Fictive Kin as Social Capital in New Immigrant Communities
Author(s): Helen Rose Ebaugh and Mary Curry
Source: Sociological Perspectives , Summer, 2000, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 189-
209
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1389793
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FICTIVE KIN AS SOCIAL CAPITAL IN NEW
IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES
HELEN ROSE EBAUGH*
University of Houston
MARY CURRY
University of Houston
ABSTRACT: Fictive kin, defined asfamily-type relationships, based not
on blood or marriage but rather on religious rituals or closefriendship ties,
constitutes a type of social capital that many immigrant groups bring with
them and that facilitates their incorporation into the host society. We
describe three types of fictive kin systems in different immigrant populations
and argue that their functions are similar across various ethnic groups
and types offictive kin relationships. Fictive kin systems expand the network
of individuals who provide social and economic capital for one another
and thereby constitute a resource to immigrants as they confront problems
of settlement and incorporation. While anthropologists have long noted
systems offictive kin in premodern and modernizing societies, sociologists
have paid little attention to fictive kin networks. We argue, however, that
systems of fictive kin constitute an important part of the social networks
that draw immigrants to a particular locale and provide them with the
material and social support that enables them to become incorporated into a
new and often hostile society. Data are derivedfrom interviews with informants
from various immigrant groups in Houston, Texas, and from a
Yoruba community in Brooklyn, New York.
"Fictive kin" (also called ritual kin) is a term that refers to a type of social relationship
that anthropologists have described and analyzed in premodern and modernizing
societies for more than fifty years. However, sociologists, who tend to
focus more on modern, urban societies, have rarely examined fictive kin structures
among the populations they study and have done little comparative or theoretical
work regarding the structure and functions of fictive kin systems among
different groups. By fictive kin we mean a relationship, based not on blood or
marriage but rather on religious rituals or close friendship ties, that replicates
many of the rights and obligations usually associated with family ties. In examin*Direct
all correspondence to: Helen Rose Ebaugh, Department of Sociology, University of Houston, Houston, TX
77204-3474; e-mail: ebaugh@uh.edu.
Sociological Perspectives, Volume 43, Number 2, pages 189-209.
Copyright ? 2000 by Pacific Sociological Association. All rights reserved.
Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press,
Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223.
ISSN: 0731-1214
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190 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 43, Number 2,2000
ing a variety of new immigrant religious institutions in Houston, Texas, we are
discovering how pervasive and important fictive kinship is in these populations.
In this article we present some of our findings on fictive kin among new immigrant
groups in an attempt to sensitize researchers to the importance of this type
of social relationship for understanding ways in which immigrants deal with
social problems that arise in the process of settlement and incorporation. The
study is exploratory in that we did not set out systematically to study fictive kinship.
Rather, in the course of studying religion among new immigrants, we stumbled
upon the importance of the concept for understanding both their familial
and their religious systems. Because we did not design our original study with fictive
kinship as a primary focus, our purpose here is to argue, on the basis of our
limited data, for the importance of the concept in immigrant communities and for
the need for field researchers to include the concept in future studies.
Before the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, most immigrants to the United
States were either Catholic or Protestant Europeans and familiar with the traditional
system of godparents, namely, individuals who serve as ceremonial sponsors
at baptism and confirmation and who assume special rights and obligations in
regard to their godchildren. The "new immigrants" who arrived after 1965 brought
with them fictive kin systems, also rooted in religion, that differ in structure and
custom from the Christian system and fulfill far broader functions than they do for
Americans of European descent. We describe various fictive kin systems among
new immigrants and show how this institution provides social capital for them as
they confront problems of settlement and incorporation into the host society.
SOCIAL CAPITAL AND SOCIAL NETWORKS
Bourdieu's (1986) expansion of the concept "capital" to include social, cultural,
and symbolic, as well as economic, resources provides sociologists with a set of
analytic concepts that enrich our understanding of social stratification processes
at both the individual and the aggregate levels. Here we concentrate on only one
of these types of resources, social capital, and explore the role it plays in the wellbeing
of immigrants. As defined by Bourdieu, social capital refers to positions and
relationships in groupings and social networks, including memberships, network
ties, and social relations that can serve to enhance an individual's access to opportunities,
information, material resources, and social status.
Social networks constitute the specific aspect of social capital that has generated
the most interest and research among sociologists during the past decade. Specifically,
attention has been directed to the examination of the structures of ties that
link individuals, as well as collectivities, and how they affect a variety of outcomes.
The extent and types of social networks in which actions are embedded
have been found to affect educational achievement (Coleman and Hoffer 1987),
income (Boxman, DeGraaf, and Flap 1991), entry into organizations (Bridges and
Villemez 1986; Montgomery 1992), perceived potential for career advancement
(Ibarra 1995), and actual career mobility (Podolny and Baron 1997). In addition,
numerous studies have documented how such networks influence whether and
where to migrate (Grasmuck and Pessar 1991; Pedraza 1991), return migration
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Fictive Kin as Social Capital 191
and ties with the home count
Massey et al. 1987; Rodriguez 1987), and settlement experiences in the housing
and labor markets (Baily and Waldinger 1991; Hagan 1994; Kwon, Ebaugh, and
Hagan 1997; Massey et al. 1987; Rodriguez and Nufiez 1986).
Despite growing interest in the ways that social networks facilitate the settlement
and incorporation of immigrants into a host society, the institution of fictive
kin, which is widely shared by immigrant populations from Spanish-speaking
countries, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, has not been studied extensively. Fictive
kin systems expand the network of individuals who are expected to provide
social and economic capital for one another and thereby constitute a resource available
to immigrants as they confront the problems of incorporation in a new and
strange society. Nonetheless, a review of recent anthologies dealing with new immigrant
groups and their family structures in the United States reveals that little attention
has been paid to this phenomenon (e.g., Feagin 1978; Gleason 1992; McAdoo
1993; Mindel, Habenstein, and Wright 1988; Queen, Habenstein, and Quadagno
1985; Roschelle 1997; Takaki 1987; Taylor 1998; Zinn and Eitzen 1993). There are a
number of articles that describe specific structures of fictive kin, especially the compadrazgo
of Latin America; however, systems of fictive kin have not been studied
across immigrant groups.' Perhaps the reason that sociologists overlook the existence
and importance of fictive kin in new irrmmigrant communities is that, historically,
the institution has been studied by anthropologists, who focus primarily on nonWestern
and Mesoamerican societies, rather than on Western, industrialized ones.
