Deborah A. Boehm: Intimate Migrations. Gender, Family, and Illegality among Transnation ****************************************************************************************** * Adéla Souralová ****************************************************************************************** New York and London: New York University Press 2012, 188 pp. "Intimate Migrations. Gender, Family, and Illegality among Transnational Mexicans" is the of Deborah A. Boehm, assistant professor of Anthropology and Women's Studies at the Univer It is a rich ethnographic study of the lives "neither here, nor there", or maybe more accu here, half there" and their daily negotiations in the transnational US-Mexican space. The "In my work with transnational Mexicans, I have often asked individuals to imagine a scena there are no barriers to movement between Mexico and the United States, and then I asked t would choose to live. Almost always, Mexican (im)migrants tell me they would prefer the fr and come [ir y venir],' that ideally they would like to be in both countries and to create are (...) ‘from both sides'" (p. 3). Such statements of her interviewees led Boehm to addr of family lives, gendered selves, generational relations and their emic understandings eme state-regulated migration. She traces how "the legal production of migrant ‘illegality'" s calls "intimate migrations", "the gendered and familial actions and interactions" (p. 4). In three parts (and six chapters respectively), the author subsequently deals with the iss transborder families (Part I), gendered migrations (Part II) and the migrant children (Par these parts are organically integrated in the book to portray intimate life marked by the process, fluidity of family ties and kinship formations, negotiations of gendered selves a relations, and transnational/migrant childhood. Throughout the book, Boehm strongly argues lives of transnational migrants are full of contradictions which should be understood as e intersection of intimacy and production of illegality. The cases of family reunifications deportations are pure examples of how illegality is shaped and shaping the very intimate l as well as generally the gendered migration flows (as the masculinisation of deportation r emergent feminised migrations and new configurations of family, p. 146). This book is an e which sheds new light on the migratory process, as being shaped and structuring the gender interactions under the influence of the U.S. state. From my reading of "Intimate Migration particularly three crucial points which I would appreciate and which make her book excepti comes up with new issues in feminist research on migration, with new perspectives that she research field which has been under focus for a long time - the U.S.-Mexican borders. First, it is the depth of Boehm's analysis of family lives. After describing her conceptua methodological background in Chapter 1, in Part I she deals with how "Mexican (im)migrants relationships and construct home and family in a manner that transcends nation-states" (p. contradictory processes of continuity and fragmentation lie in the core of transborder fam ties negotiations. The author builds her argument on the particular case studies which not text more pleasant for readers, but also illuminate the nuances in transnational experienc the anthropological studies on kinship, Boehm strongly accentuates the fluidity and divers of family. Such diversity and fluidity become even more apparent in the migratory context "continuously maintain, reassert, reconfigure, and transform family" (p. 33). The author c migrants' construction of family and domestic space with their understanding of home. Her different emic meanings of what home is as her interviewees express home along three (some and intersecting) axes: home as nation, home as place and home as family. This distinction on how the home is imagined across state borders and how family networks are a constitutiv home. She writes that "as family extends across borders, home is characterised by new form construct home as a mobile, building home through translocal rituals and family events, tr communication and travel, and perceptions of connectedness despite distance and over time" her analysis of family ties Boehm moves beyond the sole agency of migrants-family members, transmigrants are repeatedly shaped and constrained by state policies. In Chapter 3, the c of legality and illegality and their impact on the family lives become the main issue. "It to celebrate migrant agency in this context," Boehm cites the anthropologist Susan Bibler 66) referring to how the families construct their lives not in a vacuum but in a restricti of U.S. immigration policies. The bureaucratic process of family reunification with its di effect illustrates how the state penetrates intimate life. The author concludes that "the reunification' brings to the fore the power of the U.S. state to determine how people with beyond - its borders construct family, highlighting the persistence of state presence in t family life" (p. 67). Second is the emphasis on the gendered nature of migration flows which pervades in the who becomes most prominent in Part II where the author looks into how gender is performed and subjectivities are constructed in the migration process. What must be accentuated here is to both femininities and masculinities. "If you don't go to the United States, you are not the title of one of her chapters (p. 73-80) where she convincingly demonstrates the interp men and women which impacts on the redefinitions of femininities as well as masculinities. impact what it means to be a man; in the case of her research field, the gender order of m is clear: "to be a man, one must migrate" (p. 73). Hence, as she shows, the creation of ma strongly tied to migration and such understanding also has huge implications for men who s For them, when the expression of masculinity through migration fails, the exaggerated perf manliness come to front. Because their manhood is threatened, the men, for instance, turn a presentation of masculinity. Analysing such cases, Boehm contributes to the less develop feminist research on migration - the research on gendered migrant masculinities. At the sa interested in the experiences of women which can be summarised in the exclamation of Boehm "I do everything!" (p. 81), meaning that after the men's migration, women become responsib tasks - both those understood as "female" (housework etc.) and those traditionally perform is also why the title of her chapter - once more using the quotation of her interviewee - man and a woman". The author concludes that "through the interplay of gendered migrations moves, notions of appropriate gender roles are shifting. Transnational movement, cultural the workings of global capital, and the persistence of the nation-state are resulting in a gendered subjectivities: emergent forms of male power and strategies through which women a as well as newly defined masculinities and femininities." (p. 89). Boehm offers deep insig and women do gender while living apart and how they understand their gendered subjectiviti new experiences of family separations and shift in the gendered division of labour. And third is her analysis of migrant childhood which I found a very fruitful and important Children play many roles in Boehm's analysis: they are at the core of the motivations of p (the parents who migrate do it for their children); they are children who migrate as well stay behind. On the one hand Boehm illustrates how the actions of young migrants are enact of adults who are the primary decision makers, and on the other hand she shows the indepen migrants - predominantly male - in the migratory process. Here again the author accentuate to acknowledge the formative role of gender in migration projects by illuminating the gend around the maturation of male youth. As already elaborated above, for men migration is not is an obligation. Thus for young men, migration to the USA becomes a patriarchal rite of p which boys become men. In this vein, the young women are discouraged from migrating, as th age occurs differently. Female passage to adulthood, she argues, is characterised by stayi becoming a housewife responsible for domestic tasks. Gendering the migrant youth and diffe men's and women's experiences with mobility is an important step which the author makes to the agency of migrant children/children of migrants. Boehm moves the discussion even furth with the issue of national belonging and exclusion. She shows how children negotiate their the impact of US state policies and constitution of illegality and legality. She concludes of migrants is marked by "placement and displacement - ashere and not here" (p. 132) and i citizenship and contingent membership which characterise their transborder lives. Without any doubts, Deborah A. Boehm importantly contributes to migration and gender studi illuminating the contradictions and tensions, continuities and ruptures which characterise lives of transmigrants. It is a rich qualitative study of relatedness, kinship ties and ge which successfully profits from the developed feminist scholarship on migration and its sy modern anthropological theories on kinship and family. It is a must read book for scholars gender analysis of migratory process and provides us with a guide for the gendered researc combines policy analysis with deep analysis of intimate daily lives. Adéla Souralová [ URL "LM-366.html "]