Sara Komarnisky provides a needed intervention in Latin American and Latinx studies through her ethnographic study of Mexicans in Alaska, an area severely understudied to date. Komarnisky pushes scholars across fields to expand understandings of the border, the continent of North America, and what is meant by “greater Mexico,” to include Mexicans living as far north as Alaska.

Studying people located in Anchorage, Alaska, and Acuitzio, Michoacán, and all points in between along the “transnational social field,” Komarnisky charts the history of migrant families living between Alaska and Michoacán since the 1950s. Through the multigenerational narrative of the Bravo family, Komarnisky shows that mobility, citizenship, politics, and global economies intersect in the everyday lives of migrants who must live in multiple places in the face of economic challenges and increasing levels of violence in places like Michoacán, all leading to reconfigurations of the meanings of place and belonging. Komarnisky writes, “I argue for the development of a new set of dispositions, practices, strategies, and goals—especially those related to mobility—that are oriented toward a transnational habitus” (10). Through an analysis that weaves together intergenerational migration narratives, material culture, and cultural and civic institutions, this book presents a blueprint for this transnational habitus.

Komarnisky begins her analysis by tracing the history of Mexican migration to Alaska, particularly Anchorage, via the construct of a transnational social space, conceptualizing the space between Alaska and Mexico as one continuous field and writing Mexicans into the history of Alaska (Chapter 1). From there, she explores the annual migration experiences of migrants between Acuitzio and Anchorage, with a focus on the meanings of mobility across North America, thereby putting mobility in dialogue with citizenship (Chapter 2). This mobility is facilitated by intergenerational networks that have developed around work and recruitment networks wherein at least three generations of Acuitzences have established residency and businesses in Anchorage, starting with labor recruitments for railroad construction in the 1950s and later the Alaskan Pipeline in the 1980s (Chapter 3).

Once this network of mobility around work has been established along generations, migrants from Acuitzio adjust, and adjust to the “American dream” over time via the process they refer to as acostumbrarse (Chapter 4). In order to feel at home as transnational subjects, Acuitzences bring material goods that “move” between Acuitzio and Anchorage, so that the movement of products like food, clothing, and animals, among others, allows them to maintain Mexico in Alaska, and Alaska in Mexico, via material culture (Chapter 5). Institutions like the Mexican consulate, dance groups, and hometown associations also allow transnational migrants to “freeze together” as a group in Anchorage, a metaphor that references both the climate in Anchorage, and the ways that institutions foster transnational belonging and economic and political support (Chapter 6). These histories and transnational practices, taken together, allow Komarnisky to argue for the destabilization of North America as a continent of territorially bounded states, and advocate instead for cooperative policies and practices that recognize the lived experiences of migrants in Alaska, Mexico, and points in between.

As such, Komarnisky's book literally puts Mexicans in Alaska on the map as a previously understudied group, and pushes us to think about the paradox of mobility and citizenship. To achieve economic and political stability, families like the Bravos must attain the mobility related to dual citizenship, but in order to do so they must adhere to residency rules in the United States that restrict their movement. Komarnisky's study joins a long-established corpus of work on transnationalism and the connections between sending and receiving locales like Acuitzio and Anchorage as case studies to better understand how documented migration affects both the global and the local. Notably, this study focuses on documented migrants with citizenship privileges, a limitation that invites further research on undocumented Mexicans in Alaska, particularly given the current political climate around (im)migration in North America.