Border Lives: Fronterizos, Transnational Migrants, and Commuters in Tijuana

by Sergio Chávez

Overview

In Border Lives, Sergio Chávez moves past Tijuana's notorious image as a hub of sex, drugs, and crime to tell the story of the diverse group of individuals who use both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border as a resource to construct their livelihoods. Based on ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews, Chávez explores the complex and often contradictory ways in which the border influences the livelihood strategies and lifestyles of border crossers. The border shapes respondents' knowledge and relationships, controls their time, and allows them to convert U.S. wages into a Mexican standard of living without losing the social and cultural comforts of Tijuana-as-home. A substantial contribution to migration and labor studies, Border Lives provides empirical grounding to theories of how geographical borders shape human action.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199380589
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/02/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Sergio Chávez is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rice University. He was born and raised in California's Salinas Valley.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Crafting Border Livelihoods
Chapter 2: The Occupational Careers of Ex-Braceros
Chapter 3: Becoming a Border Commuter
Chapter 4: Strategies for Crossing the Border through (Non)Inspection
Chapter 5: Border Networks
Chapter 6: Conclusion: Lessons from Tijuana
Epilogue: Border Lives One Decade Later
Appendix A: Methodological Reflection
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This kind of special insight, of waiting in line, for example, demonstrates the biggest strength of Border Lives: its rigorous ethnographic approach... I appreciated how, in addition to spending time with respondents in their homes and personal networks, Chávez conducted observations at the San Ysidro port every morning for a year, and even crossed the border with a coyote. The Epilogue offers an update on the lives of research participants, and the reader is able to find closure with people you have developed a connection to throughout the book. I think this emotional connection speaks to the power of this study's methodology." — Claudia Maria López, Assistant Professor, California State University, Long Beach, ILR Review

"Offering insights to immigration and border studies, Border Lives shows the quintessential border city as both opportunity and barrier, as staging ground for diverse strategies and accommodations."
—Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, author of Paradise Transplanted: Migration and the Making of California Gardens

"Sergio Chávez digs beneath the headlines and stereotypes to reveal the U.S.-Mexico border as a place of both opportunities and barriers for working-class Mexicans. Drawing on his keen ethnographic senses, he explains how different strategies of border crossing work in practice and their effects on the economy and culture of the region. Border Lives is a deeply humanist account of the heartbreaks and dreams where two countries meet." —David Scott FitzGerald, University of California, San Diego

"Sergio Chávez's insightful ethnography on the lives of border crossers is an important book. While intimately rendering the lives of his informants, Chávez's innovative framing of the border as a site for studying structure-agency enables him to make an unusual contribution in the sociology of migration."
—Robert Smith, author of Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants

"Chávez's book is a valuable contribution to the literature on international migration. A thorough, well-documented account of how different cohorts of migrants navigate shifting immigration policies, Border Lives is likely to inspire additional accounts of how migrants of different legal statuses, who by their classification face distinct policy contexts, interpret and overcome the constraints they face."
—Social Forces

"Border Lives, the culmination of his years of research and 158 interviews with border residents explores the resourcefulness and adaptability those residents demonstrate in negotiating rapidly shifting immigration and border enforcement policies in the face of economic instability and social inequalities. The very geography of Tijuana, known by locals as la ciudad del brinco (jumping-point city), both constrains and enables mobility, as Chávez illustrates."
—Lynn Gosnell, Rice University

"Demonstrating how Tijuana residents mobilize their resources to access the US and carve out transborder livelihoods that increase their life opportunities, the author offers a balanced examination of structure and agency. The book's appendix on methodology might be particularly useful for advanced undergraduate and graduate students starting their own fieldwork. An important contribution to migration and borderlands studies."
—A. R. Mendez, University of California San Diego, CHOICE

"The lessons relayed in this book benefit from a commitment to sustained fieldwork and the triangulation of evidence from various sources.The book represents an important contribution to research on Tijuana and the borderlands, international migration trajectories, and urban ethnography."—Social Service Review

"This is an important ethnography that meaningfully advances our understanding of the borderlands and the border lives residing within it."
—American Journal of Sociology

From the Publisher