Survival of the Knitted: Immigrant Social Networks in a Stratified World

Through this ethnography of West Indian social networks in New York, London, and the West Indies, Vilna Bashi shows how migrant life is patterned, structured, and regulated to provide critical financial and emotional support. She develops an important new general model of transnational immigrant network organization, the “hub and spoke” model, in which select veteran migrants (hubs) act as migration experts and send repeatedly for newcomers (spokes).

Survival of the Knitted details the ongoing importance of networks throughout the resettlement process. Network hubs use their connections and reputations to find jobs for immigrants and to influence their housing choices. They shape the migrants’ experience of racial hierarchies and social stratification in a new country. As Bashi expertly shows, geographic mobility is a vehicle for socioeconomic and cultural mobility, but in ways more complex and network-dependent than the standard migration story would tell.