The Ties That Bind Us: Mexican Migrants in San Diego County (review)

San Diego County and specifically the region between Tijuana and San Diego have long been at the epicenter of research on immigration between the U.S. and Mexico. From the ethnographic work of Leo Chavez's classic Shadowed Lives (1991) to the visual tensions captured in Paul Espinoza's film, Uneasy Neighbors (1989), social scientists have looked to research conducted at this juncture as a road map to understanding the experiences of Mexican migrants across the country. The Ties That Bind Us adds an important new addition to this intellectual and political history. In particular, the authors provide an analysis of the San Diego-Tijuana region rich in depth and detail, stemming from a complex array of data ranging from case studies, focus groups, interviews, and ethnographic information to large survey data from the applications for matrículas consulares and the survey of migration at Mexico's northern border (EMIF). What emerges is a comprehensive source of information that serves as a premier tool for academicians, policy makers, non-profit and non-governmental organizations and others interested in immigration generally and this region in particular.

The book's greatest contributions are centered in two areas. First, it fills a gap in the literature and understanding of Mexican migration in this region in the period after 1993. Second, the diversity (both methodological and disciplinary) of the authors provides a more comprehensive binational perspective with details regarding Mexican migration and conditions of life in Tijuana that were previously unexamined. With the exception of work by Wayne Cornelius (1992) and the EMIF, there has been a lack of social science research on this region in the past ten years. This is significant in large part because the implementation of Operation Gatekeeper in 1994, coupled with the end of IRCA amnesty, and the mounting economic pressures borne from the implementation of NAFTA and related economic trends in the region suggest that traditional patterns of migration have shifted from this area. Yet, prior to the research represented in this volume few scientific measures existed to understand this new pattern of migration and specifically how it impacted the labor and demographic makeup of migrants already in this region. In effect, this book performs a vital function in helping to fill this gap. Most notable in this contribution are the three articles in Part I by David Runsten, Bonnie Bade, and Konane Martinez, David Runsten and Alejandrina Ricárdez. From these authors we get a better measure of the precise origins of the Mexican immigrant population in this region (notably that an increasing number are emerging from the Southeastern states of Oaxaca and Guerrero), a more precise picture of their demographic makeup (including the increase of women, as well as younger migrants from more urban locations) and a clearer sense for how their physical health interacts with their physical conditions and civic life.

In addition, to these studies the book benefits from the work by research in Tijuana and the surrounding region in Mexico that provides depth and detail regarding life in this area. There is a natural symmetry to the first half of the work present in the articles by Rafael Alarcón, María Eugenia Anguiano Téllez, as well as Luis Escala Rabadán and Germán Vega Briones. In particular the contributions of authors in Part II give us a better understanding of the social, economic, and political contexts in Mexico influencing migration, the unique experiences of cross-border commuters, and the experience of migrants as they return to their home towns. All with a methodological complexity that bridges qualitative and quantitative data in a fashion that is accessible and enlightening.

Ultimately, this impressive array of data from both sides of the border is brought together in Richard Kiy and Naoko Kada's Conclusion. Here the authors go the extra step beyond examining the conditions of the region...