Ambivalent solidarities: precarity, belonging, and informal social protection among Nepali diaspora in the San Francisco Bay Area of California

Abstract                          

This study explores how diasporic social networks function as an informal system of social protection for immigrants, focusing on the emerging Nepali community in the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States of America. Using both a digital and on-site ethnographic approach, including browsing diasporic Facebook groups, participant observation at community gatherings, and semi-structured interviews, it examines how diasporic networks help immigrants navigate precarity and access social support. The research shows that kinship ties, friendship networks, and digital forums collectively form an arrival infrastructure that provides crucial information and assistance with housing and employment. Facebook groups in particular are essential forums for spreading and accessing information as well as gathering financial and material support. Diaspora organizations facilitate social capital and community-building but are also marked by representational gaps, caste-based exclusions, and tensions between long-term residents and new arrivals. That is, while these networks offer valuable financial, legal, and emotional support, they also reproduce power hierarchies and, at times, exploitative dependencies. Notions of deservingness further shape access to support and reinforce symbolic boundaries within the community. Overall, the findings of the study illuminate the centrality of social networks in the social protection strategies of immigrants, whether it be in the migration and arrival stage or in the maintenance of transnational ties to the homeland.

Keywords

(Digital) ethnography, diaspora, immigration, informal social protection, precarity, social capital, social infrastructures, social networks.

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