C ristina S alinas . Managed Migrations

The historical connections between U.S.-Mexico border enforcement and the demand for labor by employers in the agricultural sector have been amply examined as examples of the contradictions of a system of migration laws built on a premise of control and restriction versus a reality of a demand for farmworkers who have been the basis for economic growth and development in border regions. Cristina Salinas’s Managed Migrations: Growers, Farmworkers, and Border Enforcement in the Twentieth Century adds to the study of this period of the early twentieth century, and particularly the 1940s and 1950s, by exploring the interactions of U.S. Border Patrol, migrant workers, and growers. These interactions contributed to building a racialized migration system that both prioritized growers’ desires for a secure, nonunion labor force and constructed Mexican migrants as a docile, unassimilable, cheap, and therefore desirable workforce. Salinas analyzes the connections between local, national, and international spaces of policy...

Agriculture · Archaeology · Business · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Enforcement · Geography · International trade · Political science · Premise · Workforce · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Migration, Health, Geopolitics, Historical Geography