Abstract
Migration from Mexico is a perpetually salient public issue on both sides of the border. The Mexico-born population in the United States is 11–12 million persons, including 5–6 million undocumented migrants who send billions of dollars “home.” However, the story of this migration must go beyond counts of the individuals per se to the families in which they are socially embedded. The prevailing social science narrative starts with a description of migration as a strategic decision that reflects the interests of families in spreading economic risks by sending members abroad. Families are also vital for marshaling resources that surmount barriers to both leaving home and maintaining transnational relationships that can pave the way for those who might follow in the footsteps of pioneer migrants.
This narrative misses the human drama in families that is created by tensions between aspirations, emotion-laden bonds, and expectations about fulfilling responsibilities to others from afar. Joanna Dreby’s Divided by Borders: Mexican Migrants and Their Children is a compelling ethnographic investigation that re-focuses attention on this drama, especially on parent-child relationships. Based primarily on fieldwork conducted with undocumented Mexican adults in New Jersey and the children of migrants and their grandparent caregivers in Mexico, this study provides an intimate portrait of how the costs of living apart unfold over time. This is the story of what happens when married and single parents migrate, and when children are asked to join them.
The book is structured around chapters that offer case studies and chapters that pursue analytic themes. For example, the initial case study suggests that lengthy separations create mismatches between how mothers and their children remember one another. Poignantly conveyed by the reproduction of a family portrait taken in New Jersey with an out-of-date picture of a Mexico-resident child “pasted in,” migrant mothers remember their children as they were and miss seeing them change in real time. Because routine phone calls home are poor substitutes for continuous contact, some children may create emotional distance from absent mothers who yearn for closeness. Of course, such experiences are not limited to mothers. Corroborating video evidence of this account of the malaise accompanying out-of-synch lives can be found in an interview of a migrant father in the documentary Farmingville. He describes himself with sadness as a “blind man” because of his inability to visualize a growing son in Mexico from his voice on the phone. The passage of time at different speeds for those who lead different lives in different places is not emotionally neutral.
This description alludes to the primary objective of elucidating how various inequalities affect family relationships. Specifically, expectations about parents’ responsibilities to children are structured around gender. Migrant fathers must provide financially and those who are either unable or unwilling to send money home may withdraw from their children’s lives. As the socio-emotional anchors of families, mothers carry a heavier “moral burden” to be with their children. Migrant mothers must manage guilt about leaving children who may resent them for doing so and inflict emotional pain by calling their grandmother caregivers “mama.” Those who separate from their husbands or who start new families abroad are in an even more difficult position when dealing with children who may fear the loss of emotional commitment from competing loyalties. When separation occurs, some fathers may take advantage of the opportunity to fill the resulting vacuum (at least until forming a union with another woman who can pick up the slack).
Although even familiar descriptions of gendered parenting dilemmas will resonate with many readers, Dreby’s attention to children’s perspectives is particularly fresh. Children’s views are structured less around gender than age. Children apparently shift from an attitude of indifference to an attitude of resentment toward migrant parents as they get older. Because this adds to the emotional baggage migrant parents must carry, children have some leverage in dealing with them. Older children also have greater freedom under the supervision of grandmother caregivers who typically are careful not to undermine the child’s parents and are often lax in monitoring. This lack of mooring increases the chance that children will become “troubled youth” who perform poorly in school. Still, perspectives mature during the transition to young adulthood as children accumulate experiences in their own romantic relationships and come to understand their responsibilities as men and women. Young men who are less successful in school realize that migration is a route to employment. Young women increasingly realize that it is a viable option in the context of marriage. Thus, the migration cycle begins anew.
Divided by Borders offers important insights into the ongoing costs of migration for fathers, mothers, and children. The implication that the costs for parents evolve over time, partly in response to the stance of children, exposes models of the migration process which assume that different family members have the same interests, the same costs, or that costs are static. In this vein, it is hard to walk away from this work without realizing how sterile commonly-used analytic terms like “costs” are when a richer language exists for capturing the psychological downside of migration.
This study is also praiseworthy for evidentiary reasons. Less ambitious undertakings might have focused solely on parents in New Jersey, but the adoption of an origin-destination research design that includes children in Mexico provides a necessary vantage point for developing an understanding of how lives are affected by geographic separation. Moreover, some ethnographies that are primarily narratives in the investigator’s own words require considerable trust on the part of the reader. This is not an issue here. Dreby is able to maintain the reader’s trust by liberally showcasing her subjects’ voices as evidence, despite the obvious challenges of doing so when respondents refuse to be recorded.
Several limitations that reveal avenues for future research should be mentioned. Although insights are generated from a multi-faceted data collection strategy involving in-depth interviews, in-school surveys, and interviews with school personnel, this effort better illuminates the possible channels through which some problems may emerge than their prevalence because of the research design (e.g., only 12 families were followed over time). Moreover, an original research design that excludes non-migrants cannot show that children’s problems there are due to migration. Collectively, these issues make it difficult to evaluate claims about the inadequacies of perspectives which draw attention to processes associated with cultures of migration and familism. Lastly, a secondary goal was to reveal the human impact of immigration policies. It is hard to separate the effects of immigration from the effects of immigration policies described as “exacting an unbearable toll on families.” Nevertheless, such characterizations will resonate with the already converted—those who favor a more humane approach to immigration policy. They will fail to move those who focus selectively on evidence of the resiliency of families, or who feel that angst among the undocumented population is in the national interest if it increases the likelihood of eventual family reunification in Mexico.
In closing, this exceptional study reveals the complexities of undocumented migrants as humans who are more than “arms” for digging ditches and carrying someone else’s kids. Divided by Borders will likely serve as a touchstone for future research on families with children who are both here and there.