Divided by Borders: Mexican Migrants and Their Children - by Joanna Dreby

Abstract

Divided by Borders: Mexican Migrants and Their Children. Joanna Dreby. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2010. 336 pp. ISBN 0520260902. $21.95 paper. In the current historical moment in the United States, the criminalization of undocumented immigrants - through the passage and implementation of laws that marginalize and leave them and their families unprotected - is powerfully informing public understanding about immigration. Statistics and staggering economic figures predominate in what are increasingly heated debates that, along with punitive laws and offensive rhetoric, dehumanize the entire population of Latino immigrants. In this context, Joanna Dreby's thoroughly researched and well-crafted book Divided by Borders refreshingly underscores the humanity of immigrants and their families. Divided by Borders is part of an emerging line of scholarship that examines the experiences of families for whom globalization's effects drive core members to live in different countries. The book is based on an ambitious research design that includes various locales in Mexico and the United States. Dreby conducted 142 formal interviews with migrant parents, children, and caregivers; longitudinal interviews with members of a group of 12 families over 4 years; and ethnographic observations in both the economically depressed Mixteca region of Mexico and central New Jersey. Although she draws most heavily from her conversations with transnational family members, Dreby is able to present a wider picture of the families' experiences by also including data from her research in schools. Chapters are sprinkled with fascinating information from more than 3,000 original surveys of Mexican students, interviews with teachers and administrators in the United and Mexico, and drawings from 425 Mexican elementary school students. The author effectively brings those sources together to accomplish several goals. Most notably, Dreby succeeds in providing an close and personal account of the private aspects of the lives of the Mexican men and women working in low-wage jobs in the continental United States (p. 3). Each chapter discusses a particular type of inequality experienced between parents and children while they live apart from each other. Chapter 2 reveals how time flies for migrant parents who work long hours in the United States. They remain so busy that they underestimate how quickly their children are growing up. Although they had originally planned to reunite with their families after a short period, migrant parents must spend the first few years just getting settled and paying off debts. This mismatch in time leads to prolonged separations, even when families long to be reunited. Chapters 3 and 4 deal with gendered inequalities in parenting practices and expectations. Dreby finds that, although mothers and fathers migrate in different order and for different reasons, they do long-distance parenting in similar ways: through phone calls, gifts, and economic remittances. Despite those similarities, children continue to hold gendered expectations: Fathers are economic providers whereas mothers are emotional caregivers. Although this is not a new finding, Dreby provides new evidence about how those expectations play out when parents attempt to reestablish connections after failing to live up to gendered norms. She also devotes an entire chapter to the case of Armando Lopez, a father whose experiences did not follow gendered norms. Chapter 5 shifts the attention to the role children play in families as supposed beneficiaries of family separation. Here Dreby lays out several important contributions to this line of scholarship and migration studies more broadly when she includes the voices of children in different stages of the life course. Most compelling is her analysis in delineating the changing behaviors and aspirations for young children, teenagers, and young adults. On the basis of those narratives, the author persuades readers to rethink the widely cited notion of a culture of migration in international migration studies. …