The Transnational Villagers [Paperback]

Levitt offers us a number of interesting insights into the lives of Dominican migrants in the 21st Century. She tells us that the lives of Dominicans in the U.S. and those who remain in their local communities at home are shaped by the transnational experience. This is largely the product of what she refers to as "social remittance." Levitt also goes into a long discussion of the role that institutions like political parties, the Church, and community development organizations play in this process. In many ways this analysis is a re-cycled version of earlier analyses of immigrants. For instance, Bodner gives us a version of this story in "The Transplanted." Of course, Levitt attributed this new form of "Transnationalism" to thinks like improvements in technology, communications, transportation, and interpretations of citizenship by governments. For those of us who remember the heyday of modernization theory, much of this sounds familiar, and wanton for a critique focusing on issues of inequality. Although Levitt takes the discussion of Transnationalism further than some of her contemporaries, it remains encumbered by the theoretical limitations of her selected framework.

Over eighty years ago, William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki postulated that the effect of immigration to the United States by over a million Poles would not only change the Polish arrivals, but would also alter the definition, at least slightly, of what it meant to be American-their study showed little concern for what would happen in Poland, and need not have contained any concern for a concept such as trans-nationality.

As Peggy Leavitt shows though in her study of Dominican immigrants-specifically, and it would seem exclusively, Mirofloreños-to the Jamaica Plains section of Boston, The Transnational Villagers, large scale immigration of Dominicans to the United States have brought about radical and far reaching effects on the culture and economy of the Dominican Republic. As Leavitt demonstrates through the anecdotes of informants and about informants, Miraflores' residents, whether migrants or non-migrants, have had their ways life thoroughly altered by the presence of so many of their townsfolk in Jamaica Plains. These changes, in things as frivolous as dress and as serious as attitudes towards the opposite sex and marriage, are all part and parcel of a ideological and material dialectic going on between perceived Dominican norms and those arising from extended contact with American culture and economy.

Dominican contact with American society is not a new occurrence. The fact baseball is more popular than soccer is but only one example of cultural exchange, and like the vast majority of immigrants making their way to the United States, they have some acquaintance with American popular culture even if only through media images. Trans-nationality among Dominicans of working class status is a relatively new affair, but one which is beginning to have far reaching effects-such as the relative ease with which Dominicans can attain bi-nationality because of legal reforms.

In regards to assimilation into the mainstream of American culture, trans-nationalization can be as much an inhibiting factor as it is a promoter. Considering the examples that Leavitt gives of the working and living conditions of Dominicans in Boston, where most immigrants work long hours at jobs that do not bring them into contact with the larger Anglophone world, and the kind of problems that children apparently have trouble adjusting to either world when they go back and forth between the two, would both seem to be indications that trans-nationalization was not helping assimilation along. The fact that the Dominican Republic's government no longer treats trans-nationals as suspect, at least to the extent that people who hold American citizenship can hold most offices, may promote some form of assimilation, because the legal consequences of doing such has become virtually non-existent for those who may hope to return home. This will be a different form of assimilation than nineteenth and twentieth century immigrants experienced, but it will be assimilation of a sort-a kind that is much more capable of maintaining close ties to the home country than the generations before.

As Leavitt shows almost uncategorically, trans-nationalization has thoroughly altered gender roles among Dominicans in the United States, and has altered gender roles to a limited degree on the island itself-at least among return migrants. This, though, is not a case of immigrants assimilating American values about gender, which run the gamut from machismo to conservatism to feminism, but is rather a pragmatic response to the material changes arising from immigration. In Jamaica Plains, life is dominated by work to such a degree that many men simply do not have the time to have extramarital affairs. Also, since women are working, a great many men find themselves in the unfamiliar position of having to take on at least a few tasks which would have been considered solely women's work on the island. As Leavitt further points out as well, relative poverty and cold weather even have the affect of keeping couples closer together-forms of single gender sociability prevalent on the island simply become impractical to maintain. Return migrants, if Leavitt's sources are any indices; do not completely revert to old gender based habits upon their return to the island-though men especially may be subtle about just how much their behavior has changed.

This response barely touches upon the theoretical frameworks which Leavitt works within, partially because of reasons of space, but mostly because theory is not one of my strongest suits. Please forgive the omission.

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