University of Florida Thesis Or Dissertation

THE CELLPHONE AS A TRANSNATIONAL SOURCE OF IDENTITY FOR VENEZUELAN AND GUATEMALAN MIGRANTS IN SOUTH FLORIDA

MATTHEW LEVIN

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2018

To the immigrant organizations and communities in South Florida that make this part of the world unique and a wonderful place to live.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Foremost, I want to thank my chair Dr. Nicholas Vargas for all the attention, expertise and support I received during this two-year process. His enthusiasm for the thesis and the themes involved buoyed me whenever I felt daunted by the enormity of the project and how it would all come together. I appreciate him always making time to speak about the thesis even when there really was not any available and for answering my rambling questions about approaching the thesis and the accompanying literature.

I would like to thank all my committee members for their patience during the course of this project, forgiving me for dropping in without notice and their trust that I would deliver a thesis that they found worthy of a Master’s thesis. I want to express my gratitude to Mindy McAdams for contemplating the communication and mass media aspects of the thesis and always finding relevant journal articles on this cutting-edge subject. I would like to thank Dr. Philip Williams for his tranquil presence and encouragement when I approached him with concepts and issues that appeared massive and unwieldy to me.

I also want to acknowledge Dr. Amy Jo Coffey who from the start helped me figure out the best ways to approach all the challenges of grad school and also Dr.

Rebecca Hanson who took the time to show me how to code in Atlas.TI and clarified my countless questions about Venezuela as it related to this project. I would like to thank my colleague Chelsey Hendry-Simmons for joining me on overnight marathon writing sessions in the lab and pushing me to keep going. I could not have completed this without you and the rest of our magnificent cohort.

I am indebted to Andres David Lopez and Joceyln Skolnik of the El Sol

Neighborhood Resource Center in Jupiter. Their interest in the project made this work

possible. Appreciation also goes to Jose Lopez and Jesus Duran for letting me help teach English courses at El Sol and conduct my research with students. Finally, I must thank the Guatemalan-Maya Center in Lake Worth and Tim Gamwell, who gave me the opportunity to know another migrant population and to work with the community there.

I must acknowledge Jon Glass, a professor at Syracuse and Gator alum who reassured me that grad school was the right choice. I want to recognize Dr. Ketan

Mathavan, my great friend and someone who had to endure several years of grad school before I even started and who helped me with my own experience from the moment I began filling out the application. I also would like to thank all my friends who supported me even as I disappeared for two years, including Erinn Connor, Vanessa

Garnica, Matt Gelb, Ashley Harrell, Jandi Keum, Jackie Vitale, Steven Washuta and

Andrew Zangre. They visited me in Gainesville and gave me a respite from work or invited me to their place for a much-needed sabbatical. A special thanks to Jackie Vitale and Micah Hartman for allowing me to stay at their humble home during my fieldwork.

I also would like to thank Katherine Escalante Rivas, whose amor y cariño made surviving this thesis possible. I am grateful too for all the time she took to assist me with a gringo with all the challenges of conducting a thesis project in Spanish.

At last, I must thank my parents for their love and confidence in me during these past two years, I appreciate them taking an avid interest in the thesis despite their unfamiliarity with the topic and for forgiving me for all the time I spent submerged in this project.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

LIST OF TABLES ...... 8

ABSTRACT ...... 9

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 10

2 LITERATURE REVIEW AND METHODOLOGY ...... 14

What is Incorporation? ...... 16 Anti-Immigration Law and Incorporation in the U.S...... 19 What is Transnationalism? ...... 20 Guatemalan Immigration History in the U.S...... 24 The Roots of Guatemalan Immigration ...... 25 Creating Community ...... 28 Remittances ...... 30 Communication ...... 31 Venezuelan Immigration History to the U.S...... 32 The Roots of Venezuelan Immigration ...... 33 Venezuelans and Immigrant Media ...... 34 Research Questions ...... 36 Methodology ...... 37

3 FINDINGS: INCORPORATION ...... 43

The Power of the Past ...... 43 Cost Issues ...... 44 Legal Status ...... 48 Experience Issues ...... 49 Can You Hear Me Now? ...... 53 Getting Hired ...... 53 Getting Social ...... 54 Managing Marginalization ...... 58 Entertainment and Loneliness ...... 62 A Sense of Security and Safety Nets ...... 66 Money...... 67 On the Periphery ...... 68 Chapter Summary ...... 69

4 FINDINGS: TRANSNATIONALISM ...... 72

The Distance between Them ...... 73 The Latest Evolution of Phoning Home ...... 74 ‘Cheap Calls: the Social Glue’ ...... 76 Monetary Remittances and Care Packages ...... 80 For Your Information ...... 83 Transnational News: Guatemalan Migrants ...... 84 Transnational News: Venezuelans ...... 85 The World of Instagram ...... 90 Fake News ...... 91 Knowledge / Information Remittance ...... 93 Information Overload and Harassment ...... 95 No Exit ...... 97 Chapter Summary ...... 99

5 CONCLUSION ...... 102

Limitations of the Study...... 108 Implications for Future Research ...... 109

APPENDIX

A COPY OF THE SURVEY INSTRUMENT ...... 111

B COPY OF THE INTERVIEW INSTRUMENT ...... 113

C PRACTICALITY OF RESEARCH PROJECT ...... 115

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 118

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 125

LIST OF TABLES

Table page

2-1 Gender/age breakdown of interviewees ...... 39

Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

THE CELLPHONE AS A TRANSNATIONAL SOURCE OF IDENTITY FOR VENEZUELAN AND GUATEMALAN MIGRANTS IN SOUTH FLORIDA

Matthew Levin

May 2018

Chair: Nicholas Vargas Major: Latin American Studies

Research on transnationalism often focuses on the effects of communication between the migrant and their home country. However, the role of the communication device often has been neglected.

My research looks at the use of cellphones by two populations that have arrived in recent waves to South Florida — Venezuelans and Guatemalans. The study compares and contrasts the way the different groups use smartphones. I write on how new technology extends or limits our understanding of transnationalism and incorporation into a host country.

For example, social media like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp offer instantaneous windows for migrants into the lives and circumstances of family and acquaintances back home. Apps like Google Translate allow new immigrants to overcome language barriers and find work. My paper will examine these cross-border relationships in South Florida and the benefits and pressures created by our increasingly digital lives.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

The smartphone may conjure specific images in the minds of many in the United

States. The appearance of a gaunt, bespectacled white man in a black turtleneck presenting a gleaming, state-of-the-art device to a mostly white audience shouldn’t seem unfamiliar to those who remember the first generations of iPhones, the quintessential smartphone that first debuted in 2007 (Warren, 2014). Those visions of a smartphone as an exclusive and ultramodern gadget no longer seem correct. However, that association can be hard to shake as evinced by a viral video last spring starring

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). The congressman slammed the U.S. health care system and called out the populace who couldn’t afford healthcare in a striking statement:

Americans have choices. And they’ve got to make a choice. So maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest that in health care. They’ve got to make those decisions themselves. (Bump, 2017)

The backlash proved immediate. Dissenters asked how forgoing a $600 smartphone would help them pay for a $100,000 hospital bill. Most responses attacked

Chaffetz for treating “poverty as a choice” and high health costs a punishment for being poor (ibid). However, there was another underlying matter. Smartphones did not merit a reputation as a gadget for the well off and well-to-do. Dreyfuss (2017) wrote a reply to

Chaffetz in Wired magazine that received the headline “No iPhones Aren’t Luxury Items.

They’re Economic Necessities.” That is a little too clear-cut of a statement. Calling an iPhone a compulsory part of living in the United States would go too far. However, a cellphone is indispensable. My project sets out to illustrate how a changing digital divide has turned the smartphone into a fundamental part of the immigration experience. They will not solve every problem. Participants in my field work described getting ripped off by

cellphone providers, receiving harassing text messages or leaning more on family instead of social media for helping with basic demands. Nevertheless, the devices are affordable, ubiquitous and a shortcut for essential tasks from job hunting to wiring money to, yes, receiving advice on healthcare. In some manner, the purpose of my project is the opposite of Chaffetz’s remark. Choosing not to own a cellphone is not much of a choice for many marginalized peoples in the United States. The device “has become the lifeblood of social interaction and upward mobility” (ibid). That is why it’s important to begin with the prior anecdote – to emphasize the smartphone’s evolution from luxury good to economic essential. Recent research has analyzed mobile phones1 as an empowerment device for impoverished young people, as an informational shortcut for marginalized farmers and as a navigational tool for migrants trying to reach their destination (Sam, 2017; Baird & Hartter, 2017; Benitez, 2012).

In one of the seminal theories of communication research, Everett Rodgers describes the “diffusion of innovations.” The theory states how a successful technology will spread through a population over time due to characteristics of the social system

(Rogers, 2003). Economic migrants and the working poor would not be the first adopters of new technologies. “Opinion leaders”, change agents and those with high social status initiate the diffusion process. If the technology is popular, the society-at- large will begin to adopt it and the proliferation of the technology will create competition and drive down prices. Eventually, the diffusion process will reach the late majority who frequently belong to the lowest social and economic classes (ibid). Immigrants would be

1 I use mobile phone and cellphone interchangeably throughout the thesis. A smartphone describes a device with a large screen and capabilities beyond texting and talking, including Internet access.

included among the late majority, a stage where the economic pressures created by the

U.S. market make a phone a vital mechanism for one’s livelihood. The mobile phone’s lowered cost and varied capabilities allows for most with lower socio-economic statuses to digital the digital divide. Mobile banking helps citizens in parts of Africa2 to rise out of poverty without ever needing an email account or owning a computer (Wasserman,

2011). Through social media, immigrants can use their smartphones to maintain strong ties, via inexpensive means, with family members in the home country and enhance weak ties when incorporating into a new host country (Dekker and Engbersen, 2013).

Smartphones, essentially a pocked-sized computer, could exemplify a potential money- saving investment.

My project examines the immigration realities of two different national origin groups from Latin America, Guatemalans and Venezuelans, as they relate to cell phone usage in the United States. Both groups have had mass migration movements to South

Florida in the last several years. This study begins at a point when the cellphone has become a critical part of daily life in the U.S. and many other parts of the world. How has that affected immigration and either broadened or rewritten the narrative on transnationalism?

These are questions I’ve been asking myself long before I knew anything about the literature of immigration and transnationalism. It would be impossible to not notice the way mobile phones have changed global communication. For several years I worked in Costa Rica as a journalist and watched how cellular technology altered the lives of expats and citizens. In 2010, nonresidents couldn’t even legally purchase a

2 The most successful example is Kenya’s M-Pesa mobile money system.

phone line and most everybody bought cheap feature phones (known colloquially as

“brick phones”). Text messages had to be hunt-and-pecked on 3x4 numeric keypads or with the vexing T9 predictive text function. Smartphones boomed over the next few years, and laws on purchasing a phone line were relaxed. Routines changed.

Cellphone plans replaced saldo (prepaid minutes) as the customary means to pay for one’s phone. Saldo required users to go to specific stores to recharge their minutes. If one ran out of minutes in the middle of the night, the cellphone owner could only receive calls, not take them, until visiting a store the next day to recharge. The increased connectivity of phone plans meant saldo could be paid online or skirted altogether through data plans. Applications like WhatsApp served as an international calling device, a texting service and even an advanced audiotape, where users leave voice mails to be listened to later. WhatsApp worked as the next best thing to an unlimited phone plan. By connecting to wifi, one could send all the texts that he or she wanted without ever using any data. Other apps like Facebook or Instagram made keeping up with friends’ lives easier. In a region where electronic devices like laptops and desktop computers can be prohibitively expensive, smartphones serve as an unfussy avenue to connect friends and family throughout Latin America. For immigrants, the devices aren’t an excess. They are a direct line back home to a land and family that defines everything they do in their new world.

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW AND METHODOLOGY

Migrants from Latin America have been arriving in waves to Florida for the past half-century. Large subsets of populations from the region have settled in Florida

(particularly South Florida), pushed by political unrest, economic crises and rising violence to leave their homeland for the United States. Hundreds of thousands arrived here seeking both work opportunities and refugee status. The largest Latin American groups came from the Caribbean, Mexico, the Northern Triangle (specifically,

Guatemala and Honduras) and the South American countries of Brazil and Colombia

(Wang and Rayer, 2016).

Scholarly understanding of the immigrant journey has experienced significant changes in the past decades. Traditional ideas about assimilation where migrants leave behind their home country and culture to become absorbed into a new one have been replaced by the concepts of incorporation and transnationalism. Scholars see transmigration as a “process by which immigrants forge and sustain simultaneous multi- stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement”

(Basch et al., 1994).

Transnationalism research observes the effect migration has on social relations and how migrants maintain them (or do not) and create new ones across borders via diverse methods of communication. This gives rise to the concept of transnational social fields, which refer to a “set of multiple interlocking networks of social relationships through which ideas, practices, and resources are exchanged, organized, and transformed” (Levitt and Glick Schiller, 2003). Transnationalism studies often focus on the effects of communication between these widespread networks. Yet the actual

mechanisms for communication have long been neglected in transnational literature.

Vertovec (2004) wrote about as such in the paper “Cheap calls: the social glue of migrant transnationalism”:

One of the most significant (yet under-researched) modes of transnational practice affecting migrants’ lives is the enhanced ability to telephone family members. Whereas in previous eras migrants had to make do with exorbitantly expensive calls or slow-paced post, they are now able to communicate with their families abroad on a regular, if not day-to-day basis. (p. 220)

Rapid technology adoption is becoming more prevalent among underprivileged and subordinated communities (Gonzalez and Katz, 2016). Affordable and readily available mobile technology lessen digital divides. In fact, Pew surveys on Latina/o groups show them as having high rates of: smartphone ownership, living in households without a landline phone where only a cellphone is available and obtaining Internet access via a mobile device (Lopez, et. al, 2016). For example, the researchers found that 80 percent of Latino respondents connected to “the Internet through a mobile device, compared to 76 percent of whites and 77 percent of blacks” (Cruz Guevarra,

2016). Will the recent Latin American immigrants to the U.S. show similar usage? The role mobile phones play in the narrative of transnationalism deserves more attention in this digital age.

My thesis discusses a reasonable approach to researching cell phone use in a transnational context in the hope of better understanding the effect globalism and technology has had on migrant groups. For the purpose of this study, I worked with two national-origin groups, Guatemalans and Venezuelans, which have had recent surges in numbers into the South Florida area. Violence, unrest and a lack of economic power

have drawn these groups to leave their homelands for opportunities in the United

States.

What is Incorporation?

One of the first modern theories of immigration referred to what Robert Ezra Park

(1937) called the “marginal man.” The term described:

A man living and sharing intimately in the cultural life and traditions of two distinct peoples; never quite willing to break, even if he were permitted to do so, with his past and his traditions, and not quite accepted, because of racial prejudice, in the new society in which he now sought to find a place. He was a man on the margin of two cultures and two societies, which never completely interpenetrated and fused (p. 892).

The Chicago School of Sociology concept set the framework for “assimilation theory,” which assumed that an immigrant gradually sheds his or her ties with the homeland and assumes the values of the new country through a process known as assimilation (Alba and Nee, 1999). Over the decades, the main tenets of assimilation theory fell apart, and the term itself became shackled by its nationalistic and anglo- centric implications. Immigrants did not go through a straightforward process of adopting a host country’s customs and values, but like Park’s “marginal man” they maintained ties to the home country. Moreover, the host country might take on some of the customs and values of the new immigrant group (Portes et al, 1999). “Incorporation” applies to the process of an immigrant integrating among a new society. The theory sees adaptation into a new society “as a time-dependent, multidimensional, nonlinear and multidirectional process,” where the role of the home country and host country receive corresponding attention (Treas, 2014, p. 1).

Massey (1985) emphasized the importance of social networks when determining what leads to immigrant groups concentrating in certain areas. Portes and Rumbaut

(2006) expanded on the forces that guide incorporation, and the push and pull factors that compel a migrant to leave a home country and feel drawn to a host country. The authors stated that the original immigrants to settle in a particular country likely will have an overwhelming influence on future immigrants and the generations that follow. That’s because migration itself often occurs “by spontaneous individual and family decisions, which are usually based on the presence in certain places of kin or friends who can provide shelter and assistance” (p. 81). Portes and Rumbaut used the term

“Propinquity” to define an immigrant’s desire to settle in an area closest to one’s homeland or an area sharing similar traits, such as a comparable climate. A relevant example for this project is the Cuban expat community, which built up an ethnic enclave in Miami following Fidel Castro’s revolution in the island nation in the late 1960s. Future

Cubans and other Latin American immigrants were attracted to the enclave as well since groups that share similar traits — specifically, a common language — can serve as training grounds for new arrivals (ibid). Successful incorporation depends on the receptiveness of the receiving country. Positive conditions of reception allow for migrants to turn human capital into employment or new skills. That in turn can help an immigrant community build social capital, which forms through relationships between people in a community (Coleman, 1988; Portes, 1999). Three primary factors shape a migrant community’s reception in a home country: 1) the receiving government’s policies; 2) the character of the host labor market; 3) how employers feel about immigrants (Portes and Rumbaut, 2006).

The process of incorporation begins with governmental policy: "regular legal migrant flows can only exist, of course, with the consent of governments…when this

agreement does not exist, clandestine immigration is shaped and constrained, at every step, by the need to bypass the state's enforcement machinery" (p. 139). As a result,

“ethnic network assistance comes at the cost of pressures for conformity and the latter often reinforce employers' expectations about the proper position of the minority in the labor market” that can lead to the self-perpetuation of poor communities (p.142). The conditions of the local labor market, including attitudes of the native population toward the migrants in the area of settlement, can promote reception despite inimical government attitudes (Portes, Fernández-Kelly and Haller, 2009). Naturally a local population with racist or xenophobic feelings toward migrants will limit incorporation for the newcomers and force them further into the periphery of society. The presence of a

“well-established and prosperous co-ethnic1 community pave the ground for the possibility of putting to use whatever credentials and skills have been brought from abroad”, and can soften the incorporation process by offering up more job opportunities and chances to assemble social capital (Portes, Fernández-Kelly and Haller, p. 1081).

In the cases where an antagonistic government and a hostile local population exist and/or there’s a weak co-ethnic network, cellphones could help manage one’s situation from the fringe. In the opposite situation – where the government and local population are friendly or at the least non-hostile and a thriving co-ethnic population – a smartphone and knowledge of its capabilities may allow for better employment outlooks and more opportunities to create social capital.

1 Persons of the same ethnicity.

Anti-Immigration Law and Incorporation in the U.S.

In the United States, anti-immigrant attitudes have been backed by government action such as crackdowns on undocumented migrants through the passage of laws designed to make life in the country as hostile as possible. Limited modes of legalization make surmounting those hurdles exceedingly difficult. Menjívar and Abrego (2012) elucidate on these points where the government, media and public discourse merge to portray immigrants as criminals and erase their contributions to society. The 1996 Illegal

Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) played a crucial role in creating the “legal violence” that pushes immigrants to the margins by turning minor nonviolent crimes like using a false Social Security number into felonies (ibid).

These reforms turn undocumented status into an illicit way of life and close off routes to legalization, forcing immigrants without papers to live as if they’re fugitives.

Chavez (2013) describes this tactic as trapping migrant workers within the nation and allowing them to be exploited by employers while not allowing these same workers to be viewed as part of the nation. The laws can be characterized as targeting a “class of people” instead of the “behavior of individuals” (Menjívar and Abrego, 2012, p. 1388).