We focus here on three types of fictive kin systems and show how each is structured
in different immigrant communities. We then describe the functions that fictive
kin serve and argue that these functions are similar across various ethnic
groups and fictive kin types. Finally, we explore the implications of fictive kin for
these communities, both for mitigating against the development of alienation and
social disorganization and as a resource for the solution of problems. Data are
derived from interviews with informants from various immigrant groups in
Houston, Texas, and from a Yoruba community in Brooklyn, New York.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The first systematic accounts of fictive kin by anthropologists focused
padrazgo (e.g., Foster 1953; Mintz and Wolf 1950; Paul 1942), a concept th
to a web of interpersonal relationships established primarily through participation
in the Catholic ritual of baptism. This rite involves three individuals or
groups of individuals: the initiate, usually a child, who is being baptized; the parents
of the child; and the ceremonial sponsor(s) of the child. As a result of baptism,
three sets of relationships are established. The first links the child and his or
her ceremonial sponsors, one or more persons who are often, but not necessarily,
outside the limits of the child's immediate biological family; the second links the
parents to the child's ceremonial sponsor(s); and the third consists of ties between
the sponsors (when there is more than one). The Catholic church also prescribes a
sponsor or godparent to stand for a child at confirmation. This individual must be
at least fourteen years old, of the same sex as the candidate, and not a parent or
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192 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 43, Number 2,2000
baptismal godparent. Marriage godparents are also customary in some countries
but not required by the Church. In some Latin American communities, godparenthood
has been elaborated into the ceremonial sponsorship of houses, crosses,
altars, carnivals, circumcision, the future crop, and commercial dealings. Nutrini
and White (1977) describe thirty-one well-established occasions on which individuals
enter compadrazgo relationships in rural Tlaxcalan.
Beginning in the 1950s, anthropologists began to document institutions comparable
to compadrazgo in other societies and cultural traditions: Spain (Foster
1953; Pitt-Rivers 1958), Italy (Anderson 1956), eastern Turkey (Magnarella and
Turkdogan 1973; Sertel 1971), Hungary (Fel and Hofer 1969), Yugoslavia (Hammel
1968), Greece (Aschenbrenner 1975a), Sri Lanka (Stirrat 1975), and Belgium (Vandekerskhove
1981). Although there are variations in the structure and functions of ritual
kinship systems among these societies, each system is based on the Catholic practice
of godparenthood established at baptism, and therefore there are common characteristics
as well, including a spiritual affinity between godparent(s) and godchild, as
well as between godparent(s) and biological parents; social and economic expectations;
affective ties that extend beyond godparent-godchild to the adults involved
in the co-parenthood relationship; proscription of sexual involvement and marriage
among ritual kin; the integrative function of ritual kin networks for linking
people of the same or different social classes; and prescriptions of respect and ritual
etiquette on the part of godchildren toward their godparent(s), of biological parents
toward the godparent(s) of their children, and of co-sponsors toward one another. As
Gudeman (1975) argues, these obligations are expressions of underlying moral relationships;
they are the outer signs of the spiritual bonds that are inherent in the
Catholic tradition of baptismal sponsorship. As a result, ritual kin bonds, and
the obligations inherent in them, take on a sacred dimension, become to some
degree "spiritualized," and are deeply engrained in the moral culture of the society.
The anthropological literature also includes examples of ritual kin systems that
are not embedded in a specific religious tradition, such as the dharma-atmyor kinship
structure in rural Bangladesh described by Sarker (1980). In this system, fictive
kin relationships are established among Hindus, among Muslims, between
Hindus and Muslims, and between upper- and lower-caste Hindus. Kin types
exist for such basic relationships as godfather, godmother, godsister, godbrother
and friend. The reasons for establishing such relationships are both social and
economic. For example, couples who have no children may have a godchild or
godchildren whom they treat as they would a natural child, or individuals who
do not have blood brothers or sisters often take on godbrothers or godsisters
whom they treat as blood brothers or sisters. Fictive kin relationships also make it
possible, for example, for poor persons to ask influential persons of the village for
financial assistance in exchange for taking care of them in their old age. Dharmaatmyor
is established between two persons through a social ceremony in which
the relationship is made public and mutual rights and duties are sanctioned by
the community. The system is deeply embedded in cultural tradition, but it is not
directly tied to religious practice.
Japan, likewise, has a fictive kin system that is unrelated to religious tradition,
the oyabun-kobun (Ishino 1953). Persons usually unrelated by close kin ties enter
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Fictive Kin as Social Capital 193
into a compact to assume obligations of a diffuse nature similar to those ascribed
to members of one's immediate family. The relationship is established by means
of a ceremony involving many of the expressive symbols of birth and marriage.
The terms of address and the assignment of roles in the oyabun-kobun network
are patterned on the Japanese family system: the leader becomes a ritual parent,
and his followers become symbolic children. These "children," in turn, are ritual
siblings to one another, and seniority among them is formally recognized. Like a
blood-related family, this ritual family can extend over several generations.
Two exceptions to the dearth of literature on fictive kin among new immigrants
are Li's (1977) historical study of Chinese immigrants and Fjellman and Gladwin's
(1985) work on Haitians in South Florida. Li shows how fictive kin ties were
developed by Chinese immigrants to cope with laws that sought to bar them from
the United States. During the exclusionary era, one of the few classes exempted
were children of Chinese-American citizens. Thus were born the "paper sons,"
Chinese men who claimed fictive kinship with a Chinese-American father. The
Chinese Americans falsely reported sons born in China as a means of obtaining
birth certificates, which could later be sold at great profit. Sometimes actual fictive
kin relationships were established between Chinese-American "fathers" and their
"paper sons." Often, however, the parties never knew each other. In the case of the
Chinese, therefore, Li shows how fictive kin ties may be formed and may function
as a response to existing immigration laws. Fjellman and Gladwin describe how a
Haitian extended family system, inclusive of both biological and fictive kin, makes
it possible for immigrants to survive, and in some cases prosper, under harsh conditions
in South Florida. The wide range of blood and fictive kin can be called on for
reciprocal support even when family members live in different cities and communities.
