Saliendo adelante: Understanding trauma and resilience in immigrant families from Central America

Abstract

Fleeing extreme poverty and violence and seeking safety and survival, families have increasingly migrated to the United States from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Limited scholarship has explored the transgenerational transmission of strategies for resilience, survival, and agency among Central American migrant families. Using constructivist grounded theory methods, this study sought to better understand these processes by exploring the transgenerational transmission of trauma and resilience in the context of forced migration and family separation within a sample of 24 mothers and youth who migrated to the United States from Central America. The findings reveal three important concepts that influence how trauma and resilience are transmitted across generations among families who have recently migrated from Central America. Youth and mothers described the transmission of trauma and resilience as multidirectional with impacts across generations. Participants also described experiencing ongoing systemic traumatization in the form of oppressive social, political, legal, and economic systems that perpetuate traumatic stress and cause family separation. Finally, the concept of saliendo adelante, or “moving forward,” was found to be both a process and a goal for mothers and youth, constituting an important form of transgenerational resilience. Results from this study elucidate the complex and intersecting processes that contribute to the transgenerational transmission of trauma and introduce the concept of saliendo adelante, by which immigrant families transmit family goals and build resilience in the face of adversity.