Criminalization, exploitation and deportation become unending concerns for these marginalized immigrant groups. Through “legal violence,” symbolic violence arises as well. Migrants begin to internalize the way the world treats them, isolating themselves from society and losing some of the benefits that come from the migration experience.

The authors note loss of upward mobility and a weakening ability to support relationships back in the home country.

To what degree migrants can abide governmental regulations and directives — or overcome them through asylum or Temporary Protected Status policies — shape

how incorporation happens in the United States. In South Florida, smartphones are a potential tool to circumvent the anti-immigrant policies that limit incorporation by giving migrants greater agency.

What is Transnationalism?

Glick Schiller, Basch and Blanc Szanton (1992) first proposed transnationalism as an analytic framework for understanding migration. They noted how old literature of migration emphasized a process of assimilation where a “permanent rupture” takes place and migrants abandon old patterns and begin “the painful learning of a new language and culture” (p. 1). From their own research, they observed how Caribbean and Filipino immigrants in New York maintained ties to their home countries. Some migrants even watched their social influence expand as home countries catered to their growing wealth of citizens who lived abroad. The Philippines president created incentives for immigrants to make return trips as the government recognized the importance of remittances to the economy.

Transnationalism would serve as a counterpoint to outdated notions of assimilation. As Levitt (2001) summed up the idea in her work The Transnational

Villagers: “They do not shift their loyalties and participatory energies from one country to another. Instead they are integrated, to varying degrees, into the countries that receive them, at the same time they remain connected to the countries that they leave behind”

(p. 5).

Levitt’s work recalled how modern notions of transnationalism have existed since the early 1900s when temporary workers came to a new country for work and returned home after it had ended or they had received sufficient monetary capital. Migrants sent remittances back then, but the monetary value pales in comparison to the total amounts

received by home countries today, where remittances can be a key factor in a country’s economy. Now migrants move abroad in much larger numbers and they stay longer

(commonly permanently) in the new land. Observing one of these modern diaspora movements, Levitt conceptualized the idea of a transnational village during her field work on a Dominican community in the late 1980s and 1990s in Jamaica Plains, a suburb of Boston that stays connected with the hometown of Miraflores, Dominican

Republic via social and monetary remittances.

This transnational village created a circular relationship between the home country and the host country, where cultural and religious values from the Dominican

Republic would shape lives abroad. At the same time, life in Jamaica Plain would have an effect on the identity of migrants and sometimes their new values, such as ones taught by the Catholic Church in Boston, would start to have an influence on religious practices back in Miraflores after migrants returned home. Hence, a two-way relation would be born. Monetary remittances as well would have a transnational effect on how development occurred back home: Businesses catered to those living abroad, inequality widened between those who had family in Jamaica Plain and those who did not. Like in the case of the Philippines, the Dominican Republic began to recognize the importance of migrants to the economy and made special accommodations to them (ibid). Other transnational case studies would focus on other types of remittances and their cross- border influence. Grieshop (2006) explored how cuisine unique to Oaxaca tied together local communities in Mexico with migrant communities in California. Zamora (2016) examined how anti-black ideologies and the racialization process in the United States resulted in communicating back “racial remittances” to Mexico that spread stereotypical

negative views of blacks in the U.S. Cultural and monetary remittances come up frequently in studies of transnationalism in Guatemala as well, and their effects will be discussed in more detail later.

Levitt in The Transnational Villagers emphasized how “new communication and transportation technologies permit easier and more intimate connections” … heightening “the immediacy and frequency of migrants’ contact with their sending communities” (p. 22). However the book devoted little space to those technologies.

Levitt analyzed the changes influenced by transnational communication with little discussion of the media itself. Frankly, the prior disregard for communication technologies makes sense. In the early 2000s, when the field of transnationalism broadened in scholarship, there were only a limited number of communication devices used by migrant communities and the functionality of those devices was limited.

Achievements in mobile technology occurred so suddenly and rapidly, the literature has only started to catch up in the last decade. The literature also has had little to say about the drawbacks of technology and technological determinism. Horst (2006) depicted why cellphones and new technologies should not be seen as purely advantageous by cataloguing some of the burdens of mobile phone ownership, such as surveillance, where someone could call at any time to harass a family member, peer or significant other.

Wilding (2006) wrote about families connecting “virtually” across transnational contexts in various ways like telephone calls, letters, faxes, email, Internet chat rooms, mobile text messages and tapes. Between 2001 and 2003, he interviewed migrants and refugees in Australia who had families in Europe, New Zealand, Singapore and Iran. He

wrote, “Some [communication] forms were more commonly used than others. Thus, while telephone calls and letters were mentioned by all interviewees, mobile phones and audio tapes were mentioned by only a few people” (p. 130).

Several of the newer technologies mentioned here, such as faxes and chat rooms already feel obsolete a decade later. Letters sent via postal services are no longer a popular form of communication and would be costlier than many information and communication technologies. These antiquated devices cited as tools by Wilding for transnational communication signal a gap in the literature and the importance of an updated snapshot of this area.

More recently, Flores-Yeffal (2013) noted the ways cellphones and social media like Facebook and YouTube have started to fit themselves into key roles in communication between sending and receiving communities. Cellphones have become an important part of the migration journey itself, serving as a way to confirm remittances or give directions. Sometimes as a byproduct of the richness (detailed photos, videos, etc.) of these media, the communication devices act as a way to attract non-migrants to make the journey or to convince them that the U.S. does not create the lavish lifestyle that one might have imagined from receiving remittances.

In the sending countries, the liberalization of telecom markets in Latin America has helped diminish the digital divide by making available the latest versions of new technologies at more affordable prices. In Guatemala, the Telecommunications Law of

1996 helped bring down the price of phones for the indigenous poor (“Mapping Digital

Media: Guatemala”, 2013). In fact, the country currently has more mobile phones than people. Through the Central American Free Trade Agreement, Costa Rica introduced

competition to the state-run ICE2 network for the first time, resulting in an increase in affordability (Williams, 2010). Benítez (2012), in an article describing the effect of a decreasing digital divide on Salvadoran immigrants, covered the growth of the telecommunication sector in El Salvador as the result of the 1996 Telecommunication

Law.

Despite the widespread use of cellphones, Minimal studies have looked in-depth at how migrants use cellphones and applications such as WhatsApp, Skype or

Facebook in transnational contexts, especially as it pertains to Latin America (See

Benítez, 2012 for one case study on contemporary CIT use in El Salvador). The majority of academic works on cellphones and transnationalism or cellphones and empowerment of marginalized groups have looked at Africa and Southeast and East

Asia. Few academic literatures addresses WhatsApp and its role in negotiating transnational identity, although print and online media have written about its significance, including a fitting New York Times article called “For Millions of

Immigrants, a Common Language: WhatsApp” (Manjoo, 2017).

Guatemalan Immigration History in the U.S.

Contemporary mass migration from Guatemala to the United States started in the middle of the Central American country’s 36-year civil war (1960-1996). The waves have continued for decades, propelled by a desire to escape gang violence and poverty and to seek economic opportunity and security in a new home (Jonas & Rodriguez,

2014).

2 Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (Costa Rican Electricity Institute)

The Guatemala-to-U.S. connection has carried on for a half-century now. But the immigration experience has undergone profound changes over that time. External factors like changes in U.S. immigration law to globalization to Guatemalan telecom media and the diminishing digital divide, have played a significant role in the way immigration occurs and the way Guatemalans live their lives in the receiving country.

The Mayan diaspora has extended to both coasts of the United States and enclaves have formed in cities ranging from Jupiter and Indiantown in South Florida to New

England to Houston and Los Angeles.

Scholars, through field work within these immigrant enclaves have observed the way these diverse and dispersed immigrant populations maintain ties to their homeland, and especially, the family and friends that remain in Guatemala (Rodríguez and Hagan,

2000). Via transnationalism, Guatemalans forge cross-border networks through common cultural and social bonds, stay connected via technology support and influence communities they left behind (ibid).

Here we trace the history of transnationalism among Guatemalan immigrant communities in the United States since those first modern mass migrations began in the second half of the 20th Century. Understanding these themes of how cultural identity, remittances and community all factor into the creation of transnational networks inform my research and raise questions about how smartphones might extend these conceptualizations of transnationalism or supplant them.

The Roots of Guatemalan Immigration

The vast majority of migrants from Guatemala belong to Mayan indigenous groups. At least 200,000 Mayans died during the civil war, victims of paramilitary death squads like the “Mano Blanco” that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as tensions

mounted between landowning elites and working-class campesinos3 (Morrison & May,

1994). The rise of left-wing guerillas and fear of Guatemala becoming another Cuba spurred the government repression during this time. In 1978, Romeo Lucas García won election despite claims of fraud and began one of the bloodiest periods in Guatemalan history. The state-sponsored brutality turned into genocide against the Mayans under

President Rios Montt, a general who replaced García following a coup and unleashed scorched earth tactics during his short reign in the early 1980s (ibid).

The civil war carried on through 1996 until the signing of the Peace Accords in

1996. By that time, 1 million Guatemalans had been internally displaced in a country of approximately 9 million, and some 250,000 indigenous Mayans sought refugee status abroad (Fabri, 2000). Natural disasters, including a devastating earthquake in 1976, drove further displacement. Some Mayans stayed within the Central America isthmus, hundreds of thousands moved into Mexico while others moved en masse to the United

States (ibid).

The displaced migrants mainly settled in Texas, California and Florida. Despite the flight from political violence, U.S. leadership resisted giving them asylum status and preferred to imagine the Guatemalan arrivals as economic refugees. The U.S. government had supported and trained right-wing governmental forces fighting civil wars against left-wing insurgencies in the ’70s and ’80s (Brown & Odem, 2011). Cold

War policy dictated that victims of right-wing violence rarely received asylum during that time. The lack of legal status and education and limited or absent English-speaking ability generally restrained where Guatemalans could find work.

3 Farmers

In response to mounting anti-immigrant sentiment, the Reagan Administration passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 (Rodríguez & Hagan,

2000). The measure intensified U.S. border security and placed harsh restrictions on where undocumented immigrants could work. However, IRCA also granted blanket amnesty to all undocumented immigrants in the country prior to 1982. Many

Guatemalans arrived too late to receive the residency offer, but those who did now have freedom of movement throughout the country. In addition, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1990 allowed Guatemalans to resubmit asylum applications (Burns, 2000). The diaspora spread to new parts of the United States. Significantly, amnesty provided an

“anchor” for new migrants arriving to the country (Loucky, 2000). Guatemalans with legal status could provide housing and guidance for newcomers.

However, anti-immigrant attitudes have not relented and reforms for newer undocumented immigrants have languished, forcing many indigenous Mayans to exist on the boundaries of society. In a post 9-11 world, undocumented status has become associated with criminality (Menjívar & Abrego, 2012). Laws that threaten immigrants for nonviolent crime (like using a fake Social Security number) explicitly try to tie the two concepts together. With few legal rights, undocumented Guatemalans endure widespread discrimination, the threat of deportation and scarce opportunity to improve their socioeconomic status (ibid). While remittances assist non-migrant Guatemalans still living in the home country, Mayans still face prejudice and lack of economic opportunity in their homeland at the hands of non-indigenous Ladinos4 and the

4 A term for non-Mayan Guatemalans who hold most of the power in the country.

Guatemalan government. Homicide rates there also remain some of the highest in the world (Harlow, 2012).

Remittances sent back provide a way for Mayans to subvert the structural discrimination they face in Guatemala. Near the end of the millennium, Guatemalans were receiving an annual $500 million in remittances (Lutz & Lovell, 2000). In 1995, several thousand Mayans from Santa Eulalia, who had mostly settled in California, sent back a reported $3 million alone to the Kanjobal community that stayed behind (ibid).

The remittances convince more Mayans to take the risk to leave their hometown for the

United States. Similarly, Mayans from Jacaltenango, who live far below the poverty line and saw jobs disappearing from the land, immigrate to communities in South Florida that were established decades ago (Lazo de La Vega & Steigenga, 2013).

“Due to on-going repression of human rights, lack of opportunity, and deep poverty,” Mayans continue to escape to the United States in search of better prospects

(LeBaron, 2012, p. 181). An estimated 500,000 live throughout the U.S. and many maintain transnational relationships back in the home country (ibid).

Creating Community

One of the clearest ways transnationalism exists among Guatemalan immigrants to the United States is through forging communal ties. Mayans in the United States find ways to revive rituals and rites of passage that they practiced before they left. Churches and nonprofits often act as a way to teach immigrants about their rights and the local community. However case studies show that indigenous Guatemalans, often with assistance from the community at-large, start their own associations to promote advocacy (Burns, 1993; Steigenga, Vásquez & Williams, 2009).

In the Indiantown area of South Florida, the Guatemalan population formed the

CORN-Maya association in 1983 (Burns, 1993). CORN, a reference to the sacrosanct

Guatemalan crop, stood for Comité de Refugiados de Maya.5 The organization promoted cultural unity, legal aide, human rights and education. CORN-Maya even

“secured a folk arts apprenticeship grant from the state of Florida to develop marimba classes for Maya” (ibid, p. 63). These acts served as a way to bond the community through social activities and by emphasis of common ties – both related to Mayan identity and life as immigrants in the U.S.

The marimba represents a symbol of Mayan identity and other Guatemalan enclaves throughout the U.S. have purchased the instrument as a way to unify the community. Odem and Brown (2011) wrote about how Maya immigrant groups in

Georgia, Arizona, Colorado, South Carolina and California raised funds and imported marimbas built in the Guatemala highlands. The marimba and other indigenous symbols would be used in religious ceremonies and traditional Mayan festivals that further helped build community and foster Mayan identity. Communities in the rural south played marimba music, wore traditional clothing (the corte and huipuil) and celebrated saints from the homeland (ibid). In Los Angeles, priests with ties to the Mayan community brought an indigenous Catholic organization from Santa Eulalia to southern

California to play marimba music, organize prayer sessions in the Kanjobal language, encourage communal bonding among multiple generations of Mayans and raise funds for medical services back home (Popkin, 2005). In Jupiter, Fla., through the Fiesta

Maya, migrants “literally transpose Jacaltenango through their possession and ritual

5 Mayan Refugee Committee.

dances” where they “re-created images of home, drawing from religious resources ranging from embodied memories to material culture like marimbas, costumes, masks and the icons of patron saints and of the Virgin Mary” (Steigenga, Vásquez & Williams,

2009, p. 219).

Remittances

The majority of studies on Guatemalan Mayan immigration showed that migrants did form strong transnational identities. Mayan migrants who find work in the United

States often do what they can to support their community back in Guatemala. Griffith et al. (2001) spoke to Guatemalans in South Florida who underscored their unique indigenous heritage when explaining why they chose to work in low-wage jobs under poor conditions in order to send money back to their family and community.

Monetary remittances increased inequalities between migrants and non-migrants in these transnational case studies. In places like Yichjoyom, a 450-person village in

Santa Eulalia, remittances from Los Angeles “accounted for over 50 percent of total income received by the household in 1995” (Popkin, 2005, p. 685). The 7,700 households that received remittances in Santa Eulalia received $408 on average. Those families often had nicer-looking houses. Adobe walls and sheet metal roofs replaced thatched straw rooftops on migrant family homes. Those houses also owned more livestock, had a higher chance of owning their own water supply and probably had better access to healthcare (ibid). Rodríguez and Hagan (2000) noted the opening of businesses such as courier services and long-distance phone services, catering only to the families with relatives who lived in abroad and sent remittances home.

Communication

How these communities communicated over the years saw drastic changes as well. Fink (2003) recalled one time returning from fieldwork in Guatemala and having

Mayans in Morganton, North Carolina interrogate him about what was new in

Guatemala, as they had lost touch. Early transnational communication in San Cristóbal

Totonicapán occurred through mail and more expensive courier services like Rapido

Express and Envios Urgente (Rodríguez and Hagan, 2000). Video-cassettes and faxes also were used to communicate messages before the rise of the Internet. Though large transformations have since occurred, transnational case studies have not delved deeply into the question of communication devices.

After some Guatemalans received amnesty through IRCA, they started their own profitable courier services transporting everything from letters to traditional foods like pan de fiesta (ibid). Families in Houston started video-recording businesses in the

1990s and videos would be “sent back and forth between Houston and Guatemala, of major family and community events such as weddings, quinceañeras, funerals, soccer tournaments and graduations (Rodríguez and Hagan, 2000, p. 203).

In the 1990s, Internet cafés served as important communication hubs for rural

Guatemalan indigenous communities (Tzoc, 2015). After Guatemala passed the liberalizing Telecommunications Law of 1996, a drop in cellphone price proliferated in the country (“Mapping Digital Media: Guatemala”, 2013). The digital divide between

Ladinos and Mayans decreased as a result.

Still, few academic studies have even commented on the role of cellphones in transnational Guatemalan lives – with only brief mentions in a more recent book (Jonas

& Rodriguez, 2014).

In the early 2000s a lack of communication technology led Mayan migrant families to seek updates on the home country from researchers who were visiting the homeland. Mayans used public landlines to make calls and could only afford international rates once a month. By 2010, it was not uncommon for Mayans in

Guatemala and the U.S. alike to “befriend” the researchers who interviewed them on

Facebook (Foxen and Rodman 2012).

Overall, there are clear contradictions created by transnationalism: forging community ties creates a stronger Mayan identity abroad and yet – due to remittances – can create fissures between non-migrant and migrant families back home. Guatemala’s long migration history also leads to questions about whether the process has changed much in the 21st Century. Pedraza (2006) called the adjustments ushered in by new technology “qualitatively different” because the quick-fire connectivity allowed immigrants to “experience the world they left behind as if they were still there” (p. 423).

But little study has been done yet in this area. My research among Guatemalan communities in South Florida intends to fill in some of those gaps.

Venezuelan Immigration History to the U.S.

The literature on Venezuelan migration to the United States is much shorter in size and scope. Unlike most of Latin America, the United States does not have a significant history of intervention in Venezuela. Until the election of Hugo Chavez to the presidency in 1998, the country saw minimal migration northwards and little interference by U.S. government. Few studies have been done on the transnational effects of immigration on non-migrants who stay behind in Venezuela – perhaps due to the newness of the literature and due to the violence that has beset the country in recent years. Therefore, the following review of the literature on Venezuelan migration to the

U.S. will focus on movement after Chavez’s election and the role that technology and media has played in the immigration experience.

The Roots of Venezuelan Immigration

In 1998, charismatic socialist leader Hugo Chavez swept into office with a populist campaign that upended the social order with in the country. Citizens who dreaded Chavez’s policy changes and could afford to leave the country did so (Armario,

2014). His political, economic and social reforms provoked an exodus. Residents arrived en masse to the United States, with many settling in South Florida communities such as Doral (Shumow, 2010).

Since Chavez’s election, the Venezuelan immigration population in the United

States has become one of the fastest growing Latino subgroups in the country. An estimated 188,000 Venezuelans in the United States, according to the 2006-2008

American Community Survey (Shumow, 2010). About half of them lived in Florida and

65,000 Venezuelans alone resided in the Miami-Dade and Broward areas in South

Florida.

Venezuelan migrants shared similar attributes to exiles from Fidel Castro’s Cuba decades earlier. The moneyed class had fled a leftist leader. Like Cuban exiles in the

1960s, they also were well educated – 32 percent arrived with a bachelor’s degree; 17 percent with a graduate or professional degree (ibid). Compared to four other major immigrant groups in South Florida – Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Hondurans –

Venezuelans demonstrated striking disparities in their favor (Shumow, 2012).

