Abstract
The book is readable, informative, and provocative. Since women make up nearly 50% of migrating adults and the majority of legal immigrants to the United States, the adoption of a “gendered lens to understand immigration to the United States” (p. 256) is timely and needed. Another contribution of the book is “to help correct the imbalance in scholarship and policymaking” (p. 2) on immigrant women, especially in regard to their presence and contributions. Through a mixed-method study based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and information from in-depth interviews, the authors present a multifaceted and intricate portrait of “the social, cultural and employment terrains inhabited by adult foreign-born women in the United States in the early twenty-first century, with attention to the stories that these women narrate about their lives” (p. 2).
What factors and conditions fuel the decision to leave, the “contexts of exit”(p. 20)? A historical review of push factors, that is, aspirations for better life opportunities; religious, political, or ethnic persecution; gender violence and harm; natural disasters and wars; the Industrial Revolution; and European colonialism and postcolonial authoritarian regimes in Latin America, is presented. Similarly, “contexts of reception” is another historical review, but of immigration policy and its gendered treatment of immigrants and of refugee and asylum policy. The section also offers personal insights into the cultural and structural situations into which newly landed immigrant women were inserted. The authors highlight key changes to immigration policy and their impact on foreign-born women living and working in the United States. There are data-based descriptions of the settlement patterns, family structure, and employment status at the time of migration and a succinct discussion of the “effects of 9/11 xenophobia” (p. 26) and the resulting “escalating culture of securitization” (p. 90).
The authors sought to understand how women express agency, that is, “how these women act independently within, despite, and against the structures of society” (p. 9) by “[e]xamining the intersection between the social locations of gender and nativity” (p. 236). They were rewarded with valuable personal accounts of coping and transcendence over constraints on rights and opportunities.
Life challenges multiply immeasurably when the means of entry is irregular, or “entering through the back door” (p. 77). Personal examples of resistance and activism in response to deportation are striking testaments of women’s determination to prevail. Irregular entries include falling out of status (such as visa overstays, processing delays in work authorization, the loss of a family sponsor through death [the widow’s penalty], deportation, or divorce), as well as unauthorized access through human smuggling and human trafficking. Thoughtful interpretations, reflections, recommendations, and conclusions round off an expansive and engaging inquiry into the complex and multifaceted phenomenon of immigration as experienced by women. The themes of agency, resilience, and hope resonate throughout the book.