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Undocumented Dominican Migration

by Frank Graziano

University of Texas Press, 2013
eISBN: 978-0-292-74882-8 | Cloth: 978-0-292-72585-0 | Paper: 978-0-292-76198-8
Library of Congress Classification JV7395.G73 2013
Dewey Decimal Classification 304.8097293

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Undocumented Dominican Migration is the first comprehensive study of boat migration from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico. It brings together the interactive global, cultural, and personal factors that induce thousands of Dominicans to journey across the Mona Passage in attempts to escape chronic poverty. The book provides in-depth treatment of decision-making, experiences at sea, migrant smuggling operations, and U.S. border enforcement. It also explores several topics that are rare in migration studies. These include the psychology of migrant motivation, religious beliefs, corruption and impunity, procreation and parenting, compulsive recidivism after failed attempts, social values in relation to law, marriage fraud, and the use of false documents for air travel from Puerto Rico to the mainland United States.

Frank Graziano’s extensive fieldwork among migrants, smugglers, and federal agencies provides an authority and immediacy that brings the reader close to the migrants’ experiences. The exhaustive research and multidisciplinary approach, highly readable narrative, and focus on lesser-known emigrants make Undocumented Dominican Migration an essential addition to public and academic debates about migration.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Frank Graziano is John D. MacArthur Professor of Hispanic Studies at Connecticut College. His most recent books are Wounds of Love and Cultures of Devotion.

REVIEWS

Can a thorough, well-documented, and theoretically rich academic study also be dramatic and frightening? Can a sophisticated and complex discussion of the causes of emigration be read as if it were a thriller novel? This is what Frank Graziano accomplishes with this eye-opening book, in which he studies the socioeconomic conditions and the complex psychological motivations that entice thousands of Dominican migrants to risk their lives to escape extreme poverty. Using a cross-cultural scholarly perspective, Graziano also discusses the law enforcement principles and tactics of the U.S. Coast Guard and other federal authorities. This exceptional book is destined to become required reading for studies of modern migration.

— Frank Moya Pons, author of History of the Caribbean: Plantations, Trade, and War in the Atlantic World

A truly remarkable scholarly accomplishment, Graziano’s thoroughly researched, engaging, and sensitive exploration of undocumented Dominican migration sheds enormous light on a hitherto murky subject. The author has produced a sorely needed, moving, and readable examination of the forces that ignite unlawful maritime travel from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland, with attention to the life experiences of the individuals involved. Drawing on the pertinent bibliography on Dominican migrants, in-depth interviews with individuals implicated in yola trips, media coverage of the crossings, court cases, congressional hearings, and reports issued by border enforcement agencies, Undocumented Dominican Migration tells a compelling story that reveals the inextricable link between the structural and the personal in an individual's decision to brave the waters of the sea for a chance at a better life on the other shore. While focusing primarily on undocumented migration, Graziano’s study will prove indispensable for researchers into all kinds of emigration from the Caribbean.

— Silvio Torres-Saillant, Syracuse University, author of An Intellectual History of the Caribbean

Undocumented Dominican Migration is an unflinching, fully nuanced, and humane study of the dark side of today’s broken immigration system. It is a must-read for every scholar, policy-maker, and indeed every engaged citizen concerned with fixing our anachronistic, distopic, and, yes, barbarian immigration system. I am ordering a second copy of the book to send to President Barack Obama today.

— Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco, founder of the Harvard Immigration Project and of Immigration Studies at New York University and Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles

Using particular migrant trajectories, Graziano brings life and depth to what have become zombie categories in many migration studies. In this process the author makes visible the larger ecologies within which an ‘immigrant subject’ takes shape: the organizer, the captain, the vessel, the Coast Guard. The result is an original and powerful account.

— Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, author of A Sociology of Globalization

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Miguel
Across the Mona Passage
Orlando
The Culture of Migration
Marta
The Psychology of Migrant Motivation
Raúl
Border Enforcement
Saúl
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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