The migrant crisis out of Venezuela worsened in 2013, following the death of

Chavez from cancer and the election of his vice president Nicolas Maduro. Flagging oil prices have sent inflation skyrocketing to unprecedented levels (Alvarez, 2016). Maduro

has overseen an economic crisis that has resulted in shortfalls in basic food products and medicines. An invigorated anti-Chavista movement has wooed disillusioned

Venezuelans, although the situation remains unstable (ibid). The social unrest and economic turmoil in Venezuela frequently have been visible in news coverage in South

Florida (Shumow, 2014).

Alvarez (2016) citing a study at the Universidad Central in Venezuela estimated that 1.5 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2015, and a quarter-million of them had gone to the U.S. Middle class Venezuelans made up the bulk of those arrivals, differentiating themselves from Central American migrants who often belonged to the working poor. Despite the connotation carried by the term “middle class,” these recent migrants often struggle to pay for amenities and tolerate less-than-comfortable lifestyles in Miami (Medina, 2016).

A final notable difference between Venezuelan and Guatemalan migrants is how they reached their undocumented status in the United States. While Guatemalans (and

Central Americans in general) often arrive via illegal border crossings, Venezuelans tend to overstay their visas. Among Latin Americans on expired visas, Venezuelans ranked fourth behind Mexicans, Brazilians and Colombians in 2015 (Passel and Cohn,

2016). A total of 12,242 Venezuelans remained in the country after their permits expired in 2015, the 10th most of any country. Perhaps unexpectedly, Canada had the most visa overstayers (93,035) followed by Mexico (42,114).

Venezuelans and Immigrant Media

The growth of the Venezuelan community in South Florida led to a proliferation of media as well. Newspapers like Venezuela al Dia, Doral News and Ciudad Doral

Newspaper formed to cater specifically to Venezuelan audiences (Shumow, 2010). The

director of the weekly El Venezolano told Shumow that circulation nationwide grew to approximately 100,000 readers in the late 2000s as the media kept the immigrant community informed about current issues affecting them in the U.S. and what was occurring back in Venezuela (ibid).

Venezuelan immigrants also sought out new media to understand what was going on in their country, and to combat censorship of traditional media in the home country. The country has one of the worst records for freedom of expression and press freedom in the western world (Freedom House, 2016). RCTV, the oldest broadcaster in the country, did not have its license renewed in 2007 as the relationship between

Chavez and the media fell apart (Shumow, 2010). However, Shumow notes that

Chavez’s clampdown on local media deserves to be put in some context. During the attempted coup by anti-Chavistas in 2002, the mainstream media played a supporting role. RCTV would not show “images of Chávez supporters filling the streets while the president was held for 48 hours” and even faced accusations of doctoring footage

(Shumow, 2012, p. 833).

Venezuelan media in South Florida achieve the role once filled by RCTV by maintaining a nearly uniform stance against the Chavista regime. In doing so, this helps create “a sense of exile among the new immigrants” (Shumow, 2010, p. 389). Online blogs and forums and social media like Facebook have filled the media void as well in recent years. All this serves to highlight the complicated relation that immigrants in

South Florida have with their homeland and the way media helps strengthen a sense of

Venezuelan community among migrants.

Calzadilla (2016) showed how new media has started to replace print media as a way to foment transnational ties and stay informed of issues in the host country. In an article, she wrote how new arrivals to the country will tap into networks on the mobile messenger service WhatsApp to reach the Venezuelan immigrant community in areas like Miami and Orlando. Those WhatsApp groups provide tips for finding jobs, housing, legal advice and so on for the recent arrivals that often would be seeking asylum. This represents a recent evolution of chain migration where networks appear less reliant on family and use technology to make connections in the receiving country.

Though little research has examined Venezuelan migration to South Florida, this is an important case for scholarly consideration. The Venezuelan crisis continues to worsen under Maduro. With many of the political refugees fleeing to South Florida where the Venezuelan population is booming, this project makes for a opportune case study. Since the majority of Venezuelan migrants have different backgrounds and reasons for migrating from Guatemalans, research on the populations can provide insight into two national origin groups with recent immigration histories in the United

States. Specifically, in the context of this study, the socioeconomic differences between

Venezuelan migrants and Guatemalan migrants may highlight important variation in how new technology is used across migration contexts.

Research Questions

My research examines the role of mobile devices in the lives of recent migrants

(since 2009) to South Florida. Thus, my research questions tie together the concepts of transnationalism, international communication and new media.

1. How does smartphone use by Venezuelan and Guatemalan immigrants in South Florida extend or subvert our understanding of migrant incorporation and transnationalism?

2. What factors lead to different uses of smartphones between Venezuelan and Guatemalan immigrant groups?

Methodology

My summer fieldwork explored how smartphones and social media are reshaping the immigrant experience. I conducted formal interviews with 21 Venezuelans and 15

Guatemalan residents in South Florida. I traveled between Jupiter, Florida, and Miami to conduct the interviews with both populations. My interviews with Guatemalans occurred at the immigrant resource center El Sol in Jupiter and at the Guatemala-Mayan Center in Lake Worth. I interviewed Venezuelan migrants located up and down the South

Florida coast, finding subjects via snowball sampling. I conducted in-depth semi- structured interviews, open-ended surveys and participant observation methodologies during the field research.

To be included in the sample, interviewees had to own a smartphone, be between the ages of 18 and 55 and have immigrated to the United States in 2009 or after. Participants received a $10 gift card to Publix supermarkets for participating. The majority of interviewees arrived in South Florida within the last two years, and some arrived only weeks prior to their interview. I handed out the qualitative surveys6 to figure out who qualified for the interview and to learn some background about a potential participant. The results of the survey, which included questions on what applications and social media the participant used, did not influence whether I selected the respondent as possible interviewee.

6 See Appendix A

The semi-structured interviews7 consisted of some 40 questions on the participant’s background, history of phone usage and opinions on social media.

Interviews lasted between 30 minutes to 90 minutes with the length depending on how much familiarity the participant had with the smartphone and social media.

Participant observation was a final methodological tool I used during my time in

South Florida. I spent time at the immigrant resource centers taking notes on day laborers’ cellphone use. I also wrote field notes after teaching evening English classes in Jupiter. The English classes facilitated the process of finding qualified participants for the interviews. Finally, the plebescito8 vote (see Chapter 3) presented a prime opportunity to observe how cellphones were involved at a large communal event for

Venezuelan immigrants.

After transcribing the interviews, I coded them in the qualitative analysis program

Atlas.TI following a grounded theory approach. The thematic analysis began with an evaluation of the data from the first sets of interviews to identify certain trends and patterns (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). Those themes were used to guide questions in later interviews in my field work. The method captured relevant aspects of the research topic that were not originally addressed in the interview guide.

After transcribing the audio recordings, I developed codes, broader code groups and overall themes through an approach of open coding and selective coding. During open coding, I grouped together quotations with comparable themes like “smartphone

7 See Appendix B

8 An unofficial referendum that took place July 16, 2017. Approximately 7 million Venezuelans around the world participated in the symbolic vote to reject constitutional changes proposed by President Nicolas Maduro (Weston Phippen, 2017).

doesn’t reduce loneliness”, “rarely / never uses email” or “learns about news on Twitter.”

The analysis resulted in 180 codes for more than 800 quotations. Through the process of selective coding, those codes were placed into 18 code groups that were divided into overarching themes relating to cellphone use and transnationalism or incorporation, such as “Phone boosts economic opportunities” and “Tech communication raises political focus” (ibid).

Table 2-1. Gender/age breakdown of interviewees Name Age Sex Nation of Origin Interview Site Chelsey 34 F Guatemala Jupiter Omar 18 M Guatemala Jupiter Ariana 28 F Guatemala Jupiter Yonas 29 M Guatemala Jupiter Fernanda 18 F Guatemala Lake Worth Ketan 34 M Guatemala Lake Worth Erinn 38 F Guatemala Jupiter James 38 M Guatemala Jupiter Christian 24 M Guatemala Jupiter Karen 47 F Guatemala Jupiter Haley 22 F Guatemala Jupiter Charley 21 M Guatemala Jupiter Lara 22 F Guatemala Jupiter Yessenia 37 F Guatemala Jupiter Elijah 25 M Guatemala Jupiter Emil 33 M Venezuela Jupiter Sam 43 M Venezuela West Palm Beach Jimmy 32 M Venezuela Jupiter Isabella 35 F Venezuela North Miami Eliana 39 F Venezuela Doral Kendrick 52 M Venezuela West Palm Beach Felix 22 M Venezuela West Palm Beach Ben 33 M Venezuela West Palm Beach Ana 40 F Venezuela Doral Michael 45 M Venezuela Doral Danielle 38 F Venezuela West Palm Beach Pilar 29 F Venezuela West Palm Beach Victoria 20 F Venezuela Davie Jacqueline 52 M Venezuela West Palm Beach Roger 45 M Venezuela Jupiter David 24 M Venezuela Davie Maria Elena 37 F Venezuela West Palm Beach Bryan N/A M Venezuela Jupiter Marlon 20 M Venezuela Davie Liz 24 F Venezuela Jupiter Stan N/A M Venezuela Jupiter

Reflexivity Statement

The U.S. government under the Trump Administration has fomented an atmosphere of fear for undocumented immigrants in the country. That created a challenge for arranging interviews with potential participants since many of them were undocumented. They justifiably seemed skeptical about speaking on their personal lives with a white male who speaks Spanish with what I call a gringo accent. I tried to put interviewees at ease by carefully explaining the project and the protocol and that they were not obligated to speak about anything that made them feel uncomfortable. Most undocumented Guatemalan interviewees did seem to warm up as the conversation continued, conveying detailed anecdotes about their lives in South Florida.

Nevertheless, this state of distrust made convening with Guatemalans respondents a challenge and limited by interview locations to the two migrant resource centers where the participants felt comfortable speaking with me. By midsummer, I figured out a better manner to schedule interviews with Guatemalans in Jupiter. I began volunteering as an English teacher during El Sol’s night classes for community members. The English courses provided me a way to ingratiate myself with the

Guatemalan and Venezuelan migrants who took classes there and contribute to the center’s mission. I secured several interviews during the short period of time that I volunteered for those classes before the term ended. I wish would have started assisting there earlier in my field work both to make the interview process easier, and because the experience felt valuable to the community.

A final point that’s crucial to note is that anti-immigrant national policies almost certainly limited my opportunities to interview undocumented Venezuelans. The one

Venezuelan who told me she was undocumented had passed on my information to friends in West Palm Beach in a similar situation as her. Two of them initially agreed to speak, but later ignored messages to set up the interview. I met the undocumented

Venezuelan woman who I interviewed at her home, and later ran into her at the plebescito vote. She told me her husband, a Guatemalan with residency who had lived in the U.S. for decades, had voiced to her that perhaps she shouldn’t have done the interview. The Venezuelan woman expressed no regrets over in the interview and was one of the most loquacious respondents to participate in the project. Venezuelans overall sounded enthusiastic to chat about their new lives in South Florida and vent about the crisis back home that preoccupied their thoughts. Those respondents, usually light-skinned, rarely showed apprehension about speaking with me and feasibly saw me as an outlet to articulate frustrations about living as a recent Venezuelan immigrant to

South Florida. The socioeconomic status of the undocumented Venezuelan woman I interviewed appeared more relaxed than those of undocumented Guatemalans. She owned a car and drove it without a license and had access to a bank account through her husband who had residency — and like her compatriots spent most of our time denouncing what’s occurring under Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. However, that I could not meet and interview more undocumented Venezuelans despite their presence in the area is a limitation of the project and their perceived wariness about an interview is possibly a sign that legal status led some Venezuelans in the area to experience lives more akin to undocumented Guatemalan interviewees that made them want to avoid unnecessary interactions with native-born U.S. citizens.

My privilege as a white male also might’ve blinded me from recognizing the importance of certain experiences that were foreign to me. A few female interviewees brought up harassment over social media. One Guatemalan described random men sending her pestering messages over Facebook, fishing for a response. These responses should’ve resulted in further probing in all my subsequent interviews about how harassment and imagining how the disturbance might prevent women from partaking in the transnational social fields.

CHAPTER 3 FINDINGS: INCORPORATION

The findings from my field work are broken into two chapters. The first one examines how the two national-origin groups used smartphones to incorporate into

South Florida society. I address incorporation firstly because a migrant who became established into his or her new community, instead of living in isolation, tended to acquire more cellphone abilities that would help with the process of transnational communication. By integrating into a local community, immigrants would find legal resources that could lead to employment, security and social skills to better use their cellphone. Conversely through cellphone usage, a migrant could obtain legal resources, employment, security and social skills. Possessing those abilities had effects that would benefit the migrant in terms of incorporation and transnationalism.

The goal of this chapter is to tie together prior knowledge on immigrant incorporation cited in the previous chapter with descriptions of smartphone use from my field work. First, I detail how an immigrant’s socioeconomic status when he or she arrived to the country boosts or limits the benefits one can receive from owning a smartphone. Next, I discuss the varying smartphone habits that can advance one’s economic, social and security prospects within the community. The chapter speaks to the many ways smartphones allow immigrants, including undocumented migrants, to better manage their marginalized status in South Florida by improving upon historic means of incorporation or undermining them.

The Power of the Past

Participants indicated that even before setting foot in South Florida, several factors would determine how much benefit they’d receive from the smartphone upon

their arrival. A migrant’s socioeconomic background, legal status and familial ties in the host country could compel or constrain their phone usage. Among Venezuelan respondents, almost all had college degrees or were working toward one. They arrived to the United States by land, and most applied for asylum to try to extend their stay in the country. Only one of the 21 Venezuelans I interviewed told me she was in country after overstaying her visa. Most Venezuelans knew some English, although only four described themselves as fluent.

Guatemalan respondents, on the other hand, rarely finished high school and most stopped receiving a formal education after sixth grade as they entered the workforce to earn wages for their family. The interviewees in South Florida all grew up in indigenous Mayan communities in rural regions of the Central American country; areas long plagued by poverty and discriminated against by the Ladino leaders in

Guatemala’s capital. Not every Guatemalan I spoke with acknowledged his or her legal status, but most participants affirmed they were undocumented. Two interviewees had received a green card and one other had applied for asylum. Guatemalans arrived as economic migrants, and often chose to make the journey north after family members already working in the region said it was possible to earn a wage here. Guatemalan interviewees spoke only basic English. Illiteracy also was an issue for Guatemalans in their communities, according to staffers at the immigration center, although none of the research participants expressed that reading was an issue for them.

Cost Issues

The first step to taking advantage of a smartphone device, of course, is owning one. Even the cheapest plans cost at least $70 for the initial phone purchase and another monthly payment for the data plan and financing plans. Not every Guatemalan

interviewee could afford a mobile device after arriving to the area. James, a 38-year-old male, said he spent his first few months in Jupiter borrowing his brother’s cellphone after immigrating in 2014. Omar, an 18-year-old male, said he worked for five months in the U.S. before he could purchase his mobile phone for $70, with an additional $50 payment every month. He needed to pay off debts and save before acquiring the smartphone from Boost Mobile. Omar, who worked for a sprinkler company, lost opportunities to earn cash because he did not own a phone. Omar described emotional and financial consequences during those initial five months without a cellphone: “I couldn’t communicate with family, I couldn’t greet family or friends. My boss asked for my number for a job (but couldn’t reach me). I couldn’t call my boss about when I worked.”

While all Venezuelans had no trouble obtaining a phone during their initial months in the United States, some did have to cut costs in their new circumstances.

Victoria, a 20-year-old Venezuelan who came to the U.S. on a student visa after protests shut down her university in Caracas, spent her first three months in the U.S. with an older, malfunctioning Samsung model. When it broke, she upgraded to a new model. Sam, a 43-year-old from Barquisimeto, bought an inexpensive LG phone after learning her older-model iPhone wouldn’t work in the U.S. She explained, “I got this one because I had to get something more affordable here.” Emil, a 33-year-old Venezuelan man, encountered a similar issue. He spent a week without a phone after finding out

SIM cards in the U.S. were not compatible with his jailbroken1 iPhone. He then opted for a Samsung.

1 Modifying a phone in a way that removes manufacturer or operator restrictions.

Emil: It was the cheapest phone type that I found at the moment, and I didn’t want to spend much money. In fact, with this line they gave me the device free. I thought I was going to buy the same iPhone I had been using before because I identify with this brand and it’s easier because I’m used to that type of technology. But it was very expensive, so I said to myself, “Well I better not.”

All interviewees had to meet monthly payment plans to maintain their line.

Payments for a single line usually ranged from $35 to $70, depending on the carrier and the data plan. Participants sometimes paid for lines for their kids or other family members as well.

Limited data plans could be a tricky expenditure to navigate. Guatemalans regularly paid for restricted options because they cost less than unlimited plans. Several interviewees complained of feeling misled by one of the phone companies and shocked by a bill they received. Participants often found the plans inconvenient, saying they’d eschew listening to music on their phone or making videophone calls because they didn’t want to drain data. The constraints of data limits on long-distance phone calls are further discussed in Chapter 4.

Most Venezuelans paid for unlimited plans. Phone carriers sometimes targeted

Venezuelan immigrants with plans, seemingly an additional bonus of coming to the

United States from a middle class background. Several interviewees paid an additional

$15 each month for a special feature from T-Mobile to make unrestricted phone calls to

Venezuela.

Both national origin groups complained of limited space on their smartphones, and needing to delete images or apps to keep their devices operating. Sam lamented not owning an iPhone because her new phone couldn’t fit all the apps she wanted.

Isabella, a 35-year-old woman from Caracas who met me on a fancy strip of North

Miami, said she frequently deleted photos and videos from her iPhone 5 because she needs enough memory free to keep getting WhatsApp text messages from her family.

Eliana, a 39-year-old woman from Maracaibo who now lives in Doral, said she had to delete photos from her home that reminded her of home. She said, “There wasn’t enough room. I didn’t want to delete them.”

The lack of space cost Emil certain indulgences on his phone that he accessed before in Venezuela. In his home country, he would watch Netflix on his iPhone. He said now he only uses basic functions on his Samsung, like calls and following the news. At one point during our conversation, he tried to show me a photo from a recent demonstration in Caracas. An error message popped up, saying there was not enough memory to open the file. He deleted several images from his phone before opening up the video. Fortunately for Emil, he owns a computer2 where he can utilize apps he can’t fit on his phone like Netflix.

Cost didn’t hold all participants back from buying top-of-the-line phones. Pilar, a

29-year-old Venezuelan woman from La Asuncion who worked at a car dealership in

South Florida, bought an iPhone 63 after losing her previous phone. She said, “It’s more expensive than other phones, but I think it’s worth it.” Other Venezuelan immigrants noted upgrading their phones to newer models after spending time in the United States.

Pilar’s socioeconomic status was not necessarily the only reason she could afford a high quality phone. Unlike Guatemalan economic migrants, she and other

2 Computers or tablets could be more accurately called luxuries than smartphones. Guatemalans rarely owned them and many struggled to operate the ones available for use at the immigration center.

3 She did not purchase the latest and most expensive iPhone model. The first models of the iPhone 6 debuted in September 2014. The iPhone 7 came out in September 2016, a year before the study. The iPhone 8 would be released in September 2018, a month after the study concluded.

