Migration Miracle: Faith, Hope and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey (review)

The immigration literature is a very crowded field and growing more crowded each day. How can anyone read even the yearly volumes published in this area, let alone the hundreds if not thousands of new journal articles, reports, blogs, etc.? The sheer mass gives the impression that there is little if anything original to say. Yet, periodically a new publication comes along and makes even the seasoned academic shake her head and wonder, "Now why hasn't anyone published on this before?" Such was my experience reading Jacqueline Hagan's new book, Migration Miracle.

This infinitely readable volume fills a gap in the U.S. migration field's extensive literature — in often vivid narrative prose — by documenting the importance faith plays in immigrants' decisions to migrate and their ability to survive harrowing journeys, particularly those of undocumented Central Americans. A growing literature engages the importance of faith, and religion more narrowly, in the acculturation processes of immigrants particularly the volumes published as the outcome of research underwritten by Pew Charitable Trusts — the Gateway Cities project of which I was a part. And conferences on religion and migration abound. Hagan knows this work, but she quite correctly argues that there is far more to the importance of immigrants' faith than just whether or not it aids their adaptation. What she sets out to do and achieves very effectively, is to communicate the intimacy of faith in the migration process, from prayers and promesas as people contemplate and plan their trips, to seeking human counsel and divine intervention when inevitable problems arise and barriers appear that thwart their travel. Hagan knows this terrain well; she has long researched Guatemalan migration and has published previously on how important faith is to embarking on migration. Over five years of transnational fieldwork, she and her team did copious amounts of data collection for this book, including some 250 interviews with immigrants and nearly 100 with religious leaders from Mexico and Central America. They also observed religious festivals, visited sacred spaces and traced migration pathways through the desert, finding in the latter harrowing pleas for help alongside inspiring affirmations of faith inscribed into the harsh landscape.

After an introductory chapter in which Hagan spells out her objectives and methodology, she develops chapters that mirror the migration experience. Chapter 2 explores the religio-psychological preparation migrants undergo as they plan to emigrate. Included in the planning are the promesas, the covenants they make to the divine for help in crossing. The axis mundi of the book, Hagan explains this transcendent reciprocity system in which successful migrants return the favors through devotional activities that express their gratitude, fortifying their faith in the process. In Chapter 3 the stories shift from those of migrants to those of the many faith leaders who advocate for, and provide sanctuary to, the modern-day Pilgrims during their arduous ordeals. "Miracles in the Desert" is the title of Chapter 4, recounts the travails of migrants navigating unfamiliar and harsh lands in prose reminiscent of familiar refrains from Exodus. Difficulties test faith among today's migrants — as they have since time immemorial — but faith accompanies them, inspires their determination, and miracles do happen. No wonder Hagan dedicates the entirety of Chapter 5 to narrating immigrants' promesas. These pledges are made before the journey begins, are fortified during the journey, and are repaid after the pilgrim reaches the Promised Land. However, full reciprocity can only occur, Hagan writes, when migrants return to their homelands and "pay homage to the sacred figure in the original shrine in which the pledge was made."(154) Promesas, then, are as transnational and as cyclical as the migratory life itself, inextricably bound together to sustain and nourish hope. As much or more than promises made to migrants' families, these spiritually sealed covenants inspire migrants to continue their journeys despite overwhelming difficulties and odds. It is this faith, Hagan underscores in the book's conclusion, that we social scientists typically...