The role of confianza in ethnic social communication among Mexican immigrants making lives in the United States

This research investigates how the cultural construct of confianza shapes Mexican ethnic social communication, or coethnic interaction, during adaptation. Using the ethnography of communication, this paper illustrates how confianza makes available the communicative means of revealing oneself, speaking directively, and asking questions, but makes unavailable the means of violating confidences, judging, and expressing superiority. This research argues that the complexity of these coethnic interactions warrants additional research and suggests that scholars begin their studies by considering if and to what extent immigrants feel able to engage with one another prior to investigating adaptive outcomes of their interactions.     

Relationships de Confianza and the organisation of collective social action

This article examines the social and cultural organisation of learning and community change in a largely new immigrant and under-resourced neighbourhood in the US Situating our investigation within a local social movement for food justice, we use an ethnographic lens to study how learning is made to become consequential across relationships between people, across activities, and contexts. Our four-year ethnographic study highlights how community health workers (promotoras) build relationships de confianza as a tool that mediated new forms of action in the focal neighbourhood. We demonstrate how relationships de confianza have laid a foundation to (a) mediate social networks to organise for change and (b) promote solidarity through the response to urgent needs, creating a more holistic model of community health and sustainability. Drawing attention to relational resources foregrounds social actors and their ingenuity, promoting equity-oriented scale-making.