Deborah A. Boehm: Intimate Migrations: Gender, Family, and Illegality Among Transnational Mexicans

Excerpt

Deborah A. Boehm takes an ethnographic approach to immigration between Mexico and the United States, using years of compiled fieldwork research on transnational Mexicans that she gathered both in the United States and in Mexico as the basis for her book, Intimate Migrations. From this foundation, Boehm crafts an enthralling piece of feminist, anthropological writing that weaves the human side of immigration into her scholarship; indeed, the deliberation of her title—“intimate” meaning “personal, close, familial” (Boehm 2012, p. 4)—is clear on the very first page. Boehm uses this personal, and in many ways private, lens to explore, support, and empower her conclusion, which she develops in detail throughout the expanse of her book. Overall, Boehm paints a multifaceted picture of immigration, one in which the process both impacts and is impacted by intimate familial relations. Pervading this interaction, she argues, are two inextricable forces: gender and the United States’ construction of immigrant legality-illegality, both of which profoundly impact migration and the transnational Mexican family. She makes clear, however, that this interaction is not a one-way ratchet, especially in the case of gender subjectivities, which immigration constantly works to restyle. Thus, out of the pages of Intimate Migrations emerges a complicated picture of immigration where three forces—gender, the family, and the State—operate in tandem to unremittingly define and redefine each other, leaving all in constant flux. In her book, Boehm navigates this picture with expert ease and evident familiarity and, in so doing, adds new dimensions to consider in the ever-growing area of adolescent research relating to immigration, gender, and family life (see, e.g., Delgado et al. 2011). …