An Argument for Asking about Transnational Assets in Surveys

This article presents an argument for the consideration of the collection of transnational assets in US-based survey research. The global economy is connected not only by transnational corporations, but also people living, investing, and maintaining relationships across national borders. For the wealthy, transnational assets are a recognized part of a diversification strategy to build and maintain wealth. However, wealth building across borders is not confined to the upper strata of society. Immigrants—who span varied socioeconomic strata—may also own property and hold bank accounts abroad too, in their homelands. These may be assets owned prior to migration, family property or businesses, property to which a person hopes to one day retire, or a mixture of these reasons and others. In this work, I will present descriptive results from a survey investigating transnational assets among first- and second-generation Latino immigrants. I show that both first- and second-generation Latinos hold assets in their—or their familial—homelands. I argue that forgoing consideration of transnational assets ignores wealth held by immigrants and their families that may be important to larger estimates of wealth held by immigrant communities in the United States.