Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History

by Julian Lim

With the railroad's arrival in the late nineteenth century, immigrants of all colors rushed to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, transforming the region into a booming international hub of economic and human activity. Following the stream of Mexican, Chinese, and African American migration, Julian Lim presents a fresh study of the multiracial intersections of the borderlands, where diverse peoples crossed multiple boundaries in search of new economic opportunities and social relations. However, as these migrants came together in ways that blurred and confounded elite expectations of racial order, both the United States and Mexico resorted to increasingly exclusionary immigration policies in order to make the multiracial populations of the borderlands less visible within the body politic, and to remove them from the boundaries of national identity altogether.

Using a variety of English- and Spanish-language primary sources from both sides of the border, Lim reveals how a borderlands region that has traditionally been defined by Mexican-Anglo relations was in fact shaped by a diverse population that came together dynamically through work and play, in the streets and in homes, through war and marriage, and in the very act of crossing the border.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

302 pages, Hardcover

First published December 18, 2017

Reviews

[Darian Burns · Rating 3 out of 5]

According to Julian Lim, the oxymoron “porous borders” can describe a capitalist borderland's contradictions, and this is precisely what she does with the title of her book Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the US-Mexico Borderlands. Lim examines the relationship between border and racial classification. Thus, she explores the interaction between a relatively conceptual subject, such as the formation, occupation, and fortification of the border, and a more abstract one, such as national racial identifications. Unlike food, architecture, or clothing, these factors are somewhat abstract.

There are two conceptual central themes. The first uses "borderlands" to illustrate how capital ties up with transnational labor flows and unleashes spatial and racial manifestations and tensions. Therefore, capitalist borderlands are sites where racial and citizenship identities are paradoxically blurred and sharpened. Second, state and local elites are challenged in legitimizing and delegitimizing ethnoracial and citizenship categories through discursive and policing instruments.

Throughout the book, Lim portrays two opposing images of El Paso due to the theme of borderlands. First, the alternative El Paso that “could have been,” according to Lim. An El Paso that would have been a genuinely liberating and racially diverse "sanctuary" city for blacks who sought asylum from Jim Crow violence, Chinese immigrants seeking safety from anti-Chinese labor exclusion campaigns, and Mexicans seeking relief from poverty and marginalization under Porfirian rule (Mexican President Porfirio Díaz, was often cruel to the underclasses within Mexico during his reign). In Lim's second depiction of El Paso, she describes it as a porous site where local and state elites marshaled legal instruments to regulate cross-border flows of people and erase the country's racial, compassionate, and empathetic history. In the 1930s, Lim says, The United States and Mexico began “homogenizing” because both countries pursued "purification" migration policies to keep out those races and classes that did not want to enter their country.

The result is that Mexicans, Chinese, and black Americans on both sides of the border have had to continually redefine who they are, where they belong, and who they are as individuals. The book's second central conceptual theme focuses on how capital's desire for accumulation enables it to create capitalist, entrepreneurial borderlands by combining labor's willingness for emancipation with capital's desire for accumulation. The most prevalent areas of dispossession are those where international flows of goods and non-material resources (such as knowledge, skills, or experience) intersect. These areas are often characterized by a high degree of globalization and are usually located in countries strategically important for exporting or importing specific resources. As a result, these areas are often targets of exploitation or extraction of resources without the consent of the affected communities. An essential perspective offered by Lim is that the United States' immigration policies are intrinsically linked to the eviction of Native Americans from the El Paso borderlands due to dispossession strategies. El Paso became a transnational hub for natural resources, capital, and labor after the Transcontinental Railway arrived in 1881. The Transcontinental Railway connected El Paso to
the rest of the country, making it much easier to transport natural resources, capital, and labor.
This made it easier for businesses to operate in El Paso, making it a significant hub for economic
activity. The media and city elites promoted El Paso as a cosmopolitan, all-welcoming city. For
example, in 1920, the El Paso Herald published an article praising the city's "international flavor."
and welcoming of immigrants, stating that the city was "the great, cosmopolitan melting pot" of
the West.

Based on Lim's analysis, this sanctuary city soon acquired nicknames such as "Hell Paso" or "Sin City" in response to state and local elites' disapproval of interracial marriages and efforts to eradicate them from history. The tensions between men and women also contributed to racial tensions. The nickname "Hell Paso" references the city's reputation as a place of vice and sin. In contrast, the nickname "Sin City" was a reference to the city's history of interracial marriage. The tension between men and women was because women were often blamed for the breakdown of traditional marriage roles, leading to arguments and conflict between them. For instance, by hoping to turn Sin City into a Sun City, reform-orientated women sought to get rid of those they perceived to be non-virtuous women. This response almost always meant white women trying to eliminate women belonging to immigrant minorities. The “reform’s” actual purpose became getting El Paso cleansed of those seen by whites as undesirable immigrants. This idea also meant seeing virtue as white and sin as immigrants. Authorities portrayed Chinese immigrants' laundry businesses as "stealing" white women's work to control migration. A framing of this can be seen in the current rhetoric of "American First," which pits immigrants against working-class Americans by promoting the belief that immigrants are taking jobs from them. As the saying goes, “Same play, second act.” Porus Borders gives a compelling narrative about El Paso and the US-Mexico border and skillfully stitches it together as the author moves across multiple disciplinary boundaries. Using a variety of conceptual lenses and language, Lim examines the simultaneous forces that shaped El Paso's borderlands between 1840 and 1940. After El Paso emerged during the dispossession process, it became increasingly open to intercontinental, cross-border material and non-material flows. Capital, laws, races, genders, labor, liberations, and ideologies are all fitting examples. At this time, El Paso symbolized the paradoxically porous nature of the US-Mexico border, reifying the thnoracial exclusionary practices of state and elite actors while enhancing cross-border movements.

Lim's book opens interdisciplinary methodological and conceptual paths for exploration. Thus, scholars should see the relevance of exploring how local, state, and national policies become interconnected and linked in the larger framework of immigration policies enacted to facilitate, map, justify, and make comprehensible the increasing convergence of national and racial identities. Bringing history to life and seeking to make it applicable to the modern day, Lim argues that as United States mayors, civil rights activists, and other urban leaders continue to oppose current federal policies against sanctuary cities, this book encourages inquiry into whether subnational immigration interests can be separate from and even oppositional to federal interests.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably more of a 4.5, but I thoroughly enjoyed it so I’ll round up

[Valeria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great, i love a transnational book

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A compelling premise, it seems like Lim was more intrigued with an idea and then cut it to fit into El Paso.

[Mills College Library]

305.90691 L7322 2017