For example, the Haitian Creole relationship of kouzin is considerably broader
and involves more mutual obligations than the American counterpart, cousin.
Kouzins may not be blood relatives at all but close friends of oneself and one's family.
Although most research on friendship networks among Anglos fails to document
any type of fictive kin relations (e.g., Adams and Bliezner 1989; Rubin 1986),
two studies of older Anglo women mention fictive kin. MacRae (1992) found that
40 percent of her sample of elderly women reported having at least one fictive kin
relationship; and Rubenstein, Alexander, and Goodman (1991) discuss "constructed"
kin ties among never-married, childless, older women. These relationships, however,
are not embedded in deep cultural traditions that would make them normative
or common in Anglo society. The proliferation of stepfamily relationships
during the past several decades (Cherlin 1981; Furstenberg and Cherlin 1991) and
the increasing number of gay families (Weston 1991) are introducing a type of fictive
kin or "quasi-kin" (as Furstenberg and Cherlin [1991] call them) into Anglo
culture. However, these emerging forms of family are not yet widely embedded in
the culture, and they lack the stability and normative acceptance provided by the
centuries of tradition surrounding the fictive kin systems being brought into
the United States by new immigrants.
The most promising sources of ideas about the possible role of fictive kin
among immigrants in the United States are studies of the African-American community,
where this phenomenon has long been recognized by scholars (AschenThis
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194 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 43, Number 2,2000
brenner 1975b; Stack 1974). In fact, Gutman (1976) provides evidence that during
the transport of African slaves to the Americas, and later on the plantations, parents
and other adults taught children to address older persons, who were unrelated
to them by either blood or marriage, by the title "aunt" or "uncle." This
practice, he argues, served two important functions. It helped to socialize children
into the slave community, and it acted to bind unrelated individuals to each other
through reciprocal obligations. Two types of fictive kinship networks still exist in
the African-American community. One form develops among unrelated age peers
(Anderson 1978; Liebow 1967). Common expressions to denote these special ties
are "going for brother" or "going for sister" (Liebow 1967; Stack 1974). In the other
form, fictive kin relationships involve the incorporation of unrelated individuals
into an extended family network (Aschenbrenner 1975b; Kennedy 1980; Stack
1974), where they are referred to as "aunt or uncle," "play mother/ play father," or
"play brother/ play sister." Because both African Americans and new immigrants
experience a disadvantaged status in U.S. society, including the challenges that
accompany discrimination, social dislocation, and, often, poverty, it would not be
surprising to find that in both communities fictive kin serve as social and economic
resources that can be used to survive in a hostile social environment.
METHODOLOGY
Data for this exploratory study are derived from three sources: (1) a four-year
(1988-92) in-depth study of a Yoruba community in Brooklyn, New York, and a
briefer study in Houston (1997-98); (2) thirty interviews conducted in 1996 with
members of eight immigrant groups in Houston; and (3) data from a three-year
project on religion, ethnicity, and the new immigrants (RENIR) in fourteen religious
congregations in Houston.2
Houston is one of the five urban areas in the United States that receive the largest
number of immigrants, and it does so from a variety of sending countries. The 1990
census listed Houston's population as 27 percent Hispanic, including immigrants
from Mexico and every Central and South American country. The projection for the
2000 census is that Hispanics will constitute 39 percent of the Houston population.
In the 1996 study, we included ten informants from a range of Latin American countries
(Mexico, Guatamala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras) where we knew
the system of compadrazgo was long embedded. In the RENIR project we interviewed
more than one hundred Hispanics who were members of three Hispanic
churches or two multiethnic churches that had a sizable Hispanic membership.
In 1990 approximately 4 percent of Houston's population identified themselves
as Asian, with the largest number of Asian immigrants coming from China, the
Philippines, India, and Vietnam. The Asian population in Houston is projected to
increase to approximately 7 percent by the 2000 census. In 1996 we interviewed 12
Asian informants, including 3 from India, 3 from Vietnam, 2 from China, 2 from
Korea, and 2 from the Philippines. As part of the RENIR project, we interviewed
approximately 200 Asians who are members of Chinese and Vietnamese Buddhist
temples, a Pakistani mosque, Protestant churches, Catholic churches, and a Zoroastrian
religious center.
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Fictive Kin as Social Capital 195
Because we were interested in cultural patterns rather than individual attitudes
and opinions, in the 1996 study we used the informant technique, with its long
history in anthropological research (Agar 1980; Casagrande 1960). Informants
were selected on the basis of their key positions (e.g., civic and religious leaders)
in each of the groups. In the RENIR study, we interviewed samples of religious
leaders, immigrants who had been in the United States for more than ten years,
newly arrived immigrants, and second-generation members. In the case of multiethnic
congregations (such as the Yoruba House that had members from Cuba,
Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Columbia, El Salvador, and Nigeria,
as well as African Americans and Anglos), we interviewed members from
varying ethnic and racial groups.
Given the limited number of interviews with members in each ethnic group
and the fact that our insights regarding the importance of fictive kin arose as part
of a larger project, this study of fictive kin is exploratory rather than systematic
and hypothesis testing. Issues such as the extent to which fictive kinship expands
the social networks of blood and marriage-related kin, why systems of fictive kinship
are stronger in some immigrant groups with the same ethnic/racial origins
than others, and ways in which fictive kin function at different stages of immigrant
adaptation and assimilation await future research designed specifically to
study these issues. In this article we present preliminary evidence to indicate that
fictive kin is central in many immigrant communities and that awareness of its
importance may enrich our understanding of the social resources that immigrants
use to negotiate their adaptation and settlement in U.S. society.
