Constructed Movements

At once theoretically sophisticated and poignantly written, Constructed Movements centers stories from communities in Mexico profoundly affected by emigration to the United States to show how migration extracts resources along racial lines. Ragini Shah chronicles how three interrelated dynamics—the maldistribution of public resources, the exploitation of migrant labor, and the US immigration enforcement regime—entrench the necessity of migration as a strategy for survival in Mexico. She also highlights the alternative visions elaborated by migrant community organizations that seek to end the conditions that force migration. Recognizing that reform without recompense will never right an unjust migratory system, Shah concludes with a forceful call for the US and Mexican governments to make abolitionist investments and reparative compensation to directly counteract this legacy of extraction.

“Convincingly makes the case that migration is neither a symptom of nor a solution to inequality but is rather part of a racialized system of extraction perpetuated by both US and Mexican governments. Insightful and expertly argued.” — SHANNON GLEESON, coauthor of Scaling Migrant Worker Rights: How Advocates Collaborate and Contest State Power

“A compelling and timely examination of the ways that racial capitalism extracts wealth from migrant communities.” — CARMEN G. GONZALEZ, coeditor of The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development

“Essential reading for both students and scholars dedicated to shaping informed, humane migration policies.” — KARLA McKANDERS, Director, Thurgood Marshall Institute at NAACP Legal Defense Fund

“This paradigm-shifting book makes a timely and important contribution to the literature on migration, gender, and racial capitalism.” — RACHEL E. ROSENBLOOM, Northeastern University School of Law

RAGINI SHAH is Clinical Professor of Law at Suffolk University Law School, where she is founding director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic.