by Aviva Chomsky

Beacon Press (May 13, 2014)

Immigrant rights activist Aviva Chomsky shows how "illegality" and "undocumentedness" are concepts that were created to exclude and exploit. With a focus on U.S. policy, she probes how people, especially Mexican and Central Americans, have been assigned this status-and to what ends. Blending history with human drama, Chomsky explores what it means to be undocumented within a legal, social, economic, and historical context. The result is a powerful testament of the complex, contradictory, and ever-shifting nature of status in America.

The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation, Second Edition 

By Leo Chavez

Stanford University Press; 2 edition (April 17, 2013)

 "...The Latino Threat is accessible and essential reading for students and professionals alike, and fosters advocacy for policy change, as well as the need to understand the psychologically and emotionally damaging repercussions of structural racism and nativist discourse practices, and their effects on provision of language access, health disparities, and social services for Latino immigrants."-Catherine Carballeira, Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare

Social Justice in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region 

by Mark Lusk, Kathleen Staudt, and Eva Moya

Springer (June 13, 2012)

''Social Justice on the US Mexico Border is the most comprehensive interdisciplinary book I have encountered dealing with justice and human rights issues on the US Mexico border region. The wealth of its contents stems from its interdisciplinary analysis. This book must be read by all responsible policy makers who have the capacity to influence the living conditions of millions of people living between two cultures, two worlds and two ways of life."  --Hector Luis Diaz, Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Social Work, the University of Texas - Pan American

Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: A Reader (Latin America Otherwise) 

By Denise A Segura & Patricia Zavella

University Press Books (July 20, 2007)

Women's migration within Mexico and from the country to the United States is increasing; nearly as many women as men are migrating. This relatively recent development gives rise to new social negotiations, which have not been well examined in migration studies until now. This reader analyzes how economically and politically displaced migrant women assert agency in everyday life. Scholars across diverse disciplines interrogate the socioeconomic forces that propel Mexican women into the migrant stream and shape their employment options; the changes that these women are making in homes, families, and communities; and the "structural violence" that they confront in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands broadly conceived-all within the economic, social, cultural, and political interstices of the two countries.

Why Walls Won't Work: Repairing the US-Mexico Divide

by Michael Dear

Oxford University Press (February 13, 2013)

"This is an important, elegantly written volume that reflects the very hybridity it seeks to portray: it flips between Mexican origins and U.S. politics, between cultural studies and hard social science, between the personal and the analytical with a playful skill and ease that captures the very spirit of the borderlands. Dear reveals the creation of a new border culture in which blended identities and daily transnational and transcultural interactions are emerging even as the walls between our two countries continue to rise." 

--Manuel Pastor, Professor of Sociology and American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California 

Democratizing Texas Politics: Race, Identity, and Mexican American Empowerment, 1945-2002

by Benjamin Márquez

University of Texas Press (November 1, 2014)

Despite Texas's violent history of racial conflict, the state led the nation with the greatest number of Latino officeholders by the beginning of the twenty-first century. Exploring this and other seemingly contradictory realities of Texas's political landscape since World War II, Democratizing Texas Politics captures powerful, interrelated forces that drive intriguing legislative dynamics. These factors include the long history of Mexican American activism; population growth among Mexican American citizens of voting age; increased participation among women and minorities at state and national levels in the Democratic Party, beginning in the 1960s; the emergence of the Republican Party as a viable alternative for Southern conservatives; civil rights legislation; and the transition to a more representative two-party system thanks to liberal coalitions. 

Latino America: How America's Most Dynamic Population is Poised to Transform 

the Politics of the Nation

by Matt Barreto & Gary M. Segura

Public Affairs (September 30, 2014)

Latinos' optimism, strength of family, belief in the constructive role of government, and resilience have the imminent potential to reshape the political and partisan landscape for a generation and drive the outcome of elections as soon as 2016. Sometime in April 2014, somewhere in a hospital in California, a Latino child tipped the demographic scales as Latinos displaced non-Hispanic whites as the largest racial/ethnic group in the state of California. Latino America: How America's Most Dynamic Population is Poised to Transform the Politics of the Nation describes the extent to which Latinos have already transformed the US politically and socially, and how Latino Americans are the most buoyant and dynamic ethnic and racial group, often in quite counterintuitive ways. 

Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security

by Todd Miller

City Lights Publishers (April 8, 2014)

In fast-paced prose, Miller sounds an alarm as he chronicles the changing landscape of our borderlands. Traveling the country-and beyond-to speak with the people most involved with and impacted by the U.S. Border Patrol, the author combines first-hand encounters with careful research to expose a vast and booming industry for high-end technology, weapons, surveillance, and prisons. While politicians and corporations reap substantial profits, the experiences of millions of men, women, and children point to staggering humanitarian consequences. Border Patrol Nation shows us in stark relief how the entire country has become a militarized border zone, with consequences that may very likely affect every U.S. resident.   

by Sonia Nazario