Clandestine Crossings

Clandestine Crossings PDF Author: David Spener
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801460395
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Clandestine Crossings delivers an in-depth description and analysis of the experiences of working-class Mexican migrants at the beginning of the twenty-first century as they enter the United States surreptitiously with the help of paid guides known as coyotes. Drawing on ethnographic observations of crossing conditions in the borderlands of South Texas, as well as interviews with migrants, coyotes, and border officials, Spener details how migrants and coyotes work together to evade apprehension by U.S. law enforcement authorities as they cross the border. In so doing, he seeks to dispel many of the myths that misinform public debate about undocumented immigration to the United States. The hiring of a coyote, Spener argues, is one of the principal strategies that Mexican migrants have developed in response to intensified U.S. border enforcement. Although this strategy is typically portrayed in the press as a sinister organized-crime phenomenon, Spener argues that it is better understood as the resistance of working-class Mexicans to an economic model and set of immigration policies in North America that increasingly resemble an apartheid system. In the absence of adequate employment opportunities in Mexico and legal mechanisms for them to work in the United States, migrants and coyotes draw on their social connections and cultural knowledge to stage successful border crossings in spite of the ever greater dangers placed in their path by government authorities.

Clandestine Crossings

Clandestine Crossings PDF Author: David Spener
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801460395
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315

Get Book Here

Book Description
Clandestine Crossings delivers an in-depth description and analysis of the experiences of working-class Mexican migrants at the beginning of the twenty-first century as they enter the United States surreptitiously with the help of paid guides known as coyotes. Drawing on ethnographic observations of crossing conditions in the borderlands of South Texas, as well as interviews with migrants, coyotes, and border officials, Spener details how migrants and coyotes work together to evade apprehension by U.S. law enforcement authorities as they cross the border. In so doing, he seeks to dispel many of the myths that misinform public debate about undocumented immigration to the United States. The hiring of a coyote, Spener argues, is one of the principal strategies that Mexican migrants have developed in response to intensified U.S. border enforcement. Although this strategy is typically portrayed in the press as a sinister organized-crime phenomenon, Spener argues that it is better understood as the resistance of working-class Mexicans to an economic model and set of immigration policies in North America that increasingly resemble an apartheid system. In the absence of adequate employment opportunities in Mexico and legal mechanisms for them to work in the United States, migrants and coyotes draw on their social connections and cultural knowledge to stage successful border crossings in spite of the ever greater dangers placed in their path by government authorities.

Ex-Centric Migrations

Ex-Centric Migrations PDF Author: Hakim Abderrezak
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253020786
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
“Plunges the reader into a tour de force across radically divergent artistic responses to Mediterranean migration.” —Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies Ex-Centric Migrations examines cinematic, literary, and musical representations of migrants and migratory trends in the western Mediterranean. Focusing primarily on clandestine sea-crossings, Hakim Abderrezak shows that despite labor and linguistic ties with the colonizer, migrants from the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) no longer systematically target France as a destination, but instead aspire toward other European countries, notably Spain and Italy. In addition, the author investigates other migratory patterns that entail the repatriation of émigrés. His analysis reveals that the films, novels, and songs of Mediterranean artists run contrary to mass media coverage and conservative political discourse, bringing a nuanced vision and expert analysis to the sensationalism and biased reportage of such events as the Mediterranean maritime tragedies. “Ex-Centric Migrations is crucial reading for scholars and students of contemporary Maghrebi, French, and Spanish literatures and cultures. It breaks new ground by encompassing the literature, film, and music of ‘return migration’ and examining the trajectories of Maghrebi migration outside France.” —H-France “Hakim Abderrezak convincingly illustrates how politically committed artistic practices serve to humanize the challenges of human migration, and in the process dramatically improves our understanding of the complex cultural, economic, political, and social realities that shape 21st-century existence.” —Dominic Thomas, author of Africa and France: Postcolonial Cultures, Migration, and Racism

The Migrant Passage

The Migrant Passage PDF Author: Noelle Kateri Brigden
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501730568
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
At the crossroads between international relations and anthropology, The Migrant Passage analyzes how people from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala navigate the dangerous and uncertain clandestine journey across Mexico to the United States. However much advance planning they do, they survive the journey through improvisation. Central American migrants improvise upon social roles and physical objects, leveraging them for new purposes along the way. Over time, the accumulation of individual journeys has cut a path across the socioeconomic and political landscape of Mexico, generating a social and material infrastructure that guides future passages and complicates borders. Tracing the survival strategies of migrants during the journey to the North, The Migrant Passage shows how their mobility reshapes the social landscape of Mexico, and the book explores the implications for the future of sovereignty and the nation-state. To trace the continuous renewal of the transit corridor, Noelle Brigden draws upon over two years of in-depth, multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork along human smuggling routes from Central America across Mexico and into the United States. In so doing, she shows the value of disciplinary and methodological border crossing between international relations and anthropology, to understand the relationships between human security, international borders, and clandestine transnationalism.

Illegality, Inc.

Illegality, Inc. PDF Author: Ruben Andersson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520958284
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
In this groundbreaking ethnography, Ruben Andersson, a gifted anthropologist and journalist, travels along the clandestine migration trail from Senegal and Mali to the Spanish North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Through the voices of his informants, Andersson explores, viscerally and emphatically, how Europe’s increasingly powerful border regime meets and interacts with its target–the clandestine migrant. This vivid, rich work examines the subterranean migration flow from Africa to Europe, and shifts the focus from the "illegal immigrants" themselves to the vast industry built around their movements. This fascinating and accessible book is a must-read for anyone interested in the politics of international migration and the changing texture of global culture.

