Undocumented lives The untold story of Mexican migration

Minian (history and comparative studies in race and ethnicity, Stanford) contextualizes the post-Bracero (manual worker) Program period of Mexican migration and immigration between 1965 and 1986. She focuses on migration patterns to and from Mexico's Michoacán and Zacatecas regions and Los Angeles. Over 250 oral histories bring a new historical perspective to the Mexican immigration and migration process. Individual chapters contextualize the historical construction of modern Mexican migration and immigration, cross-cultural tensions among Mexican Americans, the sexuality and gender identity of male migrants, and the rise of contemporary anti-immigrant policies in the US. Minian challenges similar published scholarship that centers on the Mexican migration and immigration experience in the US: she is influenced instead by a body of recent Latinx migrant/immigrant scholarship that introduces transnational and cross-cultural perspectives to the existing literature on this critical subject matter. Her research yields insights into the social and ideological impacts that past Mexican migrants and immigrants have had on the current struggle for immigrants' rights in the US. This is also the first scholarship that investigates the sexuality and gender identity of Mexican migrant and immigrant males on both sides of the US border. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels/libraries. --Jose Gomez Moreno, Northern Arizona University

As the Los Tigres del Norte song Jaula de Oro (The Cage of Gold) tells us: Even made of gold, a cage is still a prison (La jaula aunque sea de oro no deja de ser prisión). Minian's aching and timely book clearly lays out the political and cultural forces on both sides of the border that have placed millions of Mexicans in the golden cage that is the U.S.' immigration policy. An assistant professor of history and comparative studies in race and ethnicity at Stanford University, Minian has conducted exhaustive research, which includes copious oral-history interviews, to produce a work providing historical context and perspective for the current debate raging about immigration. Although at times a dense academic read, Minian's book is rich in graphs, tables, and testimonials that add urgency. The issue of unsanctioned migration, she writes, is a transnational issue that requires deep cross-border analysis and solutions. It affects millions of people. There are no conscionable reasons for workers to die in their search for work.--Martinez, Sara Copyright 2018 Booklist

In this compassionate study, Stanford University history professor Minian provides an elaborate account of Mexican immigration to the United States, particularly from the mid-1960s to the 1980s. Using a wide range of sources-migrants' private correspondence, organizational records, personal collections, secondary sources, and more than 200 interviews-Minian plumbs "the intimate world of migrants" and the role of gender, sexual, and cultural norms in Mexican migration to the U.S. (for example, women and gay men tended to face less pressure at home to emigrate, and consequently the migrants were mostly straight men). Minian notes that Mexicans' "circular migration" has been a longstanding feature of the two societies and that U.S. border fortification, more than migrants' desires, encouraged permanent settlement in the U.S. The book sympathetically analyzes the exclusion these migrants have experienced-from the United States, from Mexico, and from their local communities within Mexico-and highlights the various forms of community-building and activism that migrants and others have engaged in, such as "hometown clubs" in which migrants send money home to fund public works. Though primarily a work of scholarship, this history provides a rare window into "the messy complexity of [the] lived experience" of Mexican migrants and contributes much-needed nuance to contemporary debates on immigration. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.