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.

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9780199380589

Table of Contents

Reviews

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 Chavez 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 Chavez's insightful ethnography on the lives of border crossers is an important book. While intimately rendering the lives of his informants, Chavez'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

Author Information

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

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