Sounds of Crossing

Sounds of Crossing PDF Author: Alex E. Chávez
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822372207
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
In Sounds of Crossing Alex E. Chávez explores the contemporary politics of Mexican migrant cultural expression manifest in the sounds and poetics of huapango arribeño, a musical genre originating from north-central Mexico. Following the resonance of huapango's improvisational performance within the lives of audiences, musicians, and himself—from New Year's festivities in the highlands of Guanajuato, Mexico, to backyard get-togethers along the back roads of central Texas—Chávez shows how Mexicans living on both sides of the border use expressive culture to construct meaningful communities amid the United States’ often vitriolic immigration politics. Through Chávez's writing, we gain an intimate look at the experience of migration and how huapango carries the voices of those in Mexico, those undertaking the dangerous trek across the border, and those living in the United States. Illuminating how huapango arribeño’s performance refigures the sociopolitical and economic terms of migration through aesthetic means, Chávez adds fresh and compelling insights into the ways transnational music-making is at the center of everyday Mexican migrant life.

Alien Nation

Alien Nation PDF Author: Elliott Young
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469613409
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
In this sweeping work, Elliott Young traces the pivotal century of Chinese migration to the Americas, beginning with the 1840s at the start of the "coolie" trade and ending during World War II. The Chinese came as laborers, streaming across borders legally and illegally and working jobs few others wanted, from constructing railroads in California to harvesting sugar cane in Cuba. Though nations were built in part from their labor, Young argues that they were the first group of migrants to bear the stigma of being "alien." Being neither black nor white and existing outside of the nineteenth century Western norms of sexuality and gender, the Chinese were viewed as permanent outsiders, culturally and legally. It was their presence that hastened the creation of immigration bureaucracies charged with capture, imprisonment, and deportation. This book is the first transnational history of Chinese migration to the Americas. By focusing on the fluidity and complexity of border crossings throughout the Western Hemisphere, Young shows us how Chinese migrants constructed alternative communities and identities through these transnational pathways.

The Frontier Effect

The Frontier Effect PDF Author: Teo Ballvé
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781501747533
Category : Colombia
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"This book disputes the commonly held view that Colombia's armed conflict is a result of state absence or failure, providing broader lessons about the real drivers of political violence in war-torn areas"--

At Europe's Edge

At Europe's Edge PDF Author: Ċetta Mainwaring
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192580086
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The Mediterranean Sea is now the deadliest region in the world for migrants. Although the death toll has been rising for many years, the EU response remains fragmented and short sighted. Politicians frame these migration flows as an unprecedented crisis and emphasize migration control at the EU's external boundaries. In this context, At Europe's Edge investigates why the EU prioritizes the fortification of its external borders; why migrants nevertheless continue to cross the Mediterranean and to die at sea; and how EU member states on the southern periphery respond to their new role as migration gatekeepers. The book addresses these questions by examining the relationship between the EU and Malta, a small state with an outsized role in migration politics as EU policies place it at the crosshairs of migration flows and controls. The chapters combine ethnographic methods with macro-level analyses to weave together policymaker, practitioner, and migrant experiences, and demonstrate how the Mediterranean is an important space for the contested construction of 'Europe'. This book provides rich insight into the unexpected level of influence Malta exerts on EU migration governance, as well as the critical role migrants and their clandestine journeys play in animating EU and Maltese migration policies, driving international relations, and producing Malta's political power. By centring on the margins, the book pushes the boundaries of our knowledge of the global politics of migration, asylum, and border security.

Irregular Migrants

Irregular Migrants PDF Author: Alice Bloch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135701873
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
A new era of international migration has been accompanied by increasingly restrictive immigration controls to manage migration to more developed countries. The consequence has been fewer routes to enter and/or stay in countries in a regularised way and as a result, an increase in the numbers of undocumented migrants. In this situation undocumented migrants, especially in relation to immigration controls and internal security have come to occupy an important role on the policy agenda of many nation states. The control and regulation of undocumented migrants has become an increasingly politicised issue. This edited collection brings together cutting edge scholarly research papers to explore undocumented migration at the international, national and individual levels. Starting with an overview of the literature on undocumented migration this book explores some of the key areas of research and policy in this area. This includes the making of undocumented migrants, the journey and processes, experiences of being undocumented at the individual level, collective action and return. This fascinating book explores the many facets of undocumented migration and of being an undocumented migrant in different geographical contexts that include Europe, Southern Africa, Central America and North America. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Mi Voz, Mi Vida

Mi Voz, Mi Vida PDF Author: Andrew C. Garrod
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801463793
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
Amid the flurry of debates about immigration, poverty, and education in the United States, the stories in Mi Voz, Mi Vida allow us to reflect on how young people who might be most affected by the results of these debates actually navigate through American society. The fifteen Latino college students who tell their stories in this book come from a variety of socioeconomic, regional, and family backgrounds—they are young men and women of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Central American, and South American descent. Their insights are both balanced and frank, blending personal, anecdotal, political, and cultural viewpoints. Their engaging stories detail the students' personal struggles with issues such as identity and biculturalism, family dynamics, religion, poverty, stereotypes, and the value of education. Throughout, they provide insights into issues of racial identity in contemporary America among a minority population that is very much in the news. This book gives educators, students, and their families a clear view of the experience of Latino students adapting to a challenging educational environment and a cultural context—Dartmouth College—often very different from their childhood ones.