Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol

Bibliographic Data

ID7306052
AuthorsEric V Meeks (Northern Arizona University, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume98
Issue1
Pages230-231
Publication date2011-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jar100
OpenAlexW2327437885
LanguageEN
Citations received15

Kelly Lytle Hernández revises a common thesis that the United States Border Patrol served as a monolithic instrument of immigrant labor control and a salve to nativist anxieties. She does so, first, by revealing how local interests and individual border patrol agents determined the goals and practices of early border policing, not always to the advantage of southwestern agribusiness. Secondly, she examines the patrol's evolving practice of state-sanctioned violence, from direct brutality to less direct—yet no less harmful—tactics in later years. Her third and perhaps most important innovation emerges from her transnational framework. She persuasively shows that Mexico collaborated with U.S. policing efforts (though not without tension and conflict), ironically fostering the racialization of Mexican migrants as a subordinate caste within the United States. Hernández begins with a social history of the border patrol from its formation in 1924 through the 1930s, when local culture determined the institution's character in different regions. In the “greater Texas borderlands” that stretched to eastern Arizona, working-class Anglos hoped to gain dignity, status, and respect by joining the patrol and following the example of the Texas Rangers, who used often-brutal violence to discipline Mexican migrant workers. In the “California-Arizona borderlands,” agents first focused on preventing the immigration of restricted Asians and Europeans. Within a decade, however, officials turned their attention to Mexican migrants, even though they accommodated growers by ensuring a ready supply of seasonal labor. As labor demands dropped during the Great Depression, agents enforced restrictions with new vigor, while Mexico discouraged emigration and encouraged repatriation

Caste · Criminology · Dignity · Immigration · Political science · Politics · Racialization · Sociology · State (computer science · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law

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