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Migration is a way of life for many individuals and even families in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Some who leave their rural communities go only as far as the state capital, while others migrate to other parts of Mexico and to the United States. Most send money back to their communities, and many return to their homes after a few years. Migration offers Oaxacans economic opportunities that are not always available locally—but it also creates burdens for those who stay behind.

This book explores the complex constellation of factors that cause rural Oaxacans to migrate, the historical and contemporary patterns of their migration, the effects of migration on families and communities, and the economic, cultural, and social reasons why many Oaxacans choose not to migrate. Jeffrey Cohen draws on fieldwork and survey data from twelve communities in the central valleys of Oaxaca to give an encompassing view of the factors that drive migration and determine its outcomes. He demonstrates conclusively that, while migration is an effective way to make a living, no single model can explain the patterns of migration in southern Mexico.

Immigration is at once a personal, immediate, and urgent issue that plays a central role in the United States’ perception of itself. In The Documented Child, scholar Maya Socolovsky demonstrates how the portrayal of Latinx children has shifted over the first two decades of the twenty-first century in literary texts aimed at children and young adults and looks at how these shifts map onto broader changes in immigration policy and discourse.

Through a critical inquiry into picture books and middle-grade and young adult literature, Socolovsky argues that the literary documentations of—and for—U.S. Latinx children have shifted over the decades, from an emphasis on hybrid transnationalism to that of a more American-oriented self. Socolovsky delves into texts written from 1997 to 2020, a period marked by tremendous changes in U.S. immigration policies, amplified discourses around nationhood, and an increasingly militarized border. The author shows how children’s and young adult books have shifted their depictions of the border, personal and national identity, and sovereignty.

Between 1946 and 1948, roughly five thousand ethnic Italians from the northern Adriatic shipbuilding town of Monfalcone relocated to the newly communist Yugoslavia. This rare case of eastward Cold War migration demonstrates how ordinary people conceived of liberation during the transitional years between World War II and the early Cold War—a time when Monfalcone was both the object of competing Italian and Yugoslav territorial claims and the subject of Anglo-American military occupation.

In The Red Italians of Monfalcone, Luke Gramith undertakes a deep and detailed analysis—based on archival sources in Italy, Slovenia, and the United States—of how the Monfalconesi came to understand Fascism and communism through everyday experience and how those emergent ideologies affected and were affected by their migration. In the course of his analysis, Gramith also examines the failure of “defascistization” and how it fueled strong (but ultimately unsuccessful) pro-Yugoslav and communist movements.

The impact of the passage of war refugees on the lives and minds of local residents and officials is the subject of this study. Between 2017 and 2020, Beatrix Futak-Campbell conducted interviews with over fifty people who live and work near the Hungarian-Serbian border. This area was exposed to the unprecedented stream of refugees, most of them seeking safety from the Syrian civil war. The Hungarian government’s hostility to migrants has been widely criticized, and news coverage has tended to reiterate unhelpful characterisations of Hungarian citizens as being anti-migrant, anti-Muslim and racist.

The situation is, however, more nuanced. There is a substantial difference between the border police, local communities, and organizations, on the one hand, and national politicians and the international media perception of the refugee ‘crisis’, on the other. Those living and working with migrants at the border were caught between the domestic political situation, the plight of the refugees and the international support the latter receive, and the exigencies of their own livelihoods. This book explores these communities and their own security concerns.