Leveraging Relations in Diaspora

Book excerpt: This Element expands the horizon of sociopragmatic research by offering a first inquiry into the sociocultural norms that underlie the establishment and maintenance of interpersonal relations in a diasporic context. Based on accounts of the practices that Spanish-speaking Latin Americans engage in pursuit of employment, primarily gathered in life-story interviews, it captures the social reality of members of this social group as they build interpersonal relations and establish new contractual obligations with each other away from home. It examines occupational recommendations as a diasporic relational practice whereby the relationship between the recommender and the recommendee becomes part of the value being exchanged and the moral order on which the practice is established and maintained through an interlocked system of favours. The Element offers new social pragmatics insights beyond the dyad in a contemporary globalised context characterised by social inequality.