Undocumented Lives

Awards

2018, Winner of the Betty and Alfred McClung Lee Book Award

2019, Winner of the David Montgomery Award

2019, Winner of the Theodore Saloutos Memorial Book Award

2019, Winner of the Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize

2019, Winner of the Américo Paredes Book Award

In the 1970s, the Mexican government decided to tackle rural unemployment by supporting the migration of able-bodied men. Millions of Mexican men crossed into the United States to find work. They took low-level positions that few Americans wanted and sent money back to communities that depended on their support. They periodically returned to Mexico, living their lives in both countries. After 1986, however, US authorities disrupted this back-and-forth movement by strengthening border controls. Many Mexican men chose to remain in the United States permanently for fear of not being able to come back north if they returned to Mexico. For them, the United States became a jaula de oro—a cage of gold. Undocumented Lives tells the story of Mexican migrants who were compelled to bring their families across the border and raise a generation of undocumented children.