Migrants consciously cultivated trust despite constant risk of default

Evidence

Frafra migrants were well aware that much of this commercial activity depended on the establishment of trust between free agents whose scope for default was palpable. The protagonist in the following example laid great stress on the importance of a personal style capable of winning and sustaining the friendship and trust of strangers. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2340

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s theoretical claim that trust requires observable constraints on opportunistic behavior — here, ‘personal style’ as the observable signal.