STRUCTURES OF FICTIVE KIN
In this section we describe three different systems of fictive kin amo
grants: compadrazgo among Hispanic immigrants, the kinship structure of the
Yoruba based on priesthood and houses of Ocha, and the system of respect and
kinship established among Asian immigrants. We do not pretend that these three
systems exhaust fictive kinship systems among the new immigrants; rather, we
present them as examples of variations in such systems.
Compadrazgo
Compadrazgo, the complex system of ritual co-parenthood that exists thro
out Latin America, is intricately interwoven with Catholic dogma and ritual. It
arose from the Catholic custom of requiring spiritual sponsorship at baptism. A
single sponsor, or at most two (one of each gender), is required by Canon Law.
Sponsors must be baptized persons, in good standing with the Church, and
acceptable to the priest who performs the baptism. Parents and members of reli
gious orders are excluded. The primary responsibility of sponsors is to instruct
the child on faith and morals and, in the event that parents die or neglect the
spiritual duty, to raise the child as a good Christian. Along with this primary spir
itual duty, sponsors also assume the obligation to provide for the material welfar
of the child if the parents die or lack the requisite material resources.
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196 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 43, Number 2,2000
While the Catholic church also prescribes a sponsor or godparent to stand for a
child at first communion and confirmation and, in some countries, encourages
marriage godparents, it is the baptismal compadrazgo system that is most important
in defining both the spiritual and social obligations between individuals. The
compadrazgo network extends beyond the basic relationship and mutual obligations
of baptized child and godparent, whom the child calls padrino (godfather) or
madrina (godmother). It also sets up mutual rights, obligations, and relationships
between the godparent(s) and the child's biological parents (copadre, for godfather,
and comadre, for godmother, of one's child). In addition, when two sponsors
are chosen for the same child, relationships are set up between the sponsors
themselves. One Mexican immigrant man commented that many Mexicans feel
closer to their copadres than to their own blood brothers. To ignore or "be mean"
to a copadre would be greatly frowned on in his community.
Godparents may be blood kin (other than parents), close friends, or other individuals
in the community. Choosing someone, especially a nonrelative, to serve as
copadre or comadre to one's child is considered a way to cement close friendships
and make a public statement regarding the importance of the friendship. Because
a new sponsor is selected for the baptism of each child, the system of co-parenthood
extends the fictive kin network into the wider community of friends and relations
such that, in time, almost everyone in the community can be related by blood,
marital, or fictive kinship ties. If different sponsors are selected for the first communion,
confirmation, and marriage of the child, he or she ends up with four sets
of padrinos and madrinas who are all part of the fictive kin network. Therefore, as
Alvarez (1987) reminds us, if a family has five children, the parents will be
involved in a fictive kin network of forty adults.
A Honduran informant remarked that he chose to come to Houston because his
madrina lived here and he knew she would assist him. Two years later, his parents
came. He explained, "[They came] not only because I was here but they had,
by then, two copadres and three comadres in Houston, so it was like one big family
that welcomed them." He went on to say that Hispanics are very lucky
because they have so many people who are "like family." Being Catholic, he was
amazed that many Anglo Catholics he met do not keep in touch with their godparents
and sometimes do not even know who they are.
Immigrants who are refugees from war-torn Central American countries, such
as El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, also report that many fictive kin relationships
were established as a result of children being abandoned or orphaned
during the war. For example, a Salvadoran male informant reported that his grandfather
raised eight children who had been orphaned in the war. The informant
still calls each of them "aunt" and "uncle" and treats them exactly as he does his
blood-related aunts and uncles.
Yoruba
The Yoruba religion (also called Yoruba, Santeria, and Ocha but most commonly
The Religion) is an African religion that has survived in the New World,
despite enslavement and persecution of its adherents over the years since it was
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Fictive Kin as Social Capital 197
introduced by African slaves. The Religion originated in western Africa, where it
was the national religion of Yoruba kingdoms. During the slave trade, it was
introduced into the Caribbean and Latin America, especially Haiti, Cuba, Trinidad,
and Brazil. When slavery ended, followers of The Religion were persecuted
as criminals in these predominantly Catholic countries. Practitioners went underground
and masked their traditional religion behind Catholicism. Yoruba religion
quietly entered the United States in the 1960s, during the civil rights and Black
Power movements via the immigration of Cuban refugees. Many African Americans
converted to The Religion as a means of rejecting Christianity and replacing
it with a form of spirituality that fostered black identity and a return to things
African. For the past four decades, because of continued Cuban immigration and
conversion, the Yoruba religion has been steadily growing in the African-American
and Cuban communities.
The practitioners of Yoruba have an elaborate form of ritual kinship that is
organized into structures called houses. The word house describes a group of
people who think of themselves as being in a family relationship with the deities
(Orisha)3 and with each other. Priests, who are leaders of a house, have godchildren
who are godbrothers and godsisters to each other. Priests take on both material
and spiritual responsibility for people who join the house and are known as
"godparents in Ocha." There are also "aunts and uncles" as well as "nieces and
nephews in Ocha." These terms are patterned after consanguinal or adoptive relationships
and carry similar rights and obligations, even though the Yoruba ritual
kinship system excludes blood relatives from being part of specific ritual kin relationships
such as godparent and godchild. Houses of Ocha (short for Orisha) replicate
the traditional segmentary lineage system of Yorubaland in West Africa and
are structured similar to, and serve many of the same functions as, traditional
extended families.
A Yoruba house is seen as a line of descent of godparents and godchildren and
lines of descent of Orisha. When a priest is initiated, he or she becomes an lyawo,
that is, a bride of an Orisha. Members of that priest's house, therefore, have a ritual
kinship with that particular Orisha. Practitioners of Yoruba recite a prayer
called the Ijuba (lit., the act of paying homage) on important ritual occasions, in
which they make reference to their house ancestors and consanguinal ancestors,
that is, a genealogy of the house. Moreover, each person lists all the living priests
in the house senior to himself or herself. As one Yoruba member commented, this
recitation continually reminds participants of the membership, both living and
dead, of the particular house. Many Yoruba in Houston also make reference on
their telephone answering machines to their house and specific ancestors who
have died. Through these rituals the subculture of the house, including the ritual
kin system, is continually re-created for the individual.
