Blurred Borders: Transnational Migration between the Hispanic Caribbean and the United States

by Jorge Duany

In this comprehensive comparative study, Jorge Duany explores how migrants to the United States from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico maintain multiple ties to their countries of origin.

Chronicling these diasporas from the end of World War II to the present, Duany argues that each sending country's relationship to the United States shapes the transnational experience for each migrant group, from legal status and migratory patterns to work activities and the connections migrants retain with their home countries. Blending extensive ethnographic, archival, and survey research, Duany proposes that contemporary migration challenges the traditional concept of the nation-state. Increasing numbers of immigrants and their descendants lead what Duany calls "bifocal" lives, bridging two or more states, markets, languages, and cultures throughout their lives. Even as nations attempt to draw their boundaries more clearly, the ceaseless movement of transnational migrants, Duany argues, requires the rethinking of conventional equations between birthplace and residence, identity and citizenship, borders and boundaries.

304 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2011

Reviews

[Chelsea · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I find it indispensable to maintain emotional, family, and cultural connections with my country of birth. Going back to Cuba every so often is a way of not burning the bridges back "home." Studying transnational migration has forced me to ponder how my own experiences may reverberate with ordinary people who blur borders in their daily lives. This book is an academic attempt to answer that very personal question, 'Where are you from?'" (16)

"Border crossing becomes an apt image not just for the act of moving to another country but also for the crossover. Throughout this book, I have argued that Hispanic Caribbean migrants blur the borders of their countries with the United States. In doing so, they create hybrid zones of contact between their places of origin and destination. Thus, they constantly shuttle along the social, cultural, political, and economic edges between two or more nations." (228)

[Osvaldo · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I had to power-browse through a couple of the chapters to get through this in time for my last field exam, this is definitely a book I am going to come back to quite a bit. Looking through the Hispanophone Caribbean and their respective Diasporic communities in the U.S. (and in each other) through the lens of transnationalism, Duany makes a convincing argument for divorcing the boundaries of culture, race and language from the border of nation-states in examining these communities and the bonds between and among them. Furthermore, he convincingly includes Puerto Rico in the discussion of the trans-"national" despite its position as a post-colonial colony of the U.S.