"Latinyorks: Insertion, Identity and Transnational Imaginary": A presentation by Juan Carlos Narvaez Gutierrez April 7, 2009

"Latinyorks: insertion, identity and transnational imaginary" is a study that analyzes the insertion of Latin American youth - Dominican, Salvadoran and Mexican- in the city of New York, in four basic dimensions: territorial, social, political and cultural. From their experience of insertion as international migrants, the study examines how youth construct their identities beyond the local experience, from a subjectivity anchored in a transnational imaginary: "because words and feelings cross borders and change the life of the others". In addition, when young people are the makers of these dynamics, unlike adult migrants, they exchange specific codes that perhaps do not imply factual, material or monetary exchanges, but other types of exchange that contain information, knowledge, feelings, experiences that communicate another form of living in an adult and global world: subjective recreations of that transnationality.

This investigation follows Narváez Gutiérrez' published work: A Transnational route: To San Salvador via Los Angeles. Spaces of youthful interaction in a migratory context (2007) that is a peripheral glance at the construction of the Mara Salvatrucha 13 or MS13, - a much known youthful gang in a migratory context, and as a (transnational) approach to the Salvadoran community in Los Angeles, California.

Juan Carlos Narváez Gutiérrez is a PhD candidate in the Social Sciences program at FLACSO, Mexico City. The Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales - FLACSO) is an international organization created with the purpose of enhancing the social and political analysis in Latin America through graduate programs and academic research.

Organized by the Mexico-Minnesota Dialogue Collaborative.

Official Website: http://www.ias.umn.edu/collabs08-09/MexicoMinnesota.php