While Chicago has the second-largest Mexican population among U.S.
cities, relatively little ethnographic attention has focused on its
Mexican community. This much-needed ethnography of Mexicans living
and working in Chicago examines processes of racialization, labor
subordination, and class formation; the politics of nativism; and
the structures of citizenship and immigration law. Nicholas De
Genova develops a theory of "Mexican Chicago" as a transnational
social and geographic space that joins Chicago to innumerable
communities throughout Mexico. "Mexican Chicago" is a powerful
analytical tool, a challenge to the way that social scientists have
thought about immigration and pluralism in the United States, and
the basis for a wide-ranging critique of U.S. notions of race,
national identity, and citizenship.
De Genova worked for two and a half years as a teacher of
English in ten industrial workplaces (primarily metal-fabricating
factories) throughout Chicago and its suburbs. In "Working the
Boundaries "he draws on fieldwork conducted in these factories, in
community centers, and in the homes and neighborhoods of Mexican
migrants. He describes how the meaning of "Mexican" is refigured
and racialized in relation to a U.S. social order dominated by a
black-white binary. Delving into immigration law, he contends that
immigration policies have worked over time to produce Mexicans as
the U.S. nation-state's iconic "illegal aliens." He explains how
the constant threat of deportation is used to keep Mexican workers
in line. "Working the Boundaries" is a major contribution to
theories of race and transnationalism and a scathing indictment of
U.S. labor and citizenship policies.
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