Among Asians
Although differences in fictive kinship systems exist among the various Asian
immigrant groups (e.g., Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Indians), there are striking
similarities. Most obvious is the profound respect demanded of younger people
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198 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 43, Number 2,2000
for elders, a tradition strongly rooted in Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucianist religious
doctrines. This deference and attention to age differences is reflected in each
of the Asian languages. For example, the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Koreans have
specific language terms to indicate age position in the family. Not only is someone
your brother or uncle, but he is your elder brother (uncle) or younger brother
(uncle). In Vietnamese, the word nui, which means "caretaker," is attached to the
end of the kinship term to indicate variations based on age as well as the responsibilities
associated with age titles.
In many traditional Asian households, a man or woman is known by position
in the family as first, second, or third son or daughter. Every person older than
oneself deserves respect. Frequently, in Asian groups children refer to elders as
aunts or uncles, terms that do not necessarily indicate blood ties but obligations
established on the basis of age. As one Vietnamese female informant described, "I
have a lot of people I call aunt and uncle that are not blood related. In Vietnam,
which is a very small country, the terms 'aunt' and 'uncle' are used very loosely to
refer to elders who are respected and have a special relationship to our family."
Indian children also refer to elders as aunt or uncle, and these individuals take
responsibility for advising and disciplining the children.
Vietnamese immigrants have fictive kin relationships that are similar to those of
godfather (banui) and godmother (manui). These individuals function as surrogate
parents and expect the same filial respect as natural parents. Chinese immigrants
also use equivalent terms, gan-ba (godfather) and gan-ma (godmother), as well as
"covenant brothers," that is, two men who go through a ritual ceremony to
declare that they are now brothers. Among Vietnamese and Indians, brothers and
sisters may not be consanguinally related but part of a fictive kin network. In the
Vietnamese culture, brothers and sisters are "so dear," according to one informant,
that "if you do not have blood brothers or sisters, or if you are living in a
different locality from them, you adopt a brother or sister to whom you relate
exactly the same as if they were your blood siblings." A Jain from western India
explained that the concept of brother and sister is so special that, if you don't have
a brother or sister, you pick one and say, "Now you are my brother/ sister," and
you act like brother and sister in every way. There is even a special name for these
relationships, which, translated, means "brother by religion" or "sister by religion,"
although the names and custom have nothing to do with religion. One of
the major roles of a sister in Jain culture is to name her brother's children. This
custom is considered to be very important. One Jain informant said, "Now, if I
had no sister at all I would have to adopt one so she could give my kid a name."
Another basis for fictive kin relationships in Asian communities is close friendships
between one's parents and unrelated individuals in the community. Someone's
mother's (or father's) close friend would automatically be considered an
aunt (uncle), and the same respect, rights, and obligations would be extended to
that individual as to aunts and uncles based on blood or marriage. A Vietnamese
female informant, who is a social worker in a child welfare agency, explained that
the staff has to be very careful about releasing children to Asians (and Nigerians)
who claim to be the child's "aunt," "uncle," or, in some situations, even parent.
Even though the child may use these familial terms in addressing the adult, he or
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Fictive Kin as Social Capital 199
she may have no blood relationship to that individual, who, by law, has no custodial
right to or responsibility for the child.
Fictive kin among Asians also can arise from the immigration experience itself.
As has been the case for many nationalities, it has been common for single Asian
males to migrate to the United States first and send for their families only after
they have found a job and gotten established. Such unattached males are usually
befriended by families in the immigrant community that are already reunited and
that often came from the same or nearby localities back home. As one Vietnamese
female informant described, "My grandparents were among the first Vietnamese to
come to Houston in the 1970s. On any given Sunday, we would have three or four
bachelor men at our table. After a while, we children would begin calling them
uncle and they would play with us, teach us about our Vietnamese culture, and
help us find part-time jobs when we got to be teenagers." As these men brought
their wives and children to Houston, they were also incorporated into the family
as fictive aunts and cousins. Because many Vietnamese in the United States are
poor and often are refugees, they are either forced to share dwellings or placed
with others by resettlement agencies. The interactions developed in shared residences
often evolve into family-like, or "pseudo-family," relationships. In addition,
unrelated individuals often forge close relationships in refugee camps in
Southeast Asia, ties that are frequently maintained in the United States. For example,
one informant was eleven years old when he was put on a boat in Vietnam
bound for the United States. The boat was confiscated on the high seas and its
occupants taken to a refugee camp in Thailand. On the boat was a sixteen-year-old
girl whom the boat people felt would be a good "sister" for him. The agreement
was that she would take care of him and they would become brother and sister.
When they finally arrived in the United States, the two lost contact. However, the
informant felt very guilty about that. He told me, "After all, she is my sister."
The compadrazgo system among Hispanics, the Yoruba system of relationships
among members of a house, and familial-like relationships of respect that characterize
Asian immigrants are each unique in origin and structure. Nonetheless, they
all provide social networks that help immigrants to confront the numerous challenges
of being strangers in a strange land. These various systems of fictive kinship
are integral parts of the culture that immigrants learn and reproduce in home
countries and that constitute social capital available for their use in this country.
FUNCTIONS OF FICTIVE KIN IN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES
Regardless of differences in the types of fictive kin systems, the functi
serve for new immigrants are quite similar. These functions include assuring the
spiritual development of the child and thereby reinforcing cultural continuity,
exercising social control, providing material support, and assuring socioemotional
support. That fictive kin provide these services for new immigrants, who
often face dislocation, anomie, economic difficulties, cultural shock, and value
conflicts in the new society, means that the institution serves as an important
buffer and resource.
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200 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 43, Number 2,2000
Spiritual Development and Cultural Continuity
Religious beliefs and practices are an integral part of ethnic identity in many
immigrant communities and constitute an important avenue for reproducing the
native culture in the second generation. It is through rituals and the telling of traditional
stories that a group of people re-create and reinforce a sense of their history
as a people, a process that often occurs through religious practices in a sacred
place. Immigrant informants in each of the groups we studied were concerned
about socializing youth to maintain their ethnic identity. Therefore, adults who
assume the responsibility for the spiritual development of youth see themselves
as also perpetuating ethnic identity.
