Trust Under Threat: Social Capital and Informal Networks among Honduran Immigrant Women in Durham, NC

• In Event: Latina/o Sociology Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

Understanding how immigrants rely on social networks under conditions of legal precarity remains central to research on immigrant incorporation. This is particularly so for new immigrant destinations. While scholarship often treats social capital as a stabilizing resource, less is known about how perceived threat, such as immigration enforcement, shapes whether and how networks are used in everyday life. Drawing on a mixed-methods case study of Honduran immigrant women in Durham, North Carolina, I examine how heightened immigration enforcement and legal uncertainty reshape the cognitive and emotional evaluation of trust, reciprocity, and social engagement. I show that perceived threat operates as a cognitive filter between the structural availability of networks and their practical activation as social capital. Honduran women describe heightened vigilance, selective activation of ties, and reconstructed participation in informal economies. These included domains of work, caregiving, and community engagement. Threat doesn’t eliminate social capital; it reconfigures it by narrowing trust while intensifying reliance on tightly bounded networks. By centering women’s everyday decision-making, I advance a theory of social capital under threat and demonstrate how enforcement atmospheres can quietly undermine incorporation by making informal support systems more costly and unevenly accessible.

Author

• Ana Ramirez Calderon, University of Pennsylvania