Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands by Julian Lim (review)

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the U.S.– Mexico borderland regions were filled with movements of migrants searching for refuge, work, and money. As Julian Lim discusses in Porous Borders, these groups included Indigenous people, Chinese, African Americans, and Mexicans (16–20). Lim shows that although these migrants were constantly subjected to hostile immigration policies created in both the United States and Mexico, they nonetheless found ways to elude these discriminatory policies, rendering the border porous (11). Though previous historiography has largely examined each group of migrants individually, few have viewed the migratory dynamics of Chinese, African Americans, and the Indigenous people holistically. Lim’s work offers a new conceptualization of borderland history in which, as she argues, “people of diverse ethnoracial backgrounds forged dynamic relations—both cooperative and contentious” (8). Applying this notion throughout her study, Lim shows that “Mexican, Chinese, and black migrations in the borderlands were not always so easily compartmentalized, and they intersected and mixed in ways that confounded and challenged elite sensibilities on both sides of the border” (9–10). Furthermore, through providing detailed accounts of these diverse migrants’ interactions with immigration laws in both the United States and Mexico, Lim shows that both U.S. and Mexican immigration policies converged, even though they were developed independently, and that “the ideologies of racial purification through policies of differentiation and segregation had become transnational themselves” (14).

Lim opens the book with an overview of the U.S.–Mexico borderland history, focusing mainly on the development of the border region of El Paso–Ciudad Júarez. She shows that the El Paso–Ciudad Júarez region attracted Mexicans, Chinese, and African Americans who transgressed racial lines drawn by white supremacists and nationalists through interracial marriages, collaborative labor activities, and sharing the same living spaces. Lim then turns to the border-crossing movements of Chinese peoples. Unable to legally enter the United States due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Chinese in the El Paso–Ciudad Júarez region often dressed up as Mexicans wearing traditional Mexican garbs such as sombreros to enter the United States from Mexico. The presence of Chinese people, Lim argues, challenged the conventional racial divisions, making it difficult for immigration officials to distinguish Chinese people from Mexican people (106–107). Pershing’s Punitive Expedition provided another opportunity for Indigenous, Chinese, Mexican, and African American peoples of the U.S.–Mexico regions to transgress border and racial lines. Lim aptly shows that these peoples, who were marginalized in the United States, aided Pershing’s expedition “to redefine their relationship to the American nation and state” (126), which, ironically, “reinforced the legitimacy of the U.S. government to continue to exclude others like them” (127).

Ending the book on a somber note, Lim shows that during the 1920s and 1930s, the discriminatory immigration policies on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border became more draconian, making the once porous border more impervious. Chinese, Mexican, and African American peoples who once enjoyed the benefit provided by borderlands found themselves stuck between two nations that increasingly restricted their movements (161–164). Eventually, the Chinese migrants, who did not fit into either the racial binary construct of the United States or the homogenous notion of mestizaje in Mexico, were rendered invisible in the U.S.–Mexico border-land histories (196).

One of Lim’s major contributions to the historiography is that she incorporates many fascinating accounts documenting interactions among Chinese, African American, and Mexican groups. Lim shows that these migrants worked alongside each other in places such as railroad construction sites and Chinese restaurants. They also inter-married each other and shared recreational activities such as gambling. Through these discussions, Lim provides a new perspective for viewing U.S.–Mexico borderland histories and reconceptualizes the borderland region as a greater hotspot of diversity than some historians have imagined. Using sources on both sides of...