Venezuelan interviewees did not send remittances back to her home country. Two of her siblings were living in the United States before she moved there. Six months before our interview, Pilar’s parents had relocated from Venezuela to the U.S. In addition, her income benefitted because she had permission to work in the country and could find better-paying jobs.

Legal Status

Pending or approved asylum cases or valid visas allowed Venezuelan migrants to maneuver gamely around South Florida, where they could find job opportunities and earn a higher wage. Emil recognized this disparity while giving his interview at the El Sol immigration resource center in South Florida, where Guatemalans often came for job opportunities. The former civil engineer wants to start a second career as a commercial pilot after the desastre total in his country. He planned to receive a student visa to attend pilot school in Ft. Lauderdale the following week – an arrangement he had set up before leaving Venezuela on a tourist visa. Even as he worked odd jobs in Jupiter to support his next career, he observed that his situation felt more relaxed than what the

Guatemalan workers experienced.

Emil: Obviously [the Guatemalans] come here without documentation that we have here, so we have, between quotations, “a little more tranquility” about [our situation]…because we are able to move around freely like a tourist.

Some Venezuelan migrants seemed to not want to describe themselves as immigrants at all, underscoring their identities as emigrants from Venezuela instead of settlers of the United States. Two Venezuelans called their trip to the U.S. “like a vacation”, even though one worked low-wage jobs to support his daily life and the other had applied for asylum. Jimmy, a 32-year-old male from Maracaibo who worked the

low-waged jobs on his “vacation,” said he planned to only stay the entirety of the tourist visa, 180 days, before returning back to Venezuela. Now a few months into his to trip to

South Florida, he admitted to not having bought a return ticket yet.

Ana, a 40-year-old Venezuelan woman in Doral, said if she did not receive asylum in the United States she would rather live in another country than remain here illegally. However, she was certain “I cannot return to Venezuela.” David, a 24-year-old former banker in Venezuela, said he wanted to attend an immersive English-language school in the U.S., but said if he couldn’t find one he liked, he would look for job opportunities in South America.

Experience Issues

Smartphones are the norm for middle-class Venezuelans. All interviewees had owned one in their home country. Using Facebook Messenger, Instagram or WhatsApp felt like second nature to them. Unlike Guatemala, the country seemed to follow a relatively straightforward smartphone evolution, where citizens moved from using computers and feature phones4 to BlackBerrys to smartphones like iPhones and

Samsung. Jacqueline, a 52-year-old woman from Maracay, said the BlackBerry she owned in Venezuela helped her understand how to operate the cheaper LG phone she bought in the U.S. The boyfriend of Isabella, who moved to the Miami almost a decade ago, recalled that before WhatsApp launched he downloaded a BlackBerry Messenger app for iPhone to communicate with his family back home.5

4 Cellular phones without smartphone capabilities, such as Internet access. Also known as brick phones.

5 Isabella met her boyfriend after moving to Miami. He did not qualify to be a participant for the interview since he had left Venezuela nine years, but he sat in on our interview and offered some insights on how communication had changed.

Some Venezuelans used their cellphones to circumvent the lack of strong ties to

South Florida. Emil used his cellphone to arrange an interview with the flight center in

Ft. Lauderdale while living in Caracas. He also caught up with a friend from high school in Jupiter via his smartphone. When Emil moved to the area, his friend took him to

Costco to buy discounted groceries. Victoria, 20, described the importance of her phone in the yearlong process of applying for a student visa to study at Broward College in

Davie, Florida.

Chib et al. (2014) describe technological leapfrogging via affordable smartphones that allowed for Thai migrants in Singapore to close the digital divide through a single device. But that quick-and-mandatory introduction into smartphones for Guatemalan participants created issues. Most interviewees had only feature phones in their home country. Interviewees stated that learning to use the cellphone “me costo mucho” (“it was very difficult”). James, the 38-year-old Guatemalan, had used only outmoded feature phones in his homeland. He described the adjustment of operating his smartphone, “It was challenging to use because it was purely a screen.”

Familial networks lessened the learning curve of the smartphone. Those networks have been central to the history of Guatemalan immigration to the U.S. A concept known as family reunification has encouraged immigration movements to certain areas. Family members who already live in an area can assist newcomers

(Hagan, 1994). The cellphone here serves as an extension of that transnational network.

These built-in networks made learning smartphone skills from a more practiced family member a component of the incorporation process for Guatemalans.

Furthermore, it highlighted that family remains a focal point of Guatemalan immigration even as the technology might change the way interactions occur. Ariana, a 28-year-old

Guatemalan woman form La Laguna de Atitlan, said her brother-in-law taught her how to use language apps Duolingo6 and Google Translate. The latter app would become a critical a part of her work in Jupiter. Incorporation usually involves the family member with more experience in the U.S. showing the ropes to newer immigrants (ibid). But expectations didn’t always follow that line when it came to learning new technology.

Several interviewees mentioned that younger family members taught them how to take advantage of specific apps or use the phone in general. Fernanda, an 18-year-old

Guatemalan woman from San Miguel Acatán, wanted to open a Facebook account after arriving in the United States. Her younger cousin in Guatemala instructed her on how to create one to stay in touch with family abroad.

Ketan, a 34-year-old Guatemalan man living in Lake Worth, mentioned that his son helped download apps, and found for him the results of soccer matches on his phone. Omar, 18, explained that his cousins had encouraged him to download

Facebook in Guatemala, but he wasn’t interested and didn’t understand how it worked.

In Jupiter, a 16-year-old cousin convinced Omar to open an account and instructed him on using the Facebook app. He showed him WhatsApp too. Later on, Omar returned the favor.

Omar: My cousin that taught me about the Internet, I told him about Duolingo, and he downloaded it. Now we’re practicing. I spoke about the app that it has been helping a lot. One can write English and speak in English, and it will say if it’s good or bad.

6 She later deleted Duolingo from her phone due to lack of space.

Acquaintances in one’s network played an important role in understanding new apps for both national origin groups. Until a friend showed, the Google Translate app, to

Yonas he would look up words in the browser. Michael, a 45-year-old Venezuelan in

Doral, learned about the money-transfer app Cash and the ride-sharing app Uber from friends. For some Guatemalans, learning about secondary apps exhausted too much mental energy for their already busy lives. Erinn, a 38-year-old Guatemalan woman, said she doesn’t like “entering into programs other than ones for work or for communicating with her family.”

Portes and Rumbaut (2006) state that solidarity is rare for Latin American immigrant groups because national experiences are too divergent. My own findings showed a separation in attitudes and identities between the Venezuelans and

Guatemalans. The authors add that the “first generation [of immigrants]… have been characterized by an overriding preoccupation with the home country” (p. 164). That applies to Venezuelan migrants, a national origin group with only a short immigration history in the United States. This section showed how those divergent experiences and immigration histories influence an immigrants’ choices after arriving in the host country.

In short, Guatemalans, marginalized by legal status considerations and socioeconomic conditions, did not express as much flexibility as Venezuelans with where they lived, worked and socialized and the smartphone technology they purchased. Unlike Venezuelans, Guatemalans did not describe their choice of smartphones in terms that made it sound like a part of their identity. The cheapest phone possible would do.

Can You Hear Me Now?

The second half of this chapter focuses on how recent immigrants from

Venezuela and Guatemala utilize cellphones to support distinctive incorporation goals. I break this chapter down into three occurrences:

 Using smartphones to boost economic opportunities  Using smartphones to boost social opportunities  Using smartphones to attain security

Phones aided both national origin groups in all these areas. Interviews on these topics reveal how smartphones can allow noncitizens to manage their marginalized statuses. A cellphone can bypass certain obstacles that come with living on the fringes of society, in a country that continues to pass laws that reject immigrant movements and force them to the periphery of existence.

Getting Hired

Phones cut down on one of the most laborious parts of working in a host country

– finding an employer. Interviewees called the mobile devices a crucial part of obtaining regular work. Ketan, 34, said the mobility of a cellphone can be beneficial for the most basic of purposes. He explained, “When somebody says, ‘Here, this is my business card,’ I put in the number and make the phone call. It makes life much easier.” Yonas,

29, appreciated that his phone provides him flexibility in the opposite situation: When a potential employer calls him. He said, “There are companies that say leave your number. We’ll call you when we need you.” Jacqueline, a 52-year-old Venezuelan woman, used her smartphone to set up her own employment – as a counselor at a recovery center for addicts – before arriving to the United States. A Venezuelan friend living in South Florida told her through WhatsApp, “When you have your papers, you can come here and work with me.”

My interviews with Guatemalans occurred at immigration resource centers, where contractors could come and hire migrants and locals for day jobs. The service was crucial to the livelihoods of many immigrants, but a phone can extend the usefulness of those positions by turning them into steady work. If a worker got along great with a contractor, they could bypass the immigration center altogether. James, a

38-year-old Guatemalan man who arrived in 2014, stated, “I get my work through

[immigration center] El Sol … but [contractors] might ask for my number if he needs me again. The people have my number and it can pass from owner to owner and they call me.”

The purpose of El Sol is to link up workers with employers who will pay a fair wage under safe conditions. Officials there see the benefits that smartphones have brought to the day-laborer system. But the technological leapfrogging achieved by the

Guatemalan workers does generate some frustrations for El Sol’s staff. Most

Guatemalans never had an email account in their home country, and few migrant workers pay attention to their email in Jupiter even though email addresses likely are required for formal job applications and convenient if El Sol wants to alert them to other opportunities. Fernanda, 18, demurred about using an email account because she forgot her password and didn’t find the service valuable enough to create another. Other interview subjects gave similar reasoning for discounting email. Granted, the fact that most undocumented migrants work off-the-grid day-laborer jobs for legal reasons means joining the formal workforce is a less practical option for them.

Getting Social

Social media was a more common tool for job hunters or those trying entrepreneurial activities. Ariana, a 28-year-old Guatemalan woman, said “my brother

sells stuff via his Facebook page: Washing machines. Stoves. Dryers. Refrigerators. He buys them and sells them second-hand. They question him (through Facebook), ask him how much it costs and where he lives (to pick it up).”

A sign of email’s waning power in general seemed apparent when talking to

Venezuelans. Packed-to-capacity WhatsApp groups pass on messages for job opportunities to new migrants in South Florida. Ben, a 33-year-old Venezuelan man from Acarigua, found a position driving for Uber after joining one of those groups. He took the job with the ride-sharing app to supplement his work in construction. He didn’t fall into the WhatsApp group immediately. First, he saw posts in Facebook and

Instagram promoting employment opportunities. Ben contacted one of them in a private message, and the response mentioned the WhatsApp group.

Ben: So they said, “Look, we are in a group where they pass information on jobs, food, culture and we need [to raise the number of participants] to make [an effective] group… The people always ask about what type of job offers are available, where they can find a pediatrician or specialist and there is much information. Also you can look for housing and many other things… More than anything, I always pass along information [in the groups] because I found many things here, so I have helped other people.

He invited friends who followed him to South Florida to the groups too. The process for getting others to join a group is straightforward. Ben told group administrators “that his person just arrived, he’s my friend and can you please let him join?” The groups have a capacity of 256 participants. He said when they run out of space, one of the contributors simply starts a new one.

Ana, 40, detailed some of the benefits she experienced in her WhatsApp groups.

She and her husband learned of the group called “Yo Te Ayudo Venezuela” (“I will help you Venezuela”) when she first needed to find her bearings in South Florida. She said the first question anyone asks when they join a group is where to find housing and

where to encounter employment. But after that newcomers hone their inquiries, asking about topics like their children and how to get them healthcare and schooling. Ana said,

“[the groups] share information on free vaccines, medical exams, food delivery, if somebody is looking for employees they share that too, and there are people selling many things.” When the group filled up, participants created another one called “Yo Te

Ayudo Venezuela 2.” Ana said she thinks eight separate “Yo Te Ayudo Venezuela”

WhatsApp groups have spun off from the original. The groups are not a free-for-all. She said if participants spread rumors about news or anything else inappropriate, they’re immediately removed. Ana said the group forbids writing messages between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., and members shouldn’t “be offensive, take an aggressive position against someone else in the group – in other words, they need to be tolerant.”

WhatsApp groups help the Venezuelan community connect outside of their phones as well. Ana said her group spread a message about a Thanksgiving celebration in Tropical Park in Doral. Some 300 people showed, bringing their own contributions to the festivities. “All this was disseminated through the group,” Ana said.

The same goes for other social events like fundraisers to collect money and food to deliver to Venezuela. Her own group hosts these campaigns at two arepa restaurants.7

WhatsApp groups represented one of the most successful ways that

Venezuelans utilized digital communication to extend their networks and compensate for the lack of generational ties in the host country. Other social media served a similar community-building function. Pilar, 29, scrolled through several local Facebook Pages

7A type of corn or flour arepa sold throughout Venezuela and Colombia. In Doral, the most popular restaurants are named El Arepazo (“the big arepa”) and El Arepazo 2.

she followed on her phone. “Venezolanos en Miami” had 25,755 members. The “Doral” group for Venezuelans had 14,000 members. Pilar listed some of the activities taking place in these groups: People looking for jobs, sharing news, advertising their catering company and selling miscellaneous items. These pages didn’t appear to have the type of regulation that the WhatsApp groups demonstrated. The sites seemed overrun with messages hawking bits and pieces, from hats to cars to houses. Fundraisers appeared as well, with authors of the posts asking for money or medicine.

Emil, 33, appreciated this far-reaching albeit faceless digital community. He followed the “Venezolanos en Miami” page on Facebook and felt like he had the backing of all Cariquenas8 in South Florida. He referred to the network as making “a family of Venezuelans” … “we support each other.”

Ana monitored the Doral and West Palm Beach pages on Facebook for happenings ranging from social events to people giving away furniture. She entrenched herself in the Doral community through Twitter, where Ana followed local accounts like the superintendent of Miami-Dade County and the Miami Marlins baseball team.

Venezuelan community accounts on social media existed across all the most popular platforms. Eliana, for example, followed the Venezolanos en Doral account on

Instagram.

For Guatemalans, large social media groups were far less common. Instead, cellphones made arranging small get-togethers or community soccer games easier.

Overall, their networks aren’t as sophisticated and as widespread as the Venezuelans’.

There might be several reasons for that: Guatemalans have relied on close-knit family

8 Demonym for people from Caracas

networks for incorporation into a host country, and weak linkages receive less attention in these nertworks (Rodríguez and Hagan, 2000). As discussed in the previous section,

Guatemalan migrants don’t earn enough financial capital to afford more expensive data plans – and extra money gets sent back home via remittances. Finally, a desire to stay in the shadows due to one’s undocumented status might discourage certain types of unrestricted social media use. One of the staff members at El Sol did set up a

WhatsApp group for a weekly program where workers can learn handiwork skills at a local Home Depot. They coordinated the meetups through WhatsApp. The El Sol staffer said workers initially appeared hesitant to use the chat network, but by the end of the workshop the employee no longer had to drive the conversation in-group. Workers discussed job opportunities along with the content of the training sessions.

Managing Marginalization

While the social networks seemed less meaningful to Guatemalans, they did use their cellphones in other innovative ways to great benefit. Both Venezuelans and

Guatemalans cited YouTube and the language app Duolingo as useful for basic English practice. Chelsey, a 34-year-old Guatemalan woman, said she was cautious about putting entertainment like music on her phone because she worried about using too much data. But she would play English-language YouTube videos for her son to help him learn the language. She had received instruction from other female migrant workers at the El Sol immigration center on translating English with Google Translate, although she couldn’t recall what they had taught her. Other Guatemalans did not know that the

Traductor9 existed as an app that could be downloaded onto their phone. They’d

9 The Spanish language title for the Google Translate app

translate words in a web browser, a slower and more cumbersome process. Others need to be instructed on how to download new apps.

Some migrants wielded the Traductor in ways that appeared groundbreaking, bringing the app into their work life and using it to surmount communication hurdles.

The app made Ariana’s housekeeping work much clearer. When she discusses her work with an English-language employer, Ariana switches on the phones microphone function to translate her own speech as she talks.

Ariana: When [El Sol] finds an employer for me, they put us with a person who speaks English. I don't understand much besides a few words, so I use the Traductor to communicate.

We talk about the house cleaning. The señora talks with me in English about what I have to do and the microphone translates it into Spanish. … [Employers] say to me it’s a great tool to communicate … in fact, they try to learn Spanish [after seeing me use the Traductor]. I went there for the first 3 months, and the señora didn't speak Spanish. But now through the Traductor, when she doesn't know an important word in Spanish she'll ask me to say it to learn. It's bonito (lovely) to communicate with each other through the phone.

Ariana said the conversations she’s had with employers with the app have helped her develop a rapport with them and earned her more work opportunities.

Interviewees of both national origin groups use the typing function of the app to translate words that they might encounter in their job or elsewhere. Emil used it to figure out the name of tools or actions he needed to recognize for his manual labor work.

Some participants translated English-language products in big box stores or the supermarket. Venezuelans Ben and Michael noted using the speaker function on the app to learn how the proper pronunciation for English words. Google Translate includes a capability that lets users translate text in an image by taking a photo of the document containing the words. Some interviewees said they had utilized it before, but could not

confirm how they took advantage of the tool, which could potentially help non-English speakers translate vital forms10.

Google Translate didn’t always perform up to standards. James, a 38-year-old

Guatemalan, pointed out that the app gives a too literal definition of the idiomatic expression “Buen provecho,” which should translate to “Enjoy your meal.” Jacqueline, a

52-year-old woman from Venezuela, who described herself as an adequate English speaker, voiced a similar complaint. At her counseling position, she’ll sometimes need to send emails in English to clients. Jaqueline puts the message into the Traductor to double check her work, and she’ll notice it “doesn’t make sense, so I have to do my own interpretation.” She said for more complicated translations, she preferred to ask a friend rather than a machine. Interviewees sometimes entrusted family members11 fluent in

English to do translations and correct errors.

Another vital app was Google Maps – a tool for migrants coping with daunting work and social situations in the host country. Fernanda, an 18-year-old woman from

Guatemala, needed assistance from the navigation app when she started at her supermarket job in Lake Worth. She said, “When I started my work I didn’t know where it was. I put the direction in it and I went on a bus and found it.” Omar, an 18-year-old man from Guatemala, received training from his boss on how to use Google Maps for his job fixing sprinklers. On the morning of a shift, his crew picks him up from his home.

Omar’s boss will send him the address of where they’ll be working that day, and the

10 I helped teach English classes at El Sol at night. During the courses, I demonstrated the various ways one could use Google Translate for those who hadn’t heard of the app. Students (and teachers) in the class found the document translation tool remarkable, but I cannot say if they started utilizing it.

11 Often children or young relatives who attend school in South Florida.

teenager will direct the rest of the crew to the location. He’s taught other workers how to use the app, but as the youngest member of the crew he feels that he’s savvier with technology.

James and Ketan had both made journeys to the United States in the early

2000s and worked for several years before going back to Guatemala. They returned again within the last few years, and recalled how difficult navigating Florida could be before smartphones. Ketan said, “We used a map, but it was a big sheet. It was more difficult to see the map and figure out where to go. Now it’s different, much easier.”

Venezuelans and Guatemalans stated the importance of Google Maps for social events. Danielle needed the app to drive her kids to places she had never visited before. Christian, a 24-year-old Guatemalan man, discovered eateries on Google Maps like Pizza Hut or Chinese restaurants that he could bike to from his home. Omar goes to

Mexican taquerias and Chinese restaurants that he’s located in his neighborhood via the map. Two Venezuelan interviewees, Emil and Pilar, preferred the navigation app

Waze. The app, also owned by Google, gives more detailed summaries of the route and offers more precise shortcuts.

Since immigration status could prevent migrants from getting a bank account, most Guatemalans did not have much exposure to apps that required virtual payments like the ride-sharing app Uber. Venezuelans in search of a lift opted for the ride-sharing app12.

Guatemalans counted on rides from family and co-workers when jobs or errands called for them. Like Omar’s previous anecdote, interviewees who worked outdoors in

12 As mentioned previously, a few of the Venezuelan interviewees drove for Uber as well.

jobs like landscaping usually had one driver with a car who would pick up the rest of the crew. Fernanda said friends of her uncle operate taxis in the area and she can call them for rides when she needs a Spanish-speaking navigator. Ketan said his brother has two cars and he can use them when he needed to go to the bakery or elsewhere.

One final, notable way that migrants used phones to help manage marginalization was through YouTube, and its endless supply of how-to videos. Ketan acquired landscaping skills, like how to fix a water pump for a sprinkler, on YouTube. He supplemented that knowledge with videos on how to make bread and how to do watch repair. Yonas, a Guatemalan with a car and legal residence, studied vehicle maintenance online. He said, “It’s easy. I do all the maintenance, service. Oil change, brakes, discs.” His car became an additional source of earning income to complement his full-time job. Guatemalan community members would offer him cash to ferry them to family members in other parts of the state like Miami or Bonita Springs.

Guatemalans and Venezuelans cited household repairs and recipes as their most frequent YouTube searches. Christian found everything from “how to level a shower floor” to how remodel cars to how to play U.S. sports. Many of these new skills permitted respondents to earn extra money on the side, or save money by not contracting out for home based repairs.

Entertainment and Loneliness

The last part of this section on phones as a social and economic tool centers on how phones can act as a cheap form of entertainment and a fortress against solitude.

Most Venezuelan interviewees emphasized the value of smartphones as a tool for reading information about their home country (see Chapter 4) more than local news.

Some diminished local news, saying they were only interested in checking the phone for

the weather. Still, stories shared by friends on Facebook were a popular way for migrants to familiarize themselves with local news and activities.

At the immigration center in Jupiter, workers would watch YouTube on their phone, such as clips from movies, soccer highlights or music videos, as they waited for work opportunities. A migrant who finished working for a day might still sit down next to an outlet in the center and relax while watching videos on his or her phone. Not everyone had headphones, and some would place their phones on their table and watch a video or play a song with the volume cranked up. Noise complaints did not seem to be an issue though.

Workers told me that music served as an ideal relaxation tool. James enjoyed that CDs were not needed anymore to listen to music. He unwound to Spanish pop artists like Guatemalan star Ricardo Arjona and Spaniard hit maker Enrique Iglesias on

YouTube. Christian picked his favorite songs to play on YouTube when resting at home.

But when working, he would switch to the free Spotify app13 and select an artist like the

Reggaeton stars Maluma or Daddy Yankee, and let the app shuffle from song to song as he takes on remodeling and painting work.

Victoria paid for a $5-a-month Spotify account for students. The app served as a way to unify her Venezuelan friend group through their cultural identity as young immigrants in a new home. Her friends play trap music14 from Venezuela so often she sounded exhausted by it.

13 The free Spotify mobile app does not let you select specific songs. Hence, why YouTube makes sense as a music app when not occupied by work.

14 A subgenre of hip-hop that originated in the southern United States.

Interviewees called on specific apps for entertaining their young children, such as

YouTube, Snapchat and Netflix15. Both Eliana, of Venezuela, and Yonas, of Guatemala, played around with Snapchat because their kids enjoyed having fun with the face- altering filters and lenses. Yonas played mobile games with his son too like Angry Birds.

Ketan challenged his son to a mobile billiards game.

Cellphones helped fight the crippling isolation that comes with making a living on the fringe of South Florida. Venezuelan and Guatemalan participants mentioned mobile games as a distraction from boredom. Sporting events and highlights can aid as entertainment for Internet-savvy migrants who don’t own a TV. Ketan recalled his son pulling up Champions League soccer matches in Europe streaming on Facebook. Real

Madrid and Barcelona worked out a deal with Facebook last summer that let them stream games for free over the social network for a limited time and that innovation found its way to Guatemalan migrants in South Florida (Joseph, 2017).

Most interviewees agreed that the cellphone reduced loneliness. Victoria said

“When I moved here, I was pretty lonely and I depended on my phone completely.”

Scrolling through one’s Facebook newsfeed or listening to music on YouTube can be enough to raise spirits. Danielle listened to a favorite song when missing Venezuela.

The song, “El Alma Llanera”16 (“Soul of the Plains”) is a quasi-national anthem for

Venezuelans. For Ariana, she pulls up on YouTube Los Sones de Guatemala, an album by a marimba band17 from her homeland. Fernanda also shared marimba videos on her

15 Only Venezuelans paid for Netflix, which costs almost $10 a month at its cheapest. Those who had an account usually had opened it while in Venezuela.

16 Danielle selected a version of “El Alma Llanera” by the Venezuelan joropo singer Luis Silva.

17 The official instrument of Guatemala (Odem and Brown, 2011)

Facebook page. The physical instrument didn’t need to be there – through the medium of the smartphone the marimba still served as a transnational symbol of cultural identity.

Phones can’t replace proximity. The distance doesn’t disappear with an app.

Cash woes and lack of experience with communication tools like video calls make it hard for Fernanda to interact much with her family in Guatemala. She said the phone doesn’t help close the expanse between them. She keeps a stash of photos of her family to look at when she feels homesick. Victoria said, “Facebook [I use] for entertainment, but the entertainment gets lost in the Venezuelan situation, [so I mostly watch] Netflix and … YouTube.” In some ways, the constant connection might reinforce the gulf between a migrant and his or her homeland. Michael has no sentimental attachments to the device or its cross-border functionality18.

Michael: The truth is it doesn’t help me [reduce loneliness]. It’s an indispensable instrument nowadays. But for longing, the cellphone does not exactly help me with that. … I think nothing helps. I miss my family. My father, my sister and the fact that I talk with them by phone every day and sometimes see some photos, [well], still no. It gives me nostalgia.

Dekker and Engbersen (2013) characterized “online migrant networks as a welcome supplement to the services of migrant organizations” in their study on

Brazilian, Moroccan and Ukrainian migrants to the Netherlands (p. 415). They used the word “supplement” because the authors’ findings did not show traditional migrant networks to be redundant. In some cases, traditional modes of incorporation are favored because they appear more trustworthy. Nevertheless, online networks and resources had started to displace the role of old networks and migrant organizations. The findings in this chapter demonstrate that this occurred among Guatemalans and Venezuelans in

18 International phone calls as a transnational tool are discussed in Chapter 4.

South Florida too. Guatemalans still turned to familial ties for finding housing19 and other basics of beginning a new life in a host country. But digital spaces started to eat into other territory. A community no longer needed a marimba and a marimba instrumentalist to hear the music of Guatemala, individuals listened to the same music on YouTube. The smartphone was perhaps a less authentic and tangible form of denoting Guatemalan identity, but it also was simpler and cost next to nothing compared to the price of importing a marimba to the United States (Odem and Brown,

2011). Google Maps expanded the options individuals had for finding necessities like transportation, convenience stores or restaurants, reducing the importance of familial expertise. While El Sol was vital for day-laborers looking for a safe and reliable route into the local labor market, the migrant organization saw its traditional function diminish.

Cellphones created greater chances to find additional employment opportunities and to manage language barriers.

A Sense of Security and Safety Nets

The fear of venturing into the unknown as an immigrant means security is never far from one’s mind. As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, an immigrant’s socioeconomic status influences so much about his or her lifestyle in South Florida.

Unfortunately for undocumented immigrants, the restrictions placed on people in the country without papers reduced how a phone can be used to improve security. The final section of this chapter analyzes how phones can be used as a security tool and why marginalized groups struggle to find comfort and safety in their smartphones.

19 The survey instrument asked how they found housing or why they decided to settle in Jupiter or Lake Worth, and almost all Guatemalans made the decision based off of family members who already lived in the area.

Money

That undocumented immigrants rarely can open a bank account in the United

States constructs security concerns that a cellphone cannot fix. Those migrants must carry cash everywhere in order to complete purchases. Thieves know this. Stories of

Guatemalans getting attacked on the walk or bike ride back home from a day laborer job are not uncommon (Altman and Aguayo, 2006). Due to the rise of mobile banking apps and digital wallets20, smartphones are well equipped to function as a replacement for hard cash.

Venezuelans with bank accounts take advantage of this circumstance.

Interviewees described the ease of the process over and over again.21 Bank payment services like Zelle or PayPal let Isabella pay bills with ease. Michael downloaded the

Cash app after a friend told him about it. Pilar, who also uses Venmo, said the Cash app is popular among her Venezuelan friends: “Let’s say if you go out on a Friday night.

You get the bill. Someone pays the bill. And they’re like, ’Oh just transfer me the money.’”

Mobile banking proved convenient to pay Uber rides, pay off doctor visits or set up a SunPass account that automatically pays highway tolls. Venezuelans used mobile accounts on Amazon or eBay or UberEats to make quick, simple and safe purchases online. Emil, who only had a tourist visa at the time of our interview, paid most of his bills through the Bank of America app. When asked why he chose Bank of America, he explained that he didn’t care about finding the perfect bank – he just wanted a place to

20 Apps like Venmo, Cash and Square that let you quickly transfer cash from your phone to other friends or to make purchases in online stores.

21 Chapter 4 addresses how these apps help transfer money to family members living back in Venezuela.

securely keep his funds and picked a place that looked popular. He opened an account with the food delivery service UberEats account for security reasons as well. He wasn’t just trying to rid himself of needing to carry cash. He liked the service because Emil doesn’t have a vehicle and doesn’t like the idea of walking around his neighborhood alone. He said, “At certain times of night I don’t leave my house. If I’m going to eat I prefer UberEats, and they bring food to my door.”

All these apps represented not only an inventive payment method but a security measure for a vulnerable stranger-in-a-strange-land. Guatemalan participants were left behind when it came to all these products. Only Yonas, who received a green card through his wife’s parents, said he used his phone to pay for expenses, like car insurance, through his phone.

On the Periphery

U.S. immigration law dehumanizes undocumented migrants, forcing them to live in a vulnerable and exploitable position when it comes to security. Interviewees did find ways to use the phone to benefit as they live on the periphery of U.S. life. Both

Venezuelans and Guatemalans entrusted Google Maps to help them find their way if lost. If stranded, they can make a phone call for assistance. Christian said “this happened to me recently. I went out to run and it got dark and I couldn’t figure out how to get back. I called my brother and he gave me the address.”

Cellphones make getting in touch with potential allies a quicker process too.

Chelsey, who’s going through the asylum process, needed her phone to take phone calls from her lawyer. Their interactions sound effortless. A Spanish-speaking secretary calls up Chelsey, and the assistant relays all the latest details of the asylum case to the

Guatemala native. The devices also could be used to monitor the surrounding

landscape. When I had asked about what news stories they followed, participants mentioned reports that could have an effect on the undocumented Guatemalan community in Jupiter. There appeared to be no formal system for surveying local issues in Jupiter, although a couple interviewees mentioned following a communal Facebook page. Respondents mentioned learning of an incident where an undocumented

Guatemalan was charged with DUI manslaughter and vehicular manslaughter after a car crashed into an ambulance in Jupiter that killed two paramedics and another time where a resident filmed an undocumented Guatemalan getting pulled over by a Jupiter police officer (Whigham II, 2017). Such information could be useful, particularly for migrants concerned about issues of legal status in the community.

Chapter Summary

When looking at Portes and Rumbaut’s (2006) pillars of successful incorporation,

Venezuelans and Guatemalans both conceivably benefit from a native population that’s comprised of many Latinos and a community that’s friendly to immigration. But the

Guatemalans’ heavy co-ethnic presence and deep familial ties in the region do not trump the fact that they must endure in a country with anti-immigration laws hostile to their experiences as economic migrants. Those laws hinder incorporation and the ways that phones can facilitate the process because undocumented Guatemalans can’t open bank accounts, receive a driver’s license, or perform a host of other commonplace activities in the state of Florida. On the other hand, Venezuelans can use their phones to facilitate immigration despite a comparatively small co-ethnic community. The smartphone expands their network, introduces them to co-ethnics who would have otherwise remained anonymous and turns that anonymous network into a system of collaborators.

Venezuelans also might benefit from what Granovetter called “the strength of weak ties” (1973). The weak ties found in Venezuelan migrant networks might in some instances be more valuable than the strong familial ties found within in Guatemalan communities. Weak ties normally result in migrants having more access to different sources of information, while strong ties are more likely to overlap and limit the possibility of discovering new information or resources. Guatemalan networks are mostly restricted to familial ties and migrant organizations. Venezuelans have learned to use smartphones to exploit those weak or latent ties in the community to make incorporation smoother and seemingly to find information unavailable to Guatemalans through their network of strong ties. That gave Venezuelans an advantage when it came to managing their peripheral status.

The word “manage” is critical here because migrants did not overcome their marginalized status as a new immigrant to South Florida. Sam (2017), who wrote about cellphones as a source of empowerment in Sierra Leone, warned about overstating the perceived benefits of mobile phones. Although the youth in Sierra Leone used inexpensive mobile phones to coordinate businesses, family affairs and socio-cultural connectivity and to amplify their voices against the government, he cautioned that there is “no strong evidence to suggest that these empowerment capabilities completely emancipate [young people in Sierra Leone] from their marginality” (p. 368).

The inability of smartphones to overcome marginalization applies to both national-origin groups in this study. As Michael stated above, the simultaneous co- presence offered by smartphones does not replace being physically present with one’s family. To give another example, Google Translate made navigating the English-

language world easier for Venezuelans. However, since most of them could not speak the language with fluency those Venezuelans could not obtain better-paying jobs that required English. The majority of Venezuelans had university-level degrees, but they were stuck working in low-skill jobs in South Florida. Liz, a 24-year-old Venezuelan woman with an engineering degree, worked as a nanny because she needed to speak better English to obtain a job in her field. She and other Venezuelans with advanced degrees could not “overcome” what’s traditionally been observed in incorporation literature despite the assistance of a smartphone. Portes and Rumbaut (2006) wrote that “regardless of their qualifications and experience, recent immigrants generally enter at the bottom of their respective occupational ladders…immigrant professionals – such as engineers, programmers, physicians and nurses – also must accept less desirable entry jobs within their professions and even outside them” (p. 104). Once again, legal status seemed to be the great differentiator in the type of jobs Venezuelans and

Guatemalans obtained. Smartphones and migrant organizations helped both groups enter the job market through low-skilled positions, but Venezuelans at least found more permanent positions that offered consistent (and higher) pay thanks to asylum status or another type of residency. The two Guatemalans who told me they had residency seemed to enjoy lifestyles closer to Venezuelans. Yonas paid for products online through his bank account. Karen, a 47-year-old woman from Guatemala, took an Uber to work every day during a period when she had no other transportation. Although the sample size is small, the result underscores how legal violence can hinder incorporation more than considerations like socioeconomic status, English-language ability and educational level.

CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS: TRANSNATIONALISM

The pioneering studies on transnational social fields in the 1990s acknowledged the communication methods that kept far-flung national origin groups bonded. But snail mail and courier services and undeveloped digital technologies like fax machines did not warrant much study from researchers (Wilding, 2006). These services received passing mention in research papers and books on transnationalism. That the messages either took long periods of time to reach their receiver or that technologies were overpriced and cumbersome likely encouraged scholars to focus on other facets of transnationalism, such as remittances. Superior digital technology and the advent of the

24-7 news cycle has altered expectations of how we send and receive information. The effects of a world where the transfer of information can travel across borders instantaneously is worthy of a larger part of the transnational studies literature.

James, one of two Guatemalans I interviewed who had worked in Florida in the early 2000s before returning home for several years, reinforced that modern information and communication technologies have changed his habits. He recalled waiting for pay phones to dial his family back home. He needed to buy a one-time use phone card from a convenience store to make the call and would sometimes linger around the pay phone for hours until the line became free. The process could be an excruciating use of one’s time.

James: “If I arrived to a public phone and saw someone talking, I’d have to wait because normally when we communicated back home, we did not speak for five minutes, we did not speak only 10 minutes – we talked for half an hour to an hour because they are very special moments to communicate with the family. We could not talk for a while with them. So when we saw a person situated at the pay phone and talking on the phone, we have to wait a long time. If there are two people standing there, we have to wait sometimes two or three hours.

Those phone calls back home remain special, but they’re no longer so sporadic.

This chapter offers a compendium on how improved information and communication technology has influenced transnational interactions with Guatemalan and Venezuelan migrants and their non-migrant family in their country of origin. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first part establishes how interviewees used cellphones to make international calls and explores the way those exchanges benefited familial relations.

The second part examines newsgathering via cellphone and the essential role that smartphones play for Venezuelan migrants during the ongoing political crisis in their home country. The final part notes some of the drawbacks of constant cross-border contact.

The Distance between Them

Participants in this research study made calls back home in one of three primary ways. The first group used a type of reformed phone card to speak with family in the home country. Only Guatemalans used this method of international calling. The second method was to call via social media, such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.

Callers normally would be ringing the WhatsApp or Facebook accounts of the person they were calling, as opposed to dialing a landline or cellphone line. The last group used international calling plans, including Skype, to make direct calls to a relative or friends’ cellphone or landline. Only Venezuelans used this method of international calling.

Except for a select few Guatemalans, almost every interviewee of both national-origin groups used social media to make phone calls home. But that was not always the preferred method of calling.

The Latest Evolution of Phoning Home

Guatemalans interviewees used a phone card company called SinPin1 or Boss

Revolution2. Ketan, a return migrant like James, praised the modest price of these calling cards. The card companies give clients their own account that they can refill with cash at a convenience store. Clients registered their cellphone numbers with that account and can call as long as funds remained. In the past, phone cards only worked once for a 24-hour period, and callers would have to enter a lengthy pin number each time they wanted to activate the service. Ketan said he could buy $5 worth of saldo for a

10 to 15 minute call and then save the rest for another day. Calling two or three times a week, his credit sometimes lasts a month before it runs out. He doesn’t mind using the social media to contact friends, but the phone card is a blessing for when he needs to call his parents. He said, “My mother and father…they don’t use Facebook or Skype.

They don’t have any idea or their phones don’t function with those programs.”

James said he doesn’t trust social media. His undocumented status made him wary about giving out information and found that websites like Facebook asked for too much.3 Teenagers Omar and Fernanda both were adept at WhatsApp and use it for calls home but preferred SinPin because the weak Internet connection in Guatemala occasionally dropped their calls and wasted data. Fernanda said she’ll text home every three days but only calls bimonthly. Chelsey, 34, once made a call with Facebook and saw the connection used too many gigs to be worth it.

1 Translates to “Without Pin” in Spanish.

2 Only Guatemalans in Lake Worth sometimes used Boss Revolution. Everyone I interviewed in Jupiter used SinPin.

3 He lamented to me that he can’t convince his younger relatives to stay off social media.

Ariana, 28, bought unlimited Internet for $43 a month. With that plan, she has no need for SinPin. She makes calls to Guatemala with Facebook Messenger and

WhatsApp. Her only complaint was that her mother did not have a phone with

WhatsApp. If Ariana needs to her, she’ll send a text via WhatsApp to her sister who lives with their mom. Her mother can call Ariana’s phone using a $1.50 phone card4 that provided 60 minutes for a 24-hour period.

