Circuits, Sanctuary and Sympathy: Social Resources and Economic Lives of Immigrants

Karla Valeria Segovia

Advisor: Virgil Storr, PhD, Department of Economics

Committee Members: Peter J. Boettke, Stefanie Haeffele

Buchanan Hall, #D180
February 20, 2025, 10:00 AM to 01:00 PM

Abstract:

This dissertation examines the social and economic dimensions of Central American migration to the United States through three interrelated studies. The first chapter explores how newly arrived Central American immigrants navigate economic life using Zelizer circuits of commerce—informal but structured social networks through which housing, employment, and financial resources circulate.  Drawing on interviews with immigrants in the Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland metropolitan area, this study highlights how these circuits blend market transactions with social relationships, shaping economic outcomes in Central American immigrant communities.

The second chapter analyzes the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s, in which thousands of U.S. citizens defied immigration laws to protect asylum seekers. This chapter applies polycentric governance theory to explain how decentralized religious and activist networks overcame collective action challenges, sustaining large-scale civil disobedience. By examining the movement’s institutional structures and interactions with U.S. federalism, this study contributes to the understanding of grassroots governance in social movements.

The third chapter investigates acts of kindness toward migrants during their treacherous journeys by land to the U.S., applying Adam Smith’s concept of circles of sympathy. Unlike social capital, which depends on stable relationships, Smithian sympathy accounts for how fleeting yet critical aid emerges from strangers—fellow travelers, local Mexicans, and U.S. activists—through moral imagination. This study illustrates how individuals extend beneficence beyond their immediate circles, even at great personal cost. This beneficence has been critical for the successful journey of thousands of migrants who at some point or another have found themselves in need of help.

Together, these chapters provide an analysis of how social ties have shaped the economic lives of immigrants from journey to arrival and eventual settling. These investigations reveal the social infrastructures and mechanisms that sustain mobility and survival of Central American immigrants in the U.S.