The World of Mexican Migrants

Praised as a Splendid Addition to the Literature on the great wave of contemporary immigration from Mexico. The World of Mexican Migrants, by acclaimed author Judith Adler Hellman, provides a perspective on the migration issue that is rooted in the real-life experiences of the migrants themselves. Hellman, author of the bestselling Mexican Lives, takes us deep into the sending communities in Mexico, where we witness the conditions that lead Mexicans to risk their lives crossing the border. We hear harrowing border-crossing accounts and discover how construction workers, restaurant staff, street vendors, factory workers, and bicycle couriers from New York to Los Angeles find jobs and housing, learn English, send their children to school, and live with the constant fear of detection. We see how the intensification of enforcement directed at undocumented migrants has changed their lives and impacted on their decisions to remain in the United States or return to their homeland. Drawing on five years of in-depth interviews, Hellman offers a badly needed intimate perspective on Mexican migrants living in the United States. Book jacket.

Judith Adler Hellman is a professor of social and political science at York University in Canada. The author of three previous books-Mexican Lives (The New Press), Mexico in Crisis, and Journeys Among Women-she has done fieldwork in Mexico since the late 1960s.