In all three fictive kin systems described above, assuring that one's godchild is
being raised with appropriate spiritual values is the primary responsibility of
godparents. In compadrazgo, this responsibility is carefully laid out by the Catholic
church when sponsors are chosen and commissioned in the baptismal ceremony.
In fact, sponsors take an oath during the ceremony that they will willingly
and conscientiously accept the responsibility of sharing in the Christian education
and upbringing of the child. Chinese Christians accept the same Church mandate
when they agree to serve as godparents at baptism.
Among the Yoruba, spiritual development of the godchild is the primary
responsibility of the godparent, who oversees all necessary divinations, sacrifices,
and initiations for the godchild and has the duty to instruct the godchild in religious
knowledge, ritual and duties. The godparent also assumes the responsibility
of providing a funeral and burial for the godchild if the blood family is not
capable of doing so. Reciprocally, the godchild is expected to assist the godparent
in rituals and other religious work. Because Yoruba rituals frequently involve
elaborate preparations, this assistance includes cooking and cleaning in preparation
for a religious ceremony. If at all possible, the godchild is expected to attend
all religious activities hosted by the godparent.
Godparents play special roles in the initiation careers of Yoruba. The first initiation,
that of receiving ilekis (colored bead necklaces representing different
Orishas) is considered to be the extension of the protection of the godparent's
Orisha to the godchild, who is then given the title alejo (stranger resident in the
house). At this ceremony the godchild also acquires a secondary godparent called
an ojubona (witness to the process). It is the duty of the ojubona to make sure the initiation
ceremony is performed correctly and to replace the primary godparent
should that person be unable to fulfill that role. The second initiation, that of
"receiving the warriors," is the ceremony in which the initiate receives symbols
of the four Orishas (Elegba, Ogun, Oshos, and Osun), and the third initiation is
into the priesthood, which allows a Yoruba to function as an intermediary
between the Orisha and human beings by practicing divination, performing sacrifices,
and possibly undergoing possession. Godparents play a central role in
each ceremony.
In the case of Asian immigrants, much of the spiritual encouragement and help
that ritual kin provide relates to the maintenance of cultural values, such as rituals
of respect for ancestors. For example, the traditional engagement and marriage
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Fictive Kin as Social Capital 201
ceremony of Vietnamese Buddhists is conducted in the homes of the bride and
groom before the altar of the ancestors, who are asked to bless the couple and accept
the in-law into the family. One of the responsibilities of "aunts" and "uncles" is
to ensure that the ceremony is properly conducted so that the young couple is in
good standing with the ancestors. Several of our informants commented that
even Vietnamese Catholics seek the blessings of their ancestors, either as part
of the church ceremony or in an informal ceremony at home that follows a
church wedding.
Informants in each immigrant community expressed concern that many of their
young people do not take religion as seriously as the older generation and are
succumbing to "the worldliness and immorality of American society," as one Filipino
female informant put it. A central part of the role of the older generation of
fictive kin is to encourage second-generation youth to learn, value, and practice
their ethic and religious heritage.
Social Control
Because fictive kin systems bind people to one another emotionally and socially,
they serve as a mechanism to mitigate hostility and aggression in immigrant communities
and enhance community solidarity. Individuals involved in the relationship
network are expected to cooperate and avoid hostility, as well as to behave in
a manner that is a credit to the community. In the compadrazgo system, individuals
acquire a series of obligations and expectations to behave in ways that will
make padrinos and madrinas proud. It is understood that ritual kin are to monitor,
guide, and judge the behavior of their godchildren and that their godchildren,
in turn, will not disappoint them. A Taiwanese man explained that in his community,
"aunts" and "uncles" not only have the right but also the responsibility to
correct the behavior of children in their "adopted family." Children are expected
to listen respectfully and to correct any bad behavior pointed out by elders. Likewise,
an Indian Jain informant said, "A kid's uncles (and not just blood related)
can basically push the kid around like a parent and say 'hey, don't do that' and
the kid would obey." This same informant explained that the custom works
because individuals who do not conform "get a bad reputation, which can hurt
you down the road." He gave several examples of business deals that were
aborted when it was discovered that one of the partners did not have the reputation
of being "a good Jain."
In Yoruba houses, godparents do not "divorce" godchildren except in instances
in which they use drugs or become extremely disruptive of the house. The major
mechanism of social control is gossip. One's greatest asset is reputation; therefore,
a loss of reputation means a loss of prestige, an inability to attract and retain godchildren,
and, therefore, it seriously weakens the house. In one instance among
the Houston Yoruba, a godparent was accused of stealing money. His godchildren,
some of whom were not yet initiated into the priesthood, decided to sever
their relationship with him, an act considered very unusual in the group.
In many immigrant communities, such as the Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese,
not only the death of parents but conflict between parents and children
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202 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 43, Number 2,2000
would cause godparents or fictive aunts and uncles to step in and invite the teenager
to live with them until the conflict is resolved. For example, a Vietnamese
informant reported that, as a teenager, she had difficulties with her parents. Her
"uncle," a close friend of her parents, invited her to live with him for a year so she
could "mend her ways" and see how much her parents really loved her and
wanted success for her.
Systems of fictive kin are also essential in controlling sexuality by defining who
may and may not marry or have sexual relations with one another, since individuals
within these networks are considered family and are bound by the same taboos
and norms as blood kin. In the compadrazgo system, not only are godchildren not
allowed to marry or be romantically involved with godparents, strong sanctions are
placed on the marriage of copadres and comadres (men and women who are godparents
to the same child). One Hispanic informant was incensed because his comadre,
a co-sponsor for one of his godchildren, had "made passes at him," something
that is prohibited in his Guatamalan culture. Another Hispanic man commented
that sometimes he is very attracted to one of his ahijadas (female child; masc. ahijados)
but has to control his feelings at all costs because he would be ostracized by his
fellow Hispanics if he allowed any type of sexual relationship to evolve.
Among Yoruba, sexual relationships between godparents and godchildren are
strictly forbidden, and such relationships between god-siblings are discouraged.
