negative outcomes