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on Jiménez’s death when his children attempt to claim their inheritance.The branch of the family that is involved in the running of transportenterprises in Trujillo and Lima may benefit from this, but in any case theywill certainly continue their own entrepreneurial activities. Those in theU.S. are heading for new social lives. From the humble roots of a highlandvillage in Peru, the children and grandchildren of Jiménez are carving outimportant business and professional niches for themselves in the U.S., andas a consequence are likely to become less “transnational” than they werebefore. Their families are now firmly rooted in Hispanic-American lifeworlds and appear to be more culturally, socially and emotionally at homeand secure there than they could ever be in Peru.4. Transnational Lives in Italy and Peru 12The second vignette centers on the experiences and communicative practicesof a mother living in a poor neighborhood of Huancayo city and her twodaughters working in Milan, Italy. The case highlights how the motherat home successfully inserts herself into the transnational worlds of herdaughters, thus influencing their daily decisions, livelihood strategies andsocial commitments; and on the other hand, how her daughters reshape thelife circumstances and dreams of the mother. The means of communication(i.e., weekly phone calls backed up by letters giving news from both ends)keep both parties in close contact and make it possible for them to engagewith each other’s ideas, feelings and plans for the future. During theseexchanges various cultural modes of practice and understanding concerningfamily welfare and solidarity are conveyed and reaffirmed. The exampleis especially interesting because it demonstrates the considerable extentto which close kin separated by thousands of miles and experiencing verydifferent daily routines can nevertheless shape each other’s aspirations andconceptions of the worlds in which they live. This kind of process of courselies at the heart of transnational lives. Only detailed ethnographic researchof the kind described below can reveal the intimacies of such “compellingpersonal concerns.”4.1 Camila and Her Two Daughters in MilanAs I mentioned above, Camila lives on the outskirts of the city of Huancayo.She fled, together with her husband and five children, in the early 1980sfrom Huancavelica to Huancayo to escape the mounting violence inflictedby Sendero and the army. She eventually became separated from her4712This example is taken from the research of Carla Tamagno who was a member of the research teamput together by myself, Teófilo Altamirano and Pieter de Vries to carry out research on “MigrantNetworks, Livelihoods and the Cultural Construction of ‘Community’ in the Central Highlands ofPeru”. For further details on the conclusions of her research, see Tamagno (2002 and 2003).