In some houses, while such relationships are not be forbidden, they are considered
troublesome because they can cause conflicting loyalties.
In all three systems of fictive kin considered here, ritual kin exercise social control
over those in the kinship system. Not only do adults, such as godparents,
"aunts and uncles," and adult members of a house assure that the young people
for whom they are responsible obey norms, but, reciprocally, there are normative
constraints on their behavior.
Financial Support
For immigrants, a major function performed by ritual kin is the provision of
material support. The compadrazgo system forms a kind of social insurance system
in the community-lending money, providing assistance in finding employment,
a place to stay, or business contacts, and helping with financing such
ceremonies as confirmation, the quinceniera, or coming-out for fifteen-year-old daughters,
and marriage. Parents often seek to obtain godparents of a higher social and economic
status than themselves for the material advantages that accrue to their
children. As one Central American Hispanic immigrant commented, "I find
myself being asked over and over again within my community to serve as padrino
for children being baptized. Not only do I not have children of my own, but I am
seen as having more money than most people they know and I am known for
helping my ahijados and ahijadas financially."
In the event that both parents die or are unable to provide financially for the
child, it is the godparents or "aunts" and "uncles" who are expected to take
responsibility for the child. In the Hispanic compadrazgo system, the godfather
acts as actual father to a male child and the godmother as actual mother for a
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Fictive Kin as Social Capital 203
female child. In Vietnamese culture, if someone is alone and does not have bloodrelated
parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, or uncles to care for him or her, a member
of the community will step in to become that person's godfather or godmother
and take on the role of nui, or caregiver. The idea of homeless or street kids is
shocking to Vietnamese immigrants, in whose community there exists a safety net
of extended and ritual kin to fill in where parents may fail or become alienated
from their offspring. One Vietnamese informant was asked what would happen if
a godparent refused to take care of the child in the event of a parent's death. He
responded, "This would never happen. I have never heard of any case like this. I
have never heard of anyone abandoning a kid. In Vietnamese culture, godparents
just take you in. You consider yourself a part of the family, and later in life, if they
need help you help them."
Not only do adult fictive kin have a financial obligation to children should parents
become unable to provide, adult children likewise assume the responsibility
to take care of their godparents and other adult fictive kin if they become needy in
their old age. In fact, in many Hispanic and Asian cultures, single persons or couples
without children become godparents for one or usually several children,
assuming all the various religious, social, and financial obligations entailed, in
exchange for being taken care of in their later years. A Honduran immigrant has a
godson who just arrived in Houston. He said, "As his padrino, I must help him
get started here, so he lives with my wife and me and we give him money until he
can find a job." He went on to say that he is very happy that his godson has come
to the United States, because he and his wife are getting old and have no children
to take care of them when they can no longer work. He is confident that his godson
will care for them when the time comes.
The expectation that one who "makes it" in America will support not only fictive
kin within the immigrant community but also family and fictive kin back
home is a strong norm among both Hispanic and Asian immigrants. Among all of
the Hispanics we interviewed, the sense of responsibility to routinely send money
to relatives in the home country was very strong. One Mexican informant commented
that his goddaughter in Mexico City is ill and can no longer work. Her
husband has deserted her and her two children so the informant sends her $400
every month for support.
As the following anecdote demonstrates, Asians also share this norm of assisting
ritual kin financially. A Vietnamese woman who had a good job in America
returned on a business trip to Vietnam. She was met at the airport by about thirty
people, most of whom she did not know but who claimed they knew her when
she was young and remained good friends with her father, who was still in the
home country. They informed her that they thought of her as their own and felt
part of her family. Ten days or so into the trip she began to realize that they
expected her to leave some of her American success with them in terms of financial
gifts. By then she had begun to internalize that sense of obligation and did provide
financial assistance to those who needed her help. Even after she returned to Houston,
she continued to send money back to her "aunt," a woman who knew her parents
thirty years earlier and was once close to the family. She felt it was her duty to
reciprocate the relationship the woman had once had with her parents.
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204 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 43, Number 2,2000
Among the Yoruba, members of a house are expected to take care of each other
financially as well as spiritually. There are three principal methods of economic
cooperation. The first, the fundraiser, most often takes the form of selling dinners.
One's god-brothers and god-sisters distribute notices that a sale is taking place
and may also take dinner orders. The proceeds from the sale are used to provide
material necessities or provisions for an initiation ceremony for oneself or someone
in need. Like the customs in many African and African-American groups
(Bonnett 1976; Brink 1991; Buijs 1995), the second form of providing financial support
is the Esusu, or revolving credit association. A group of people in the same
house, usually twenty or fewer, agree to put up a certain amount of money for a
number of weeks equal to the number of people in the group. For example, a
group of twenty people might put up $25 for each of twenty weeks. Each week
one person collects $500 ($25 x 20 people). Although each person collects what he
or she contributes, the system allows each person to have the use of a lump sum
when it is his or her turn. The third form occurs when a house collectively decides
to to give financial assistance to someone, usually a member. For example, on two
different occasions members of a house paid for the initiation into the priesthood
of two of its members who could not afford the expense. In another instance, a
house member needed to "make Ocha" quickly and did not have sufficient
money, which was provided by donations from house members. Job referrals and
locating living quarters are also sources of support given by house members,
especially god-sisters and god-brothers, to one another.
In addition to direct financial assistance, social networks, especially fictive kin
networks, help immigrants to locate jobs and housing and contact professionals to
assist with immigration papers. When immigrants identify family networks as
their most important source of help on arriving in Houston, they almost always
include fictive kin as well as blood relatives among "family" who helped them.
Social Support
Fictive kin often include immigrants in family social gatherings, such as special
meals, celebrations, holidays, and evening and weekend socializing. Especially
for single male immigrants, who often have difficulty establishing social relationships
in their work settings because of both linguistic and cultural barriers, the
social support provided by fictive kin is very important. As newly arriving immigrants
receive help from fictive kin in the United States, simultaneously they
establish reciprocal bonds of obligation to those who assist them. Bonds of solidarity
and reciprocity became part of the social networks and support system in
the immigrant community.
