Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

by Julian Lim

Overview

With the railroad's arrival in the late nineteenth century, immigrants of all colors rushed to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, transforming the region into a booming international hub of economic and human activity. Following the stream of Mexican, Chinese, and African American migration, Julian Lim presents a fresh study of the multiracial intersections of the borderlands, where diverse peoples crossed multiple boundaries in search of new economic opportunities and social relations. However, as these migrants came together in ways that blurred and confounded elite expectations of racial order, both the United States and Mexico resorted to increasingly exclusionary immigration policies in order to make the multiracial populations of the borderlands less visible within the body politic, and to remove them from the boundaries of national identity altogether.

Using a variety of English- and Spanish-language primary sources from both sides of the border, Lim reveals how a borderlands region that has traditionally been defined by Mexican-Anglo relations was in fact shaped by a diverse population that came together dynamically through work and play, in the streets and in homes, through war and marriage, and in the very act of crossing the border.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469635507
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	10/10/2017
Series:	The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	806,478
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Julian Lim is assistant professor of history at Arizona State University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

With lucid prose and binational archival depth, Julian Lim illuminates a key era and location in borderlands history. Starting with the cartographic expedition of 1848, Lim traces the construction of the El Paso–Juarez area as a political and economic engine of empire and border control and the ways that its multiracial, mixed-race denizens contested this process. Full of previously untold stories, this book stands to remap our understanding of the border.—Rachel Ida Buff, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee



What makes this study original is its substantive inclusion of Chinese, Black, and Mexicano histories within a single frame. Lim's innovative treatment of this material will push immigration and race historians to consider longer chronologies and dynamics at play in the borderlands.—Kelly Lytle Hernandez, author of City of Inmates

Editorial Reviews

This book's deft intersection of multiple ethnic and national histories makes Lim's work indispensable to scholars in many fields, particularly borderlands and Asian American history, US-Mexico relations, and migration studies.—Choice



A significant contribution to the historiography of comparative immigration and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. It is well grounded in existing scholarship, interprets primary material adeptly, and, along with other recent works published in English, cites Mexican scholarship and sources to comprehend better the transnational subject and region.—Journal of Southern History



Explores how diversity at the U.S.-Mexico border in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries complicated notions of community and belonging . . . Makes an important contribution to borderlands studies.—Journal of American History



Provides an eminently readable analysis of mixing, passing, and crossing of all kinds. . . . Should inspire students and emerging scholars to future research on the multiracial nation as they see the complexities of their own lives, families, and communities in the porous boundaries of today's borderlands.—Hispanic American Historical Review



Julian Lim's Porous Borders is a delight to read. It is a model of superlative historical writing to which all ought to aspire. With enviable ease, it converses with the literature in several fields, including immigration, borderlands, legal, and urban history."—Journal of Social History



Julian Lim's book offers a timely look at contemporary issues and helps readers understand the racial origins of border policing, immigration laws, and refugee policy. By incorporating copious documentation from Mexican archives, she offers a much more nuanced look at how border crossers contributed to the transformation of the US–Mexico border. Lim's rich narrative and arguments make this book an important read for any historian of immigration or the US–Mexico border, as well as an excellent choice for undergraduate and graduate seminars.—Journal of American Ethnic History



A compelling investigation. . . . Lim's work stands out for placing this history in a multiracial context in the most active zone of border crossing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.—American Historical Review



Lim's ability to weave an analytical narrative from an array of disparate sources in local, state, and national archives in Mexico as well as the United States makes Porous Borders a model for transnational history and the historian's craft.—H-Net



Lim's history of multiracial migration in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands isn't just a well-executed piece of academic scholarship. In addition, it is also a clear warning regarding the dangers of naively embracing multiracialism as a panacea for America's contemporary racial woes.—Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books



An important contribution to borderlands history . . . . Sophisticated and fresh.—Journal of Arizona History

From the Publisher