Clandestine Crossings: Migrants and Coyotes on the Texas-Mexico Border - Softcover

Spener, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801475899 ISBN 13: 9780801475894

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Clandestine Crossings delivers an in-depth description and analysis of the experiences of working-class Mexican migrants at the beginning of the twenty-first century as they enter the United States surreptitiously with the help of paid guides known as coyotes. Drawing on ethnographic observations of crossing conditions in the borderlands of South Texas, as well as interviews with migrants, coyotes, and border officials, Spener details how migrants and coyotes work together to evade apprehension by U.S. law enforcement authorities as they cross the border. In so doing, he seeks to dispel many of the myths that misinform public debate about undocumented immigration to the United States. The hiring of a coyote, Spener argues, is one of the principal strategies that Mexican migrants have developed in response to intensified U.S. border enforcement. Although this strategy is typically portrayed in the press as a sinister organized-crime phenomenon, Spener argues that it is better understood as the resistance of working-class Mexicans to an economic model and set of immigration policies in North America that increasingly resemble an apartheid system. In the absence of adequate employment opportunities in Mexico and legal mechanisms for them to work in the United States, migrants and coyotes draw on their social connections and cultural knowledge to stage successful border crossings in spite of the ever greater dangers placed in their path by government authorities.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Clandestine Crossings is both instructive and provocative in the best sense of the word. David Spener's highly unique and important research and analysis will prompt a great deal of interest and deep engagement from readers in migration studies, border studies, and Chicano/a studies, as well as in anthropology, geography, political science, and sociology. There may be no one else in a position to combine the skills and knowledge that Spener has brought to this project with his willingness and ability to challenge hegemonic notions of coyotes and coyotaje--and, by extension, the U.S. boundary-enforcement apparatus. This book deserves as wide an audience as possible: what it has to offer is not only fascinating and unique but also of great importance."--Joseph Nevins, Vassar College, author of Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid

About the Author:

David Spener is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Trinity University. He is the editor of Adult Biliteracy and coeditor of The U.S.-Mexico Border: Transcending Divisions, Contesting Identities and Free Trade and Uneven Development: The North American Apparel Industry after NAFTA. Visit his Web site at http://www.trinity.edu/clandestinecrossings.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0801475899
• ISBN 13: 9780801475894
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320