Yonas, 29, used SinPin to call home until January 2017. By that time, he had saved up enough in Florida to purchase wifi for his family’s home in Guatemala, and he can now forgo saldo payments in order to reach his family. He always uses WhatsApp for calls to his mother’s phone. When he has time, he’ll do a video call so he and his wife and two children can have a more intimate conversation with non-migrant family members.

Danielle made daily calls to her mother on WhatsApp. The Venezuelan woman saw her bill skyrocket the one time she used Facebook Messenger. Jacqueline, of

Maracay, has scheduled a once-a-week group phone call with her siblings. She doesn’t turn on the video chat function, however, because “it wastes too much battery.”

The three Venezuelans I interviewed in Doral all used a $15-a-month international unlimited calling plan from T-Mobile to reach their home country. Others in the Miami area seemed well-aware of the low-cost fixed-rate plan too as the network operator promoted the deal in stores throughout the community. Venezuelans utilized

Skype for direct calls to phone lines too. Michael applied both. He used the international

4 10 quetzales in Guatemalan currency

plan for calls with family and Skype to set up business meetings with Venezuelan associates.

Victoria, who didn’t have the fixed international calling plan, rung up her family through low-priced Skype calls. She explained that Internet service is so unreliable in

Venezuela that WhatsApp calls get dropped all the time, “So it’s easier for me to pay

Skype and call a landline than to start fighting with the Internet and waste an hour with bad reception on WhatsApp.” Emil, who does have a fixed calling plan, still preferred

Skype because of the richness its video calls capability.

‘Cheap Calls: the Social Glue’

All these methods of phoning home demonstrate how cheap calls are what

Vertovec (2004) described as “the social glue of migrant transnationalism.” Nobody paid much for them, and they could hear the friend or family member on the other line after dialing. This stress-free, lightning-quick connection provided psychological benefits for the migrant and the family members left behind. Ketan said he would call his father, mother, or brother when he feels lonely: “It helps a lot… now I feel a lot closer thanks to the technology.” Ana said her international calling plan helps her and her family back home cope with the anxiety brought up by the situation in Venezuela. Guatemalans who couldn’t manage to pay for more frequent calls often would at least share images or messages on Facebook with family members. Christian said “occasionally, I share a photo of me so that my family can see me.” Ariana uploaded photos to Facebook of trips to the beach with her son. Family members responded with good-natured jealousy, remarking her son should feel lucky since the beach is five or six hours away from their home in Guatemala. When I interviewed Isabella, she told me that earlier that morning she had sent a text message with a picture of tahini and dates to her brother who lives

in Oman. The text read, “I’m thinking about you guys. I miss you. I’m eating this.” She said the last time they were together he had gifted her the food.

Venezuelans, and Guatemalans who could afford it, used social media to turn special occasions into more personal moments. As noted in Chapter 3, during the plebescito, voters waiting in line would make videos of the scenes from the event to send to Venezuelans around the world. Jacqueline, who voted in West Palm Beach, said she received photos via WhatsApp of her nephew voting in Barcelona.

Interviewees sent short video clips or made video calls to family members in the home country to sing “happy birthday” to relatives or to send cheer during holidays like

Christmas. Yonas welcomed friends sending him advice through frases de reflexion or

Bible verses. He recalled on Father’s Day when family members sent him sights from the Serenata, an annual festival in his hometown. I asked whether – in addition to his family – he felt nostalgic for photos of his hometown, he laughed and said “I know what

Huehue looks like. 5 I don’t need to see photos of that.”

As in the serenata example, transnational calls served as a means for preserving cultural practices. For Mayans in Jupiter, the smartphones also let them retain their indigenous language. While few of the Guatemalans in the areas where I did my field work spoke English, most of them spoke one of the couple dozen Mayan languages

(Popkin, 2005). They rarely spoke them when roaming around the immigrant resource centers or their workplaces, but phone calls to family were a way to use a more personal speech. Ariana boasted she can still read, speak and write her native

5 Short for Huehuetenango, the hometown of Yonas and many other Guatemalans in Jupiter.

language Popti’, a language spoken in Jacaltenango6. She doesn’t want to lose it, and talks to her mother in the language whenever she calls her. She admitted to getting nervous when speaking it around other Guatemalans in the center “because sometimes they think you’re talking about them and it shows a lack of respect. But sometimes there are things that you can’t talk about in Spanish since you don’t want others to hear.”

Ketan and his brother know the indigenous language Mam. However his brother, who has lived in the U.S. for a dozen years, only communicates in Spanish in the house. But Ketan still speaks the language when he calls his parents and sister, who don’t speak Spanish. Ketan’s 13-year-old son, who was born in the U.S., speaks Mam as well as Spanish and some English. Chelsey giggled as she tried to teach me some of the expressions in the Mayan language Kanjobal that she had sent to family members on Facebook Messenger. She acknowledged that the keyboard of her Samsung Galaxy made typing in her native language difficult. Still, Chelsey pointed to a message she had written on Facebook that asked in Kanjobal the conversation starter “What are you doing right now?”

Victoria bonded through pop culture with her family through a unique interaction.

When she enjoys a movie in a cinema or on Netflix,7 she’ll tell her mom to check for it on DirectTV – or if that doesn’t work – her mom will take a craftier route and look for it among the pirated DVDs sold in kiosks on the streets of Caracas. Victoria said, “I have a little brother so it’s like ‘Oh my God, mom, this Disney movie is really good.’ … so she’ll go and buy it and pay it for him.”

6 Another frequent hometown for Guatemalans in Jupiter. Ariana said many of her compañeros at the immigration center speak the language.

7 Netflix Latin America has a different selection than what’s available in the United States.

Victoria and Isabella didn’t just maintain relationships with family and friends.

Both interviewees would call doctors back home when dealing with a medical issue.

Victoria said, “I use sometimes the video calls if it’s something like on my skin, I show them. If not I just call them, ‘hey I’m sick, what can I take that I don’t need prescription?’

Guatemalans, who made the journey to Florida without their young children, will use their smartphones to engage in cross-border parenting. The concept that Chib et al.

(2013) referred to as “migrant mothering” among Indonesian and Filipina immigrants in

Singapore also applies here. Erinn said she asks questions to her four children as if she were still there in Huehuetenango.8 She’ll ask them what are they studying or if there are any games they’ve been playing. She sometimes makes a video call for a simple sentimental reasons, “so they see me and I see them.”

Ariana, 28, said she always chats with her three kids through WhatsApp. She talks to her daughters one-by-one, checking in on how life is going in the home country.

She said, “I feel happy when I see them with the videollamada (video call). It’s like we are together through the medium of the telephone. One is able to do that with someone so far away – from Guatemala to here.” Despite the distance, they keep her involved with activities back home. During a birthday celebration for Ariana’s mom, the family sent back videos and photos from the fiesta. Ariana then sent back a “Happy Mother’s

Day” video to share with her mom.

8 Erinn lives in Jupiter with her husband who’s also from Huehuetenango. However, he made the trip to South Florida prior to her.

Monetary Remittances and Care Packages

A standard of transnational literature is the purpose that sending money back to the home country plays for non-migrant family members. Economic migrants in this study tended not to utilize cost-saving measures from their cellphones when it comes to sending money home. Every Guatemalan I interviewed9 used a money wiring service to relay remittances to family members, with all but one using Intermex to make the transfer. Intermex takes a small percentage of the money in order to complete the transaction. Many online services take even less, but they remain unavailable to

Guatemalans without bank accounts. Even Yonas, who made car payments with his phone, used Intermex to send money home. His reliance on wire services perhaps reflect what Portes and Rumbaut (2006) describe as the way familial or traditional social networks can limit learning new skills.

Venezuelans face their own complications when sending money to the home country. The political crisis bars money transfers from the U.S. to Venezuelan banks.

Instead, migrants get creative to make sure funds arrive home to support their family.

Isabella was one of several Venezuelans I interviewed who operated in a digital black market for dollars. Venezuelan friends with bank accounts in the U.S. would buy dollars from Isabella. Then, they would deposit the equivalent amount of bolivares10 into

Isabella’s mom’s account in Venezuela. Victoria said her best friend in Venezuela works as a go-between for people looking to exchange dollars for bolivares. Sometimes

Victoria will help out.

9 One interviewee used Western Union.

10 The Venezuelan bolivar has climbed to one of the highest inflation rates in the world during the ongoing crisis, making the dollar lucrative and the bolivar nearly worthless.

Victoria: If she can’t find it, I start calling people, ‘Are you selling dollars? Are you selling dollars?’ And that’s basically how I help her. … It’s mostly like, ‘Bank of America, do you have Bank of America?’ ‘Ok how bout Bank of America? Venmo? What about Venmo?’ ‘OK What bank account do you have back home?’ … It’s moving [money] around. It’s calling, being in touch with everyone you know back home… I handle the accounts here, and she handles the accounts there.

She said this complex strategy has become the norm for Venezuelans trying to move dollars in and out of the country, and there are some customers that will make a transaction every two or three days. Ben had another workaround for the restrictions on money transfers to Venezuela. He learned of the PayPal-owned money transfer service

XOOM from a TV advertisement.11 The service allows you to send currency from your bank account to bank accounts in a number of destinations for a small fee. Ben still can’t send the money directly to Venezuela, but he has worked out an arrangement with people he knows in Colombia. Ben said “I have to send to Colombia and from Colombia it’s routed to Venezuela. It works well because the people that are in Colombia have accounts in Venezuela and can do transfers between the banks.”

Venezuelans don’t only send monetary remittances but also boxes of cargo to make up for food and medicine shortages in the country. Those care packages have a more direct route to Venezuela, although Customs officials have been known to rummage through them at times. When that happened to one of Jacqueline’s shipments, she coordinated a roundabout delivery where those marching against the

Venezuelan government would pick up the supplies at the Colombia border.

Jacqueline: We were sending aid to the resistance, to the muchachos (young people) who are protesting in Caracas. We sent a first cargo that were two boxes that we collected and sent to Caracas and from Caracas to Maracay. We sent many first aid items [in that first shipment] and we had no problems,

11 He saw these advertisements targeting immigrants on Telemundo and ESPN

but after that they began to put restrictions, then we sent to Colombia because there were problems getting it past [customs officials]. If they opened the boxes and saw first aid things, they would not let them pass. Then we sent them to Colombia and they took them to Cúcuta, which is a border city there.

Michael said he’s always receiving messages from family members requesting clothes and, more frequently, foodstuffs, from bread and flour to olive oil to butter to milk. He said, “if it’s not my sister, it’s my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, I send one every week, every Friday.”

Digital technologies also helped make it easier for Isabella to put together the right package. Her best friend used Amazon to order a mixture of medicines to send to

Isabella’s house. Then Isabella “put the box together and sent it to her.” She said transnational Amazon purchases has become a popular tool for organizing packages to

Venezuela as certain resources in the country grow scarcer.

These anecdotes – from celebrating family milestones through social media to using phones to send care package deliveries – not only illustrate the development of

Information and Communication Technologies but also the latest evolution of what

Wilding (2006) referred to as “Virtual Intimacies.” These intimacies occur through social media platforms and cheap phone calls, a boon that has only grown more prevalent over the past decade (Vertovec, 2004). Nedelcu (2012), who wrote about Internet globalization’s effect on transnationalism, remarked on how new technologies multiply how families can be together over long distances. The author noted that “in the digital age of communication, family ties have not really weakened. The Internet mobile telephony and the new generation of smart phones combine written, oral and visual forms of expression that closely replicate face-to-face communication … Those who are physically absent are, in fact, increasingly present, in every day, situations and a

continuity of social ties develops in spite of geographical distances” (p. 1351). Nedelcu referenced interfaces like MSN and Skype. However in the years since her own study, more expedient options have materialized for immigrants to foster a transnational family. Skype is still in-use, but not to the degree of Facebook Messenger and

WhatsApp. Interviewees valued the richness of those mobile apps, which make sending photos, video clips, website links and audio messages possible via a couple clicks.

Video calls, when available to the participants, produce resonance in manners that permit individuals to take on traditional family roles regardless of the separate vicinities of the migrant and non-migrant. A Guatemalan mother can check in on her children’s schoolwork and extracurricular lives through regular international phone calls. A

Venezuelan sister could select movies for her mother and brother to purchase from bootleggers in the home country. The “virtual intimacies” once created by Internet chatrooms have moved into WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages. Clunky audiotapes have been replaced by WhatsApp audio messages to leverage a more streamlined

“connected presence” (Wilding, 2006, Licoppe, 2004; Nedelcu, 2012). The ability of these technologies to disappear terrestrial boundaries pushes migrants to improve their digital skills and concurrently draws ICTs like smartphones into a larger part of contemporary transnational narratives.

For Your Information

Perhaps the biggest change brought on by portable information and communication technologies is the quick flow of information from an information source to the user. The capability has a profound effect on immigrants who remain gripped by news events occurring in their home country. . The preoccupation with the conflict in

Venezuela presented an opportunity to understand how this rapid-fire cross-border communication adjusts identity formation as a political migrant.

The first part of this section briefly addresses how Guatemalan migrants follow the news in their home country. Most Guatemalan interviewees expressed little interest in events taking place back home, outside of breaking news, like a natural disaster. As economic migrants, they were focused on earning high enough wages to support their immediate family. The second part of this section goes into detail about the transnational newsgathering techniques performed by Venezuelans and how news in

Venezuela functions as a core part of their identity in the U.S. The final part of my findings engages with some of the identity and lifestyle issues that result when a national origin group stays fixated on a news cycle occurring more than 1,000 miles away.

Transnational News: Guatemalan Migrants

Unlike Venezuelans, Guatemalans rarely mentioned news events back in the home country during interviews. Only when prodded would they try to recall memorable events that came across Facebook newsfeeds or were told to them by family members back home. Many times interviewees could not denote an exact news event in

Guatemala that they read about in recent weeks. Some participants told me that news stories did not interest them. Others alluded to climatic events and earthquakes12 that rose to national news in Guatemala.

In mid-June 2017, a magnitude-6.8 earthquake shook Guatemala, causing minor damage. Some day-laborers said they heard about the event after one Guatemalan

12 Usually I had to bring up the topic first.

worker told them about it and the news spread through the rest of the immigration center. Yonas told me that his family does notify him about natural disasters. He said

“they told me everything was okay” after the earthquake, and his family informed him about a landslide that killed 11 people in Guatemala. Omar said he learned about a landslide near his hometown after his family members shared it on Facebook.

Besides those large-scale natural events, Guatemalan political news barely ever entered our discussions. Politics in Guatemala almost never drew any attention from interviewees13. That attitude toward government news in the home country could be a reflection of how Guatemalan Mayans emigrated from country where they already lived on the periphery and where political leaders have a long history of ignoring indigenous issues (Popkin, 2005).

Transnational News: Venezuelans

As discussed in Chapter 2, the Chávez government shut down opposition media and state-run media broadcast a significant portion of the information found on television and in newspapers (Shumrow, 2010). In reaction to perceived censorship in mainstream media, interviewees noted that they began turning to social media as an alternative source of newsgathering in the early 2010s. By 2017, participants said, that any major protest or critical event took over their WhatsApp groups and feeds on

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram hours after they occurred.

Venezuelans listed off some of their favorite sources to follow on social media.

One of the most popular answers was the anonymous opposition account

VenezuelaLucha – an Instagram account with more than 2.7 million followers as of

13 Despite the fact the Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales visited El Sol in 2016.

February 2018. The unique role of Instagram as a primary news source in Venezuela is discussed later in this chapter. Another standard follow was Dolar Today, a U.S.-based

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram account that reported on the “real price” of the inflated bolivar currency. Caraota Digital and Univision were two more mainstream sites that

Venezuelans mentioned as news sources. Venezuelan news personalities and opposition political party leaders netted attention on social media. Former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and Lilian

Tintori, the wife of imprisoned opposition member Leopoldo Lopez14, were frequent follows. News caster Leopoldo Castillo and model/activist Caterina Valentino also received mentions in interviews. Some younger Venezuelan participants turned to new media like YouTube for news. Victoria said she was invested in the emotional storytelling found in reports on Facebook or Instagram or she preferred the irreverent spin put on the situation by Spanish-speaking YouTube comedians based in Venezuela or elsewhere in Latin America or Miami. Despite speaking fluent English, Victoria eschewed mainstream U.S. or international media for its cold tone, “They can’t describe it as well as your people, you know? It’s like a very non-human political view. At the end of the day, people are getting killed and they don’t care. It’s not their people. [U.S. media] pissed me off more than it actually helps.”

In mid-July, Venezuelans gathered together for one of the most meaningful experiences as immigrants. Opposition leaders in Venezuela arranged for an unofficial referendum against Maduro’s calls to rewrite the constitution. Anti-Maduro officials said

14In 2015, he received a 14-year prison sentence on charges of inciting anti-government riots. (Casey & Herrero, 2017).

the referendum, referred to as the plebescito, brought more than 7 million Venezuelans to the polls worldwide. In West Palm Beach, where the Venezuelan community pales in comparison to the hundreds of thousands that live in Miami, some 3,000 voters cast ballots in a display of communal solidarity. Lines wrapped around the building where the vote occurred and then zig-zagged through the parking. During the busiest part of the day, voters waited more than an hour in blazing heat to declare their choice in the referendum.

Sam, 43, said it seemed impossible to not be aware of the plebescito vote and where to cast your ballot in West Palm Beach. In her WhatsApp group, Venezolanos

Unidos, participants clarified any doubts about how the process would work and offered rides to the event. Eliana, 39, received enough information to vote just two days after arriving to Miami. Information on the event overwhelmed her social media.

Eliana: I arrived the 14th. This was the 16th. I found from my sister where to vote and all the information passed through the social networks. On Venezolanos en Doral and Venezolanos en Miami, I believe those were the pages, I saw all that information. I didn’t know before. The day I arrived I got a [virtual] flyer about the event on a page I follow on Instagram.

Michael, a 45-year-old Venezuelan man who works in construction in Doral, said he received plebescito information from not only text messages and social media but also a Miami-based Venezuelan TV station that he paid for. The cross-platform ubiquity of this community event illustrated how through a political crisis at home and the connectivity created by digital media Venezuelans had manufactured a community through local media despite a short history of mass migration to the U.S. (Shumrow,

2010)

Danielle, a 38-year-old Venezuelan woman from Caracas, expressed the significance of everyone coming out for this “unofficial” referendum. She saw the referendum not only as an important political event, but a manner of creating a transnational community. She marveled at how many people showed up for the event, and took videos to send to family back home. Danielle said, “It’s so that they can see that there are Venezuelans here and that we are supporting the proposal of the opposition. If we are not united we can’t do it.” =Interviewees conceded their Internet lives revolved around the events back in Venezuela. Felix, a 22-year-old who waited in line with his father Kendrick at the plebescito, admitted that his conversations on

WhatsApp with Venezuelan friends mostly go over what’s happening in his home country. He said, “They don’t emphasize much [about my life in the U.S.].”

Danielle said, “Here you are completely enterado (aware of) everything, of every minute of the news. We know it all. It’s very difficult that a person is not involved in what’s happening.” Jacqueline considered that her and her compatriots’ experience with technology and smartphones in Venezuela made keeping up with transnational news stories easy even as an immigrant living in the United States. She opened a Twitter account after a Venezuelan friend recommended it and discovered the perfect tool to be immersed in national news and stories about her hometown Maracay. Jacqueline said,

“In Venezuela, there’s a lot of censorship, and if you use Twitter and you look for serious followers, you can find out things.” Isabella echoed that sentiment that Twitter gave Venezuelans the latest details on the situation in her country. She keeps the trending topics function on the app, which shows the most talked about stories and names of the day, set for Caracas on her phone.

