Beyond the Borderlands: Migration and Belonging in the United States and Mexico
Debra Lattanzi Shutika
Abstract
Over the last three decades, migration from Mexico to the United States has moved beyond the borderlands to diverse communities across the country, with the most striking transformations in American suburbs and small towns. This study explores the challenges encountered by Mexican families as they endeavor to find their place in the U.S. by focusing on Kennett Square, a small farming village in Pennsylvania known as the “Mushroom Capital of the World.” In an account based on extensive fieldwork among Mexican migrants and their American neighbors, this book explores the issues of belonging and ... More
Over the last three decades, migration from Mexico to the United States has moved beyond the borderlands to diverse communities across the country, with the most striking transformations in American suburbs and small towns. This study explores the challenges encountered by Mexican families as they endeavor to find their place in the U.S. by focusing on Kennett Square, a small farming village in Pennsylvania known as the “Mushroom Capital of the World.” In an account based on extensive fieldwork among Mexican migrants and their American neighbors, this book explores the issues of belonging and displacement, central concerns for residents in communities that have become new destinations for Mexican settlement. It also completes the circle of migration by following migrant families as they return to their hometown in Mexico, providing an illuminating perspective of the tenuous lives of Mexicans residing in, but not fully part of, two worlds.
Keywords:
Mexico,
migration,
Mexican families,
suburbs,
Kennett Square,
belonging,
displacement,
communities
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2011 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780520269583 |
Published to California Scholarship Online: May 2012 |
DOI:10.1525/california/9780520269583.001.0001 |