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Too frequently, the media and politicians cast Mexican immigrants as a threat to American society. Given America's increasing ethnic diversity and the large size of the Mexican-origin population, an investigation of how Mexican immigrants and their descendants achieve upward mobility and enter the middle class is long overdue. This book offers a new understanding of the Mexican-American experience. It explores the challenges that accompany rapid social mobility and examines a new indicator of incorporation, a familial obligation to “give back” in social and financial support. The book investigates the salience of middle-class Mexican Americans' ethnic identification, and details how relationships with poorer coethnics and affluent whites evolve as immigrants and their descendants move into traditionally white middle-class occupations. Disputing the argument that Mexican communities lack high-quality resources and social capital which can help Mexican Americans incorporate into the middle class, it also examines civic participation in ethnic professional associations embedded in ethnic communities.

This book argues that analyzing emigration, immigration, and re-migration under the framework of contemporaneous migration directs attention to the citizenship formations that interconnect migration sites, shaping the lives of citizens in motion. It departs from conventional approaches that study migration sites in isolation or as snapshots in time. Taking Chinese emigration as the starting point, the analysis becomes deepened by incorporating insights from migrant-receiving countries, namely Canada and Singapore, which are facing new emigration or re-migration trends among their own citizens. By analyzing shifts in migration patterns over time, we also come to understand how China is becoming an immigration country. The arguments offer new insights for researchers studying Chinese migration and diaspora. As an analytical approach, contemporaneous migration contributes to our theorization of citizenship and territory, fraternity and alterity, ethnicity, and the co-constitution of time and space.

Although globalization seems like a recent phenomenon linked to migration, some groups have used social networks to migrate great distances for centuries. To gain new insights into migration today, this book takes a closer look at the historical presence of globalization and how it has organized migration and social networks. With a focus on the lives of Gujarati Indians in New York and London, this book explains migration patterns through different kinds of social networks and relations. Gujarati migration flows span four continents, across several centuries. The book reveals the inner workings of their social networks and how these networks relate to migration flows. Championing a relational view, it examines which kinds of ties result in dead-end jobs, and which, conversely, lead to economic mobility. In the process, it speaks to central debates in the field about the economic and cultural roots of migration's causes and its surprising consequences.

It is commonly assumed that there is an enduring link between individuals and their countries of citizenship. Plural citizenship is therefore viewed with skepticism, if not outright suspicion. But the effects of widespread global migration belie common assumptions, and the connection between individuals and the countries in which they live cannot always be so easily mapped. This book analyzes immigration and nationality laws in Argentina, Italy, and Spain since the mid-19th century to reveal the contextual dynamics that have shaped the quality of legal and affective bonds between nation-states and citizens. It shows how the recent erosion of rights and privileges in Argentina has motivated individuals to seek nationality in ancestral homelands, thinking two nationalities would be more valuable than one. This book details the legal and administrative mechanisms at work, describes the patterns of law and practice, and explores the implications for how we understand the very meaning of citizenship.