One of the few times a U.S. news report received major attention from

Venezuelans took place right before I met up with Isabella. U.S. President Donald

Trump had suggested that he might send the military into Venezuela to topple the

Maduro government. The news repeated over cable TV in the North Miami sushi bar where I sat down with Isabella and her boyfriend. She said she had heard about

Trump’s declaration several hours earlier from her WhatsApp group. In that moment, her group – featuring family members both in Venezuela and abroad – chattered about the possibility of the U.S. military invading Venezuela and the disillusionment about news concerning a rebel ally who was arrested by government forces. Between all the various social media platforms, missing breaking news stories seemed nearly impossible. I asked interviewees to recall how they discovered some of the noteworthy newsflashes that took place over the summer. On the day I spoke to Pilar, the

Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez was freed from prison15. She said,

“When I opened my Facebook it was like all of [the posts].” Sam, 43, told me about the rush to spread the word when the Lopez story broke: “When I looked at my Instagram at

4 a.m. when I woke up, it was everywhere. It was the first thing I saw. … I began to call

[friends]. Some knew, some didn’t. It was something muy viral.” Kendrick first saw the government had freed Lopez after he saw a photo of the politician leaving prison on

WhatsApp. Ana spotted it first on Twitter. The social media takeover was no exaggeration. Those feeds acted as a signifier of Venezuelan identity, specifically of the opposition. Other stories like a bloody fight that happened in Venezuela’s legislative chamber and a helicopter attack on Venezuela’s Supreme Court played out in similar

15 After the brief reprieve, he was later re-arrested after government forces declared him a flight risk.

fashion over social media, where interviewees described an explosion of news across their feeds all at once.

The World of Instagram

Instagram, a photo-sharing platform owned by Facebook, took on a seemingly unprecedented function as a go-to newsgathering source for opposition members living under Maduro. Sam acknowledged the transformation saying, “I’ve always used

Instagram, but now I don’t use it as much for posting photos, but for reading, for information.” Roger, a 45-year-old Venezuelan man from the state of Zulia, explicated the rise of Instagram-as-news as he saw it, “[The government] shut down the TV stations that reported the news and from there was when the Instagram pages opened, so that you could see what was really happening in the country.”

The most popular alt-account to state-run media is @VenezuelaLucha. The

Instagram feed shares an array of images, ranging from screenshots of headlines, memes mocking Maduro, patriotic banners encouraging Venezuelan unity, calls for fundraising collections, short video clips of news reports and images of protesters.16

That final element – photos and videos of demonstrations – seemed to be the launching point for Instagram’s success as a resistance tool. Instagram worked as the ideal visual medium to highlight the size of protests or call attention to victims of pro-government forces. Victoria recalled seeing a video of young man shot in the neck during a protest.

She called the moment “eye-opening for a lot of people. So everyone shared it. That was all my feed that day.” She noted that the accounts memorialize protesters who’ve

16 Bizarrely when I checked the Instagram feed in February, the @VenezuelaLucha page had posted an ad for U.S. President’s Day that offered discounted fat-burning supplements.

been killed and start fundraisers for hurt demonstrators. Pilar added that she’s seen injured acquaintances on her Instagram, “Sometimes that gets to you. It’s not in the news. Everybody has a relative or friend or whoever who have been victims of this government.”

Fake News

In a time of uncertainty, chaos and media restrictions, figuring out what information to trust can be problematic. A couple months before my field work even began, a colleague with relatives in Venezuela told me about a graphic image an aunt had sent him on WhatsApp of brutalized corpses in the streets. A day later he informed me that image did not originate in Venezuela but in Brazil, and he lamented that his aunt had sent him such a violent photo without even checking to make sure the image depicted accurate information.

WhatsApp groups seemed to be the most blatant sources of inaccurate news stories. The term for these rumors that spread through WhatsApp were called cadenas, or chains, a callback to chain letters that were written with the intention of getting as many people as possible to share them. The cadenas existed for the same purpose, making claims that the Maduro was about to flee the country or other incredible assertions. Ben saw falsehoods on WhatsApp all the time. He said normally the cadenas are killing off people who aren’t actually dead. Sam grumbled about the issues with WhatsApp, saying that todo el mundo puts out cadenas. She said, “The people in the groups post whatever they feel like, I don’t believe much of it. Those things are not very credible.” Eliana noted the last cadena she received referred to a dam in

Venezuela collapsing. She ignored it, knowing it rang false. But she noticed that elderly

social media users have trouble disregarding the rumors. Eliana said, “The old people, they believe everything. I have to tell my mom, “Mami, por favor [enough].”

Similar gossip flies across all social media platforms. Interviewees complained that the people sharing them don’t take the few seconds it would require to Google and see if anyone other source has confirmed the story. Isabella said, “If it’s just one website or one person tweeting, you don’t know [if it’s true],” who has scolded older members of her WhatsApp group for sharing false information. Jimmy blamed trolls with no jobs pushing the rumors. He’s clicked on links to stories on Facebook that open up to malware or pornography. Victoria admitted that she’s been duped by misleading images of the Venezuela crisis. She shared a photo of rioting that turned out to be three years old. After friends texted her about the con, she removed the post.

All interviewees who discussed the rumor mill tried to live by the mantra that if a story sounded too good to be true then it probably was false. Danielle acknowledged that the chaotic atmosphere created by the situation in Venezuela leaves social networks vulnerable to rumors. She said, “They exaggerate a lot so that people feel nervous, therefore I always try to take all news calmly.” Isabella voiced cynicism about needing to monitor from abroad news reports about Venezuela: “Right now you don’t believe [a rumor] until it happens. Even for us [in the United States], it’s really hard to believe in anything until a week after it happens.”

When strange stories did turn out to have some truth to them, interviewees didn’t always know how to react. For example, a video spread through social media one night of a military pilot announcing support for the opposition and leading an aerial assault on the Supreme Court building (Jones & López, 2017). A couple of interviewees learned

from friends in the Venezuelan military that the attack was coming. But participants without those types of transnational connections sounded baffled about the incident.

Pilar said, “I thought it was fake, I don’t know what to think. I have a friend who actually knows the guy. He sent a picture with him … I think [the pilot] just wants to be famous.”

The rebel pilot Oscar Pérez achieved that goal, acquiring the nickname the Venezuelan

Rambo from his supporters. Still, many members of the opposition remained skeptical of the mysterious military police offer’s motivation even as he became a symbol of hope for others. In January 2018, Pérez was killed by pro-government forces in a raid on an anti-government cell in Caracas (Casey, 2018). During the 9-hour standoff, a bloodied

Perez posted videos on social media stating that he had offered to give himself up to authorities. Venezuela’s justice minister said seven “terrorists” were killed in the siege along with two members of the security force.

Knowledge / Information Remittance

Remittances, as discussed in the previous chapters, are a key part of transnational literature. The sending of money back to the home country can have a transformative effect on the non-migrant community (Popkin, 2005). Levitt (2001) defined a similar concept called a “social remittance,” where customs of the host country start to influence values and customs in the home country. And Zamora (2016) outlined the “racial remittance” – a way of explaining how racial attitudes in the U.S. can be passed on from migrants to non-migrants in the home country. Through Venezuela newsgathering a new type of remittance seemed to emerge. Venezuelans living abroad could transmit to non-migrants one of the things they craved during the most frenzied moments: Information.

Mobile technologies not only sped up the cycles of information that traveled between migrants and non-migrants. And in some examples, the new media would reverse the direction that news flowed. Immigrants with faster and more functional

Internet connections could inform family and friends about breaking news back in the home country.

Kendrick, a 52-year-old musician who lives in Miami, said he’ll receive inquisitive messages from friends when stories break, “If there’s news, they all want details.”

Contacts in Venezuela pass along images for Ben to share on social media accounts.

He said, “When they send information from over there, I try to upload it [across all networks] so that people find out what is happening.” Victoria has an exchange of information with her mom when they speak. She said, “My mom will be, ‘Oh, did you hear about this?’ [And] I’ll be like, ‘Oh no, tell me more or ‘Yeah, I saw it … did you hear this?’”

Isabella listed off several examples of how a “knowledge remittance” works among her family. Relatives outside of Venezuela usually are the first to post breaking news to their WhatsApp group.17 She called one cousin in Canada the “breaking news girl” because she’s always posting the latest scoops into the group. The group also has a rule where any message posted in English needs to be translated into Spanish for her aunts and uncles.

Isabella: We have to inform them [of] what's happening because they don't know. Because we don't realize how [disconnected] they are until you start talking to them and you start thinking something that's common sense that they should know is happening, they don't. After the 48 hours strike,18 I

17 For example, a cousin in Nashville first informed the group of Trump’s proposal to occupy Venezuela.

18 One day I called [my mom] and she said, "It's really quiet today. There's not many people in the street." I was like "Mom there's been a strike for 3 hours right now. That's why you don’t' see people in the street."

realized I have to keep my mom informed. She lives by herself, in an apartment. My brother, who's the closest one that she has right now, sometimes he's in Colombia, sometimes he's in Valencia. So she's very disconnected there. … I try to keep them informed so they can stay safe. Sometimes I have to call my mom and say ‘Hey, don't go out to the streets today because you have a riot happening two blocks away from your home.’ … We have to keep track of that [when] we’re outside the country.

She describes a situation familiar to many interviewees – a feeling of being stuck in the middle of two different worlds. Venezuelan participants stay abreast of political news back home, verify rumors and even inform non-migrants about details of breaking stories in their homeland. The Venezuelan transnational identity encompasses one who has fled their homeland only to be stuck in a never-ending news cycle about events in the land they left behind.

Information Overload and Harassment

Sometimes the nonstop bursts of information can be too much for Venezuelans trying to start new life in South Florida. Pilar bounces back and forth among some 20 groups.19 Even though it can be tedious to have so many conversations open at once, she hesitates to delete them because if “you close the conversation, you lose everything.” Ana will turn her groups on silent if she’s trying to relax at home.

Jacqueline, 52, left two of her groups “because they send too much information and too many photos” – and later found a more exclusive “VIP group” to join instead. Danielle

She didn't know because she has no access to news or communication in general, like [her Internet had been out].

19 Drama between group members might lead to one faction to start a new group. That leads to Pilar needing to join that new group to not lose contact with that circle of friends.

opted out of groups altogether because the persistent messaging would fill up the memory on her phone.

Even minor tasks like making a phone call carry unique anxieties. Interviewees stated that they would only ring friends and family members after being sure they were home or in a safe place. Cellphone robberies are so common20 in Venezuela that David forwarded me a meme about the phenomenon that he had received on WhatsApp. In the meme, Games of Thrones’ characters celebrate a harrowing journey from

Venezuela to “a new country” where they can safely take their phones out in the street.21 Emil talks to his family daily, but won’t call until he gets a text saying llámame.

Isabella hesitated to call her father because he always answers his phone even if he’s walking through the city. Victoria noted one unlucky friend who twice had been robbed of his cellphone by muggers in the past year.

For friends who suddenly find themselves in an unsafe situation, Victoria will coordinate a shelter for them if feasible. She’ll call her mother in Venezuela and let her know a friend is coming over to sleep in Victoria’s room. She said “I’ve had friends who’ve stayed at my house for weeks because they can’t go back to their house.” In calmer times, Victoria would have dinners with her best friend via a Skype connection.

But now she’s more likely to hear her friend has to sleep at the office because she got stuck working too late and doesn’t feel safe commuting home.

20 How present is cellphone security in the minds of some Venezuelans? When I asked Pilar if owning a smartphone made her feel safer, she interpreted the question in a different way – answering that she felt secure making phone calls in public in the U.S.

21 See Appendix C

If a relative goes to a protest in Venezuela, members of Isabella’s WhatsApp group will expect a text once he or she is back home safe. If not – “when it’s like 6 or 7 p.m. and she hasn’t responded, people start sending texts, ‘Hey, where are you?’”

When her mother’s phone broke, Isabella would check in periodically via phone with the super of her building to ask if he had seen her and if she was okay.

No Exit

Even if Venezuelan migrants wanted to take a break from the disarray in their home country, the phone makes that a struggle. As previously stated, this direct line between migrant and non-migrant means immigrants get bombarded with messages about the problems in their homeland. Isabella recalled leaving one WhatsApp group of high school friends where hundreds of messages would pass through a day. But those messages sometimes dealt with issues that were matters of survival for Venezuelans.

When the country faced food shortages, members of the group would send out alerts when they discovered groceries in a supermarket and tell others to come. Isabella said,

“When they find something [they’re] like, ‘Hey, I found a 24-pack of rice, does anyone want it? This is the price.’ They kind of agree who’s going to buy what in the group.” The omniscient nature of social media placed unexpected burdens on Venezuelan interviewees. Jimmy said he wouldn’t share images of his life in the U.S. because he didn’t want to offend family and friends in the home country

Jimmy: Because it’s like saying that in this moment of transition [for Venezuela] I am living the high life … As a Venezuelan I respect [what they’re going through]. I am an impartial person, you understand? I cannot brag of the opportunity that I have – of the blessing that I have here when they are over there fighting and losing their lives.

Eliana only will share photos with his siblings through private messages for the same reasons. Sam repeated that worry, saying that the crisis in Venezuela dissuaded her from posting her own photos on Instagram.

Sam: Since coming here [I don’t] post so much, especially because they have killed so many people in Venezuela and to post that we are good and happy here is not good for those that are over there … those that are suffering. I don’t upload photos from birthday parties here or anything else.

She did make an exception for the plebescito, where the images from the vote represented a show of camaraderie with the Venezuelans in the home country. Isabella said her Instagram followers harassed her if she posted images of Florida. One time she posted a photo of fireworks on Independence Day to her account. A friend began to guilt trip her, saying he hoped all the people celebrating the Fourth of July abroad haven’t forgotten about Independence Day in Venezuela22. Another time she posted a photo promoting her catering business. An uncle replied, ‘Oh so you’re not talking about your country. You’re taking a picture in Miami.’” She eventually turned her account private.

Venezuelan migrants didn’t censor themselves in every analogous instance.

Danielle said she would not send photos of Venezuelan meals she’s cooked in the U.S. to family members. But at Christmas time she’d share photos of the festivities to spread holiday cheer. Emil said it would be in bad taste to post photos of a vacation in Florida

“knowing there are other Venezuelans that need necessities.” However, he would forward photos to his family on WhatsApp of a trip to the beach or of a meal he’s eating.

Emil: I share photos of foods that once existed in Venezuela that no longer are available there. I send photos like ‘Mira look what I found.’ [I found] x chocolate or x food. And I send them … I share cookies that they sold in

22 Venezuela declared independence from Spain on July 5, 1811.

Venezuela but now they don’t. … [I show them] Oreos, the mint Oreos, vanilla Oreos, chocolate Oreos, fudge Oreos, gigantic Oreos. I say ‘Mira and share the photos.’

As one might come to expect, his reason for doing the latter serves an indication of his Venezuelan identity.

Chapter Summary

Several variances between Guatemalan and Venezuelan migrants have been noted throughout this process, but no difference stands out more than how the two immigrant populations use their cellphones for transnational information-gathering.

Guatemalans forgo interest23 in this area outside of major national events in the home country. Cellphones let Guatemalan migrants refine their transnational identity through direct interactions with family and the practicing of simultaneous co-presence. Religion, another significant marker of Guatemalan transnational identity, is also practiced online in the same way older generations attended services in the community (Fink, 2003).

Interviewees did sometimes attend a local church on Sundays, but they also welcomed the sharing of frases de reflexion and Bible verses on Facebook newsfeeds or through private messages. The burden of continuous news watching did not exist for

Guatemalans, whose transnational identities seem to be derived from positive experiences like repeated conversations with family that at times occur in their native language, celebrations of special events and cross-border parental relationships.

The constant monitoring of news – and even verifying rumors – crystallizes the dual identity of the Venezuelan transnational migrant. The preserving of bonds between

23 In the open-ended survey that Guatemalan migrants filled out before doing the interview, many respondents commented that they did not use their phone at all for news-gathering or didn’t know how.

migrants and non-migrant family members are a key part of one’s transnational identity but those shared moments for Venezuelans are contaminated by the conflict. This is not to say that Venezuelan migrants would prefer less contact with their homeland. Social media and an inexpensive, direct phone line home possibly ease nerves about what’s occurring in the homeland. Interviewees however portrayed their involvement as draining. Compared to Guatemalans the political migrant from Venezuela deals with a more complicated and thornier transnational identity. This ultimate section on information gathering brings insight into how smartphones can be used in innovative and surprising ways to follow significant events in a home country – and also through that same device additional responsibilities and hassles can be born.

ICTs reorder the flow of information when family members abroad alert uninformed non-migrants about breaking news. The fundamental role of social media in this process reveals the purpose of alternative media sources in the Venezuelan transnational identity. Participants stressed that Facebook had to be used for news because mainstream sources could not be trusted. Nevertheless, these platforms also made Venezuelans vulnerable to misinformation. Dekker and Engbersen (2013) observed that weak ties leave individuals more susceptible to false or unrealistic information, like giving non-migrants naïve and idealistic impressions of what it would be like to migrate. Baird and Hartter (2017) wrote about ICTs generating distrust between agro-pastoralist Maasai farmers in Tanzania. Respondents said that on the phone

“people may lie about issues such as the availability of forage or water so that distant herders do not travel to a particular area” (p. 476). As forage and water is important to the Maasai identity so is political news to the Venezuelan identity, and as a result

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scammers and Internet trolls spread deceptive and distorted stories ostensibly to stir disarray among the social networks. Venezuelan migrants also partake in their own transnational performance that’s been constructed by political polarization. Samet

(2013) analyzed how the murder of a photographer during the failed 2002 coup against

Hugo Chávez turned the deceased’s body into an instantaneous martyr for both sides of the political spectrum. He states that “self-identification with victims is a recurrent albeit underappreciated feature of populist movements” and victimhood allows the movements to “assert themselves as the true and legitimate expressions of political will” (p. 532).

That might occur with the helicopter pilot Perez, about whom several interviewees seemed skeptical, but whose popularity exploded across social media upon his death.

The political prisoner Leopoldo Lopez serves a similar function for the Venezuelan opposition both at home and abroad and who want to form a coherent social bloc without any obvious ideological coherence (ibid). Transnational identity-making occurs faster and in more sophisticated ways than ever before thanks to smartphones.

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CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION

Findings from this study demonstrated the varied ways that smartphones fit into the transnational narrative among Guatemalan and Venezuelan immigrants in South

Florida. The low-cost of smartphones and ease-of-access to social media present migrants with a new method of obtaining social capital that can simplify incorporation and transnationalism. The affordability of smartphones and accessibility of apps and social media – along with the mobility offered by these technologies – shrank the digital divide. A simultaneous co-presence was possible through smartphones, which created more genuine transnational social fields where flows moved in all different directions all- at-once (Nedelcu, 2012). Migrants built deterritorialized spaces where long distances could not deter daily identification and participation.

