Motherhood across Borders: Immigrants and Their Children in Mexico and New York by Gabrielle Oliveira (review)

In Motherhood across Borders, Gabrielle Oliveira addresses the effects of maternal migration on children's educational experiences. The book details the shift in family dynamics between the mother, the caregivers, the children left behind, the children brought over to the US, and the children born in the United States. Oliveira refers to these groups as transnational care constellations. Oliveira argues that the shift in family dynamics and care structure influences the lives of children most especially with regard to their education. In order to understand how maternal migration affects children, Oliveira examines their care and the ways in which caregivers and mothers negotiate child-rearing practices. The two questions this book seeks to answer are how mothers with children who live in New York City and in Mexico navigate the care, educational support, and investment in their children's education in both areas, and how the levels of maternal migration influence the educational and migration aspirations as well as the social opportunities of the children living in Mexico and their siblings brought to or born in the US.

One of the main issues Oliviera discusses is the interaction between economic benefits and emotional toll based on legal status. Mothers are able to provide economically for their children via migration but the cost they pay is separation from each other. Additionally, separation of siblings presents differences in how they are treated and the opportunities afforded to them. For example, one child may be undocumented and therefore limited in resources while another, born in the US, will have all of the opportunities afforded by his status. This creates a distinction between siblings and how they are perceived. The documented child, with the opportunity to do more, may receive golden child status. This status provokes jealousy among the siblings.

Chapter 1 examines the stress of gender roles and perceptions about what makes a good mother. These ideals limit the socially acceptable reasons that women may give for migrating, which in turn has an effect on the child who is left behind. The child is expected to be grateful for the separation that they are told benefits them while at the same time they suffer from it. Oliveira highlights the confusion that this creates and suggests that the mothers often have other reasons for migrating that they cannot state due to what constitutes a "good mother."

In chapter 2, Oliveira takes a look at school-related decisions and the difference between educational trajectories in the US and in Mexico. Technology helps families bridge the communication gap across the borders and mothers are able to take a central role as decision makers in their children's education in Mexico. In fact, their role in the school system is stronger in Mexico than in New York because of the lack of a language barrier as well as other concerns. In New York City the migrant mothers do not feel respected; they are worried about their legal status and have concerns of racism against them from African Americans.

Chapter 3 deals with the perspective of the children. Children make sense of their parents' migration and this shapes their view of their futures and what it is like on the other side. Children in the US, for example, perceive Mexico as less safe and more impoverished than the United States, even when they are poor and living in unsafe conditions in New York City. Children in Mexico are often taught to measure their upward mobility by their material possessions and compare the distribution of resources between themselves and their siblings in the North. Technology often feeds into their ideas of inequality whether or not any inequity exists.

Chapter 4 highlights the different social opportunities of the children in these care constellations, which also create complications—for example, the children living in Mexico feel discouraged about what their degrees would be worth in the US and may have, as a larger goal...