BOOKS & FILM
Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants
by Robert Courtney Smith
Drawing on more than 15 years of research, Mexican New York offers an intimate view of globalization as it is lived by Mexican immigrants and their children. Robert Courtney Smith's groundbreaking study sheds new light on transnationalism, vividly illustrating how immigrants move back and forth between New York and their home village in Puebla with considerable ease, borrowing from and contributing to both communities as they forge new gender roles; new strategies of social mobility, race, and even adolescence; and new brands of politics and egalitarianism.
Coyotes: A Journey Through the Secret World of America's Illegal Aliens
By Ted Conover
From Publishers Weekly
Conover, author of Rolling Nowhere, posed as an immigrant, crossing the border twice and learning first-hand about "coyotes" those who sneak Mexicans and other Latin Americans across the border, often under murderous conditions. Menaced by hoods, arrested, freed, forced to dodge spotter planes, Conover spent a year, as he puts it, "working, drinking, smoking, driving, sleeping, sweating and shivering with Mexicans." His conclusion: "It is urgent that we know more about these people who ask little more than to wash our dishes, vacuum our cars, and pick our fruit."
The Devil's Highway : A True Story
by Luis Alberto Urrea
From Publishers Weekly
In May 2001, 26 Mexican men scrambled across the border and into an area of the Arizona desert known as the Devil's Highway. Only 12 made it safely across. American Book Award winning writer and poet Urrea (Across the Wire; Six Kinds of Sky; etc.), who was born in Tijuana and now lives outside Chicago, tracks the paths those men took from their home state of Veracruz all the way norte. Their enemies were many: the U.S. Border Patrol ("La Migra"); gung-ho gringo vigilantes bent on taking the law into their own hands; the Mexican Federales; rattlesnakes; severe hypothermia and the remorseless sun, a "110 degree nightmare" that dried their bodies and pounded their brains.
Forbidden Workers: Illegal Chinese Immigrants and American Labor
By Peter Kwong
Author Peter Kwong has interviewed countless immigrant workers, activists, Chinatown powerbrokers, and "snakeheads" (smugglers who bring immigrants to the United States) and has traveled to China to talk with families of immigrants. The result is an unprecedented look at an invisible community within American society ó and at a billion-dollar industry whose commodity is workers who labor under conditions approaching modern slavery.
Hard Line : Life and Death on the U.S.-Mexico Border
From Publishers Weekly:
What makes Ellingwood's portrayal so remarkable is his ability to examine the border from nearly every conceivable angle. He tells the story of the 1,952-mile line in the dirt through detailed accounts of the activities and perspectives of border agents, church activists, angry ranchers and migrants who narrowly escaped death. He also paints a compelling portrait of members of a Native American tribe divided by a border they didn't create and follows the county coroners charged with collecting and identifying the decomposed remains of migrants who couldn't survive the treacherous terrain.
Illegals : The Imminent Threat Posed by Our Unsecured U.S.-Mexico Border
by Jon E. Dougherty
From the back cover: America is under siege, facing a hostile invasion on its own soil that most of its citizens know nothing about: the invaders are illegal immigrants, their battleground is the US-Mexico border, and whatís at stake is the money, security and freedom of all Americans. In this chilling expose, investigative journalist Jon Dougherty contends that todayís unchecked immigration is destroying the very fabric of our culture and endangering American lives.
Volunteer Training Manual
Excerpt: During your time on the line, especially if youíre serving during a night shift, youíll become keenly aware of the importance of light and noise discipline. Too much noise or light can cause illegal aliens to choose a different route where they may have better luck getting through, which is obviously counter-productive to our objective ñan obvious presence deters people from entering the country illegally. This section is intended to briefly touch on the benefits of practicing good light and noise discipline and the effects it can have.
The No-Nonsense Guide to International Migration
by Peter Stalker
From the Publisher
Goods and money can move easily in free markets, but not people. Almost every day there are news reports of would-be migrants locked in cargo holds, foundering in small boats or discovered in trucks. If they survive to reach their destination, they often face a hostile reception by citizens of the host country.
The No-Nonsense Guide to International Migration looks at all the issues, from who migrates and why, to the benefits for both the country of origin and the country where they end up.
Migrations and Cultures: A World View
by Thomas Sowell
From Amazon.com
To future generations, the late 20th century may come to be known as the time of the DPs: Displaced Persons. Migration and refugeeism are raising inflammatory issues from unified Germany to the Tex-Mex border. Into this whirlpool of half-truths, sermons, prejudices, and fears dives Hoover Institution economist and syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell. It is not necessary to agree with all of Sowell's views to admire his imposing attempt to arrive at a theory of migration and culture. Or to succumb to his fascinating tales of how immigrants from Germany, Japan, China, and other countries have coped--and excelled--on strange new shores.
Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy
by Barbara Ehrenreich (SOC), Arlie Russell Hochschild<br>
From Publishers Weekly
The current discourse on globalization, according to the authors, has little to say about the "migration of maids, nannies, nurses, sex workers, and contract brides," since, to most economists, these women "are just individuals making a go of it." The positive effects of their labor are sometimes noted: the money they remit to home countries is a major source of foreign exchange, and the work they do in the host country enables a large pool of upwardly mobile First World women to pursue productive careers. The negative consequences, which can include emotional hardships caused by leaving children behind as well as physical strains, are rarely acknowledged.
by Tung Pok Chin, Winifred C. Chin
From Booklist
Paper Son gives us a rare, first-hand account of living as a Chinese American under false pretenses during the exclusion era, roughly 1882-1943. Tung Pok Chin bought documents that falsely identified him as the son of a Chinese American, allowing him to live and work in the U.S. or Gold Mountain. Most Chinese Americans worked as hand-launderers and in restaurants, and the conditions that Chin details are similar to those in other immigrant stories: long work days, unsafe and even fatal working conditions, cramped and squalid living quarters. But Chin's memoir also relays the tension and fear the Chinese American community felt during the McCarthy era, as many were questioned unlawfully by the FBI.