In Hispanic communities, relationships between the adults involved in compadrazgo,
both between parents of the child and godparents and between copadres
and comadres, often outweigh the godparent-godchild relationship, precisely
because they provide social support among age peers. Copadres are morally
bound to stand by each other in time of need and danger as well as to provide
social support to one another. However, social support is also expected intergenerationally.
A Hispanic informant showed a great deal of disgust with one of his
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Fictive Kin as Social Capital 205
godchildren who moved away from Houston and makes no effort to keep in
touch with him unless he wants money. His disgust related to the lack of social
ties and interaction, ties that he feels constitute the heart of the godparentgodchild
relationship. In his estimation, financial obligations should take second
place to the feelings and sharing that take place with one's ahijados and ahijadas.
He commented that he doesn't mind sending money to his godchildren who keep
in touch with him and show affection.
One usually joins a Yoruba house through existing social networks, so there are
preexisting social relationships. Frequently, sharing membership in a house intensifies
those bonds. Social interaction, visiting, naming ceremonies, and weddings
usually include members of one's house. Most house members are women with
children, many of them divorced or widowed and in need of child care on a regular
basis, especially on weekends. Women in the same house often care for one
another's children.
Among Asian immigrants, providing social support for a newly arrived immigrant
often establishes a lifelong relationship between that individual and all
members of the host family. For example, in the early 1970s a male Indian immigrant
arrived at Houston International Airport in a rainstorm. The Indians who
were supposed to meet him did not show up; however, an Indian family that happened
to be at the airport saw that he was alone and seemed lost. They invited
him to their home, where he stayed for three months until he found a job. He, and
later his family, whom he brought from India, became part of the host family and
remain so after thirty years. The children (now adults) in each family refer to the
first generation as "aunt" and "uncle," and the second generation call each other
"brother" and "sister." The informant commented, "We fight like brothers and sisters
but also know we would do anything for each other."
CONCLUSIONS
Nutrini and White (1977) argue that a strong link exists between the degree of
modernization and the centrality of compadrazgo in the community, one that
resembles an inverted U-shaped curve. Based on analyses of twenty-one rural
communities in Mexico at varying stages of modernization, they show that in the
more traditional, less acculturated communities kinship is more important than
compadrazgo in the organization of community life. Clans, lineages, and extended
families regulate marriage, share religious and ceremonial functions, and fulfill
social and economic needs, and thus there is no need for nonkinship mechanisms
to cope with the structural and functional exigencies of social living. In the least
traditional, essentially secular and urban communities, neither extended kinship
nor compadrazgo is needed, because domestic groups and governmental, occupational,
and social associations fulfill these functions. It is in the in-between case,
the community in transition to modernization, in which the compadrazgo system
is strongest. In such a setting, kinship is not as pervasive as in the traditional society,
but nonfamilial social forms have not yet developed sufficiently to meet
needs. It is here that the compadrazgo system complements, expands, and amalgamates
the basic kinship elements into an organic whole. In many ways, new
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206 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 43, Number 2,2000
immigrants settling in the United States mirror the challenges and uncertainties of
people caught in the transition between traditional and modern societies. Often,
traditional relations of family and blood-related kin are left behind in the home
country and are not fully replicated in the new one. Simultaneously, access to the
social institutions that might provide many of the same economic and integrative
functions that kin once provided are not yet fully available to immigrants. In this
situation, fictive kin can serve to expand the resources and support available to
them. Our research suggests that, in fact, within new immigrant communities fictive
kin are an important part of the social networks that offer social and material
support, provide opportunities, and, thereby, facilitate settlement.
Because of the data limitations in this study, we are unable to estimate the
degree to which fictive kin expands social networks based on blood kinship and
marriage. However, the case of the Yoruba provides a hint of the extent of such
expansion. The rama (branch) of Yoruba in Houston gives a new immigrant access
to approximately fifty people who can provide housing, jobs, and social support.
Such estimates of fictive kin networks need to be the focus of future studies. Obviously,
patterns of fictive kin vary by ethnic and religious group, as well as by the
social class and migration status of immigrants. Such variables need to be taken into
account in systematic studies of fictive kin systems among the new immigrants.
As demonstrated above, we now have a quite well developed literature concerning
the importance and functions of social networks throughout the immigration
process. The bulk of this literature focuses on familial (defined as bloodrelated
kin) and friendship ties. This exploratory study suggests that systems of
fictive kin also constitute an important part of the social networks that draw
immigrants to a particular locale and provide them with the material and social
support that enables them to become incorporated into a new and often hostile
society. Whether systems of fictive kin will continue to be important beyond the
second or third generations or will disappear as a result of assimilation remains to
be seen. However, for the foreseeable future, fictive kin relationships in these
communities provide strong social networks that are part of the social capital that
immigrants bring with them to this country and use as an important resource for
dealing with social problems.
Acknowledgments: This research was supported by a grant from the University
of Houston and by The Pew Charitable Trusts. We want to express our appreciation
to Janet S. Chafetz, who read several drafts of the paper and made invaluable
suggestions; Anna Johannson and members of the RENIR research team, who
helped collect data; and several anonymous reviewers, who raised important issues.
NOTES
1. Roschelle's recent book, No More Kin, makes reference to fictive kin systems among Hispanics
and blacks. However, she offers little systematic analysis and discussion of these
structures.
2. These immigrant congregations were (1) a multiethnic Catholic church; (2) a multiethnic
Assembly of God church; (3) a Hispanic evangelical Argentine church; (4) a Chinese
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Fictive Kin as Social Capital 207
Christian church; (5) a Chinese Buddhist temple; (6) a Vietnamese Buddhist temple; (7)
an Indian Hindu temple; (8) an Islamic mosque; (9) a Greek Orthodox church; (10) a Hispanic
Catholic church; (11) a Hispanic Protestant storefront church; (12) a Zoroastrian
center; and (13) a Korean Christian church.
3. Orisha are considered to be aspects of God or forces of nature. They are seen by the Yoruba
as specialized forms of the Supreme One that can be called on in various circumstances.
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