These tools supported and helped manage a marginal existence. Previous studies have shown that mobile phones enhance how users perform existing activities while not necessarily rewriting a group’s entire way of operating. Baird and Hartter

(2017) examined how the Maasai in Tanzania adopted phones within the context of

“deeply engrained social, cultural and economic norms” and as a result “it may not be that phone use drives land use – but that land use drives phone use” (p. 460). That idea conforms to Rogers’ (2003) Diffusion of Innovations Theory where early adopters of new technology will be more likely to accept an innovation if it is perceived as both better than what it supersedes and existing within the important values and needs of the group. As evidenced by the evolution of popular communication devices, my own research extends our ideas of incorporation and transnationalism by allowing immigrants to improve upon the routines and objectives that they had performed before

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the proliferation of smartphones. The most common digital devices used by migrants did not become popular out-of-nowhere – instead they were better versions of antiquated transnational technologies. Google Maps and Google Translate replaced paper maps and language dictionaries, respectively. YouTube music videos replaced the presence of physical marimbas. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram replaced television as a form of entertainment and newsgathering. WhatsApp, Facebook messenger and

Skype replaced expensive international phone calls and sluggish snail mail services and added video capabilities to the network to improve upon the richness of the interactions.

Venezuelans, who have a short immigrant history in the U.S., took advantage of what Granovetter (1983) refers to as the strength of weak ties. The theory states that weak ties can be more valuable than strong ones because it provides people with more diverse pools of information as opposed to overlapping resources. Haythornthwaite

(2002) elaborated that social media enhances one’s abilities to access that diverse range of individuals. The size of Venezuelan social networks gave the migrants increased opportunities to encounter co-ethnics and job opportunities they might not have found otherwise. WhatsApp groups, Facebook pages, Instagram accounts all served as means for inducing newcomers to meet once-anonymous members of the

Venezuelan community in South Florida. In turn, by widening the digital network, built new local ties and formed a more tightly knit community where none had previously existed. In this sense, the phones created a mutually reinforcing relationship with transnationalism. In most of the findings, transnationalism drove phone use. However, in the case of Venezuelan expanding community ties, the smartphones acted in a transformative manner, where through social networks, individuals illuminated networks

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that they might never have reached without the devices and sometimes reconstructed those relationships in actual physical spaces. Here cellphones produced transnationalism, instead of vice versa. At the same time, the way these networks embedded migrants within a constant realm of communication about Venezuela reinforced the distance between the homeland and could fuel feelings of longing and loneliness.

During the plebescito vote, a throng of far-flung Venezuelans gathered in one place to validate their transnational identity as the opposition to the Maduro

Government. But their physical presence in West Palm Beach that day, fortified the co- ethnic community too. Maria Elena, an undocumented 37-year-old Venezuelan woman, decorated herself in Venezuelan colors and offered glasses of the cooling Venezuelan rice-based drink chicha to sunbaked voters. She gave the beverages away free while promoting her arepa-catering business. Lawyers who specialized on asylum cases placed flyers advertising their services on cars throughout the parking lot where the vote occurred. A digital community became a tangible one through a common national origin and shared political beliefs.

Obstacles such as anti-immigrant laws limited the way undocumented immigrants could use their phone as a function of incorporation and incorporation and could thwart community building. Undocumented immigrants in South Florida could not open bank accounts, obtain driver licenses, and receive on-the-books employment and so on. Without a bank account, they still needed to carry cash everywhere and felt vulnerable to thieves. Without driver licenses, they were limited to job opportunities only within a short distance of where they lived or had to rely on public transportation. If an

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undocumented Guatemalan had a vehicle, police could seize it if he or she were pulled over. Without on-the-books employment, their job opportunities seemed limited to demanding manual labor and unreliable employment prospects. Smartphones could help traverse some of these issues. However legal violence took away some of the most productive benefits of mobile phone ownership, and how that dehumanization process can affect smartphone use deserves deeper research in future studies.

The study corresponds with literature on incorporation and transnationalism where a national origin group’s pioneering settlement history presses upon future immigrants in the area. Portes and Rumbaut (2006) note that a country’s receptiveness played the largest role in determining an immigrant group’s incorporation. Cellphones perhaps allow for an easier time navigating an area’s receptiveness. Guatemalans and

Venezuelans could save time and not risk harm from hostile local populations by testing a host country’s labor market with a smartphone that permits them to make inquiries about work opportunities without needing to arrive at the employer’s main office.

Interviewees used cellphones to take calls about open positions, obtain employment despite limited English language abilities, and learn manual labor skills that that would make them more appealing to business owners. The phones made entering a local, co- ethnic community a less complicated practice.

However, an undocumented Guatemalan who possessed the same smartphone knowhow as a Venezuelan asylee would be capable of doing significantly less on their cellular device. Strikingly, the few Guatemalans I interviewed who had a green card or some type of documented status, used their smartphones in ways most similarly to

Venezuelans with legal status. The result could indicate those U.S. government policies

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– and the legal violence created by anti-immigrant laws – restricted Guatemalan upward mobility in the U.S. more than economic background or educational attainment. Still

Guatemalans who were not limited by anti-immigrant laws, at times negotiated old means of transnational correspondence that were learned through strong familial ties even when more efficient options existed. For example, Yonas used Intermex to send money home to Guatemala although cheaper routes were available since he had his own U.S. bank account.

As Gonzalez, Castro and Rodriguez (2009) stated, a desire to be in touch with families back home drove technology adoption for immigrations, seemingly regardless of socioeconomic status. Shaker (2017) discerned in her study of Iranian migrant women that they “felt empowerment through transnational communication practices and active engagement in the social networks of their families” because the phone allowed the participants to deepen their identities through a digital connectedness. In South

Florida, Guatemalan mothers, Venezuelan sons and so on used cellphones to similar effect. Interviewees repeatedly stated the importance of smartphones in maintaining a routine relationship with non-migrant family members.

Venezuelan migrants forced themselves into a cross-border limbo that was intensified by their smartphone use. Interviewees described their lives in South Florida through the lens of the crisis in Venezuela. Participants saw their social media posts or community events they attended shaped by the situation in the homeland. Migrants feared looking unsupportive of the opposition that had not or could not emigrate, which created a singular burden that may be affecting integration/incorporation into

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mainstream U.S. society despite the advantages of a higher socioeconomic status and higher education level than other immigrant groups on average.

The findings indicated that smartphones expanded local networks and encouraged social and economic incorporation. Yet there was little evidence of the device being used to foster political and civic incorporation. In fact, the instantaneous ties back to the homeland might have discouraged political incorporation even for those immigrants who resided legally in the U.S. Venezuelan migrants feared looking unsupportive of the opposition that still lived in the home country, even though getting involved in local politics could benefit the migrant community. This circumstance is not unprecedented. Austin (2017) discussed how Haitian immigrants have had little political success in New York and New Jersey regions despite a long immigration history to the area because Haitian associations in New York City historically did not want to take

“members’ attention and resources away from more important issues in Haiti” (p. 39).

On the whole, these findings illustrate how cellphones have become embedded in the lives of immigrant communities and that they create new advantages and problems not detailed in previous studies on transnationalism among immigrant groups in the United States. The new reality that migrants, like most U.S. residents and citizens, are entrenched on social networks and have busy mobile (phone) existences highlight the importance of recognizing the consequences of these experiences.

Facebook, a platform with 2 billion users worldwide, frequently has been a subject of criticism for its handling of users’ private data. Fuchs (2012) wrote that the main privacy issue with Facebook is “which user-data are used by Facebook for advertising purposes; in which sense users are exploited in this process; and how users can be

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protected from the negative consequences of economic surveillance on Facebook” (p.

141). That Guatemalan and Venezuelan immigrant networks are deeply rooted in

Facebook and other social networks, most notably Facebook Messenger, (Facebook- owned) Instagram and (Facebook-owned) WhatsApp, underscore that users cannot simply quit these networks without facing the loss of manifold virtual networks.

Abandoning social media is a privilege that many migrants cannot afford when their own support systems thrive offline (Lorenz, 2018). This creates a complex web where migrant lives are entrenched on social media, privacy is a problem on social media and privacy is pivotal to migrant lives. That overarching dilemma is significant for transnationalism research.1

Limitations of the Study

The study perhaps was limited by the selection of Guatemalans, who all were encountered at immigrant resource centers in Jupiter or Lake Worth. The political climate made this challenging, as even Guatemalans in the center were hesitant about the interviews. The fact that literacy is an issue for Guatemalan migrants represents another limitation of the study. I did not interview any Guatemalans with literacy problems. However, staff at the Guatemalan-Maya Center have told me that close to 50 percent of their visitors cannot read. Although illiterate migrants might own smartphones, their abilities to take advantage of the device would be severely limited.

Baird and Hartter (2017) interviewed illiterate Maasai farmers in Tanzania, and one commented, ‘Most of us call not like you [researchers] who are always using your

1 See Appendix C for suggestions on ways that migrants can use mobile phones and social media securely and to their benefit.

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fingers].’ Illiterate migrants might observe smartphones similarly and that is worthy of its own study. The Venezuelan crisis also seemed to generate a limitation. By the end of the summer, El Sol was enrolling almost a half-dozen Venezuelan newcomers in the day-laborer program. These Venezuelan migrants seemed to come from lower socioeconomic statuses than the first wave immigrants did, and the ones I spoke with said they headed north from Miami to Jupiter for work and a cheaper cost of living.

Those late arrivals conceivably faced more challenges with affording a fully functional cellphone than the interviewees I met earlier in the summer.

Implications for Future Research

The research presented here examines a broad swath of smartphone uses by

Venezuelan and Guatemalan immigrants in the context of transnationalism. The results should not be generalized beyond the study. Many of the trends discussed in the findings could be scrutinized more deeply in future research. Does “migrant mothering” produce gendered uses of international phone calls? Most female interviewees learned their phone skills from a male relative. Could that also affect the abilities learned? Does social media harassment make migrants less likely to enter a transnational community and obtain the benefits that come from seeking out strengthened co-ethnic ties? Or broadly, do other migrant groups in the U.S. follow similar trends in smartphone use?

The most exciting area of future study would be telling the other half of the story. This research project rarely addressed the effects of transnational smartphone communication on non-migrants. On the Venezuelan side, do the experiences of migrants abroad tempt non-migrants to leave the home country? What advantages, if any, come from having a migrant relative in the U.S.? I would have liked to address what type of cellphone infrastructure communities in Guatemala maintain, and if

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monetary remittances are being used to help build that infrastructure. Although it did not come up in my interviews, infrastructure conditions back home could affect the frequency of communication (Shaker, 2017). To understand more comprehensively the relationship between smartphones and migration among these immigrant groups, a thorough study of the role of smartphone communication from the perspective of the home country is recommended.

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APPENDIX A COPY OF THE SURVEY INSTRUMENT

Preguntas de la entrevista Encuesta de uso de teléfonos celulares 1. ¿Qué tipo de teléfono celular usa? ______2. Mi celular is económico. (Elige uno) Totalmente en desacuerdo En desacuerdo Ni de acuerdo ni en desacuerdo De Acuerdo Totalmente de acuerdo 3. ¿Cómo usa su celular? (Elija todas las que apliquen) Hacer llamadas locales | Hacer llamadas internacionales | Enviar mensajes a familiars y amigos en Florida | Enviar mensajes a familiars y amigos en mi pais de origen | Enviar correos electrónicos | Pagar facturas | Leer noticias locales en línea | Leer noticias internacionales en línea | Jugar juegos | Enviar dinero

4. ¿Qué aplicaciones utiliza con frecuencia (3 o más veces por semana) en su celular?

Facebook / WhatsApp / Twitter / Instagram / Snapchat

Google Maps / Skype / Otro (Especifique) ______5. ¿Qué medios de comunicación utiliza para conocer las noticias locales?

______6. ¿Qué medios de comunicación utiliza para conocer las noticias en tu país de origen? ______7. ¿Qué año llegó en los Estados Unidos? _____ 8. Edad: ______9. Ciudad y Pais de Origen: ______10. Género: ______

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Cellphone Use Survey

1. What type of phone do you own? ______2. My cellphone is affordable. (Choose one)

Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

3. How do you use your cellphone? (Choose all that apply) Make local calls / Make international calls / Text friends and family in Florida

Text friends and family in my country of origin / Send emails / Pay bills

Read local news online / Read international news online / Play games / Send money

4. Which applications do you use frequently (3 or more times a week) on your phone?

Facebook / WhatsApp / Twitter / Instagram / Snapchat Google Maps / Skype / Other (Please specify) ______

5. Which media outlets do you use to find out about local news?

______

6. Which media outlets do you use to find out about news in your country of origin? ______

7. What year you arrive to the U.S.? ____ 8. Age: ______9. City and Country of Origin: ______10. Gender: ______

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APPENDIX B COPY OF THE INTERVIEW INSTRUMENT

Preguntas de la entrevista Nuevos medios e inmigrantes en el Sur de la Florida: Cómo los migrantes usan los teléfonos móviles para mantenerse conectados Edad: País de origen: Cuándo llegó a Estados Unidos: INFORMACIÓN BÁSICA DE TELÉFONO ¿Qué tipo de teléfono celular usa? ¿Cuándo consiguió su celular? ¿Por qué tiene un teléfono? ¿Cuáles funciones de su móvil le resultan más útiles? ¿Fue fácil aprender a usar su dispositivo móvil? ¿Cuál es la función más útil de su teléfono celular? ¿Cómo la aprendió a usar? ¿Cómo se entera de los nuevos usos que puede tener su celular? ¿Podría ser diferente su experiencia de inmigración sin su teléfono? Si su respuesta es sí explique ¿cómo? USO DEL TELÉFONO EN LA VIDA COTIDIANA ¿Qué tipo de trabajo desempeña usted en Florida? ¿Puede su teléfono ayudarle a encontrar trabajo? Si es así, ¿puede describir ese proceso? ¿Puede su celular ayudarle a encontrar atención médica? Si es así, ¿puede describir ese proceso? ¿Puede su dispositivo móvil ayudarle a encontrar asesoramiento legal? Si es así, ¿puede describir ese proceso? ¿Su móvil puede ayudarle a encontrar vivienda? Si es así, ¿cómo describe ese proceso? ¿Puede encontrar entretenimiento en su teléfono? Si es así, ¿puede describir ese proceso? ¿Puede encontrar noticias de interés por medio de su celular? Si es así, ¿puede describir ese proceso? ¿El uso de su teléfono móvil le permite mantenerse en contacto con sus familiares y amigos en su país de origen? Si es así ¿puede describir ese proceso? ¿Con qué frecuencia se comunica con su familia en su país de origen? ¿Qué medio de comunicación prefiere usar para comunicarse con su familia?

¿Cuál es la duración aproximada de las conversaciones telefónicas con su familia? ¿Cómo se entera de los hechos noticiosos de su país de origen? ¿Cuáles cuentas de redes sociales usa? ¿Por qué? ¿Su celular le brinda la facilidad para encontrar actividades sociales para hacer en Florida? Además de usar su dispositivo móvil, ¿tiene otra forma de averiguar sobre actividades sociales en Florida? ¿Puede calcular cuántos números de contacto tiene su teléfono aproximadamente? PERCEPCIONES SOBRE PROPIEDAD DEL TELÉFONO ¿Cree que es importante que los inmigrantes tengan un celular? ¿Qué es lo que menos le gusta de su dispositivo móvil? ¿Siente que su teléfono le puede ayudar a aumentar la productividad? ¿Cree que su celular puede ayudarle a reducir la soledad? ¿Puede su teléfono celular ayudarle a sentirse más seguro?

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¿Te hace sentir feliz tener un móvil? ¿De qué manera el teléfono puede ser una distracción? ¿Es costoso poseer un teléfono celular? ¿Cree que su dispositivo móvil le sería útil en una situación de emergencia? INFORMACIÓN GENERAL ¿Cuál es su nivel de educación? ¿Qué hacía en su país de origen antes de mudarse a Florida? ¿Por qué decidió emigrar de su país de origen a la Florida? ¿Fue usted propietario de un celular antes de salir de su país de origen? ¿Puede explicar cuál fue el uso que le dio en su viaje a Júpiter? ¿Qué sabía de la ciudad Júpiter, Florida antes de llegar aquí? ¿Cómo supo de ella? ¿Alguna vez vio fotos sobre Júpiter en redes sociales?

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APPENDIX C PRACTICALITY OF RESEARCH PROJECT

The findings from my research demonstrate a number of practical uses of the smartphone in the context of migrant incorporation and transnationalism. To conclude this project, I would like to list some of the most useful skills for new migrants to learn on a smartphone. Community leaders both within the migrant group and at immigrant- supporting organizations can teach these abilities to newcomers, and strengthen the power of cellphone as a tool for managing the immigration experience.

1. Find out phone and network costs. The cost of paying for a phone varied from

person to person, and depending on the area, some providers were favored

more than others. Putting together a localized guide to buying a smartphone in

the community would be advantageous for new immigrants who potentially can

get swindled by mobile phone providers.

2. Offer a workshop on basic phone uses. Community leaders can host a short

session to instruct migrants on purchasing a phone and how to use basic

functions. They can also answer questions about trust and privacy with social

media and assuage doubts and concerns about how the device works.

3. Teach primary phone apps. Smartphones all come with basic applications like

an alarm clock, calendar, notepad, weather app and camera. These should be

taught to newcomers, along with how to download and use apps that are vital for

transnational communication like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.

4. Download Spotify or Pandora, etc. This might seem inconsequential, but music

provides an easily accessible form of entertainment for immigrants. Many

interviewees listened to songs on YouTube that reminded them of home and

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practiced English through song lyrics. Free, ad-supported versions of music apps

like Spotify or Pandora offer a more user-friendly design than YouTube.

5. Demonstrate YouTube How-To Videos: Most interviewees learned new

abilities just by looking up YouTube videos that explained subjects ranging from

car maintenance to arts and crafts. I recommend showing how YouTube is an

important source for improving employability skills.

6. Demonstrate Google Translate and Google Maps: These were two of the

most essential apps for incorporation. Explain how to use Google Translate to

not just translate words, but also to translate speech and documents. Explain

how to use Google Maps as a tool for getting around the neighborhood, finding

places in the area,

7. Learn where to find free wifi. I would encourage immigrant centers to install

free, password-protected wifi network migrants. In addition, it could be

advantageous to show immigrants how to connect to public networks at the local

library or a café.

8. Warn against scams and harassment and emphasize privacy. Go over

fundamental controls on social media for maintaining privacy. Advise new users

not to respond to messages from people they don’t recognize and warn about the

possibilities of scams on social media. Instruct individuals on how to block other

social users who might be harassing them.

9. Set up WhatsApp Groups and/or Facebook Pages. Social media groups can

help strengthen communal ties and sustain contacts with family and friends

around the world. Describe how the groups can be used to monitor local news,

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such as job opportunities or crime in the neighborhood. Brainstorm ground rules

to prevent disputes and harassment in the groups.

10. Set up an email account. Help migrants set up an email account through Gmail

or another trustworthy service. Explain how to use email for job hunting and

sending vital documents.

11. Teach how to use digital wallets and make online payments. For those living

in a marginalized community, it’s safer to not carry cash. Instruct migrants who

have a bank account about how to set up apps like Venmo or Cash, how to pay

expenses like utilities online and how to use service apps like Uber or GrubHub.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Matthew Levin earned a Master of Arts from the Center for Latin American

Studies at the University of Florida in the spring of 2018. He worked for almost four years in Costa Rica as a newspaper reporter. At the start of 2015, he took a job at the

Houston Chronicle as a member of the online and social media team. He always kept up his interest in Latin America and found a way to combine both his interests in the region with his background in communication and journalism in graduate school — where he studies how technology has changed the immigration experience.

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