Mexican migration to the United States during the twentieth century is a phenomenon that has long attracted the attention of historians. In this book, Daniel Morales examines the migratory process from 1900 through 1940. Utilizing both Mexican and US written sources—such as census records, official and personal correspondence, and periodicals—as well as oral histories, Morales effectively argues that migrants’ decisions and actions, policy decisions on both sides of the border, and structural economic changes all influenced the initial development of a migratory tradition that “became a continuing reality” for the remainder of the twentieth century (11).

The book deftly interweaves an analysis of the macro and micro factors that shaped Mexican migratory habits during this pivotal period. At the macro level, the book clearly illustrates the political and economic factors that undergirded individual decisions to migrate. Though early twentieth-century Mexican policy sought to limit migratory departures, the development of railroad networks that connected central states such as Guanajuato and San Luis Potosí to the US border, the concentration of landownership, and the violence of the 1910 revolution and the 1926–29 Cristero War all prompted Mexicans to seek out employment opportunities in the United States. At the same time, Morales notes, US officials exempted Mexican nationals from increasingly restrictive immigration entry laws, and Mexican migrant workers were able to secure jobs, albeit usually low-paying ones, in the growing agricultural, railroad, and industrial manufacturing sectors of western states such as California and midwestern states such as Illinois.

This book’s most important contribution to the historiography of Mexico–US migration is its detailed examination of the micro factors that shaped migratory patterns during the early twentieth century, specifically the sophisticated information networks that Mexican migrants built and used to their benefit. An overlapping web of circular migration routes was the foundation of these information networks. Morales notes that circular migration between Mexico and the United States was the norm during the early twentieth century, as the majority of Mexican migrants who entered the United States before 1920 had returned to Mexico by 1930 (4). But Mexican migrants were also constantly on the move within the United States, following routes and job opportunities that took them from the cotton fields of Texas to the citrus orchards of California, from the mines of Colorado to the beet farms of Michigan, and from the railroad yards of Kansas City to the factory floors of Chicago. All along these routes, Mexican migrant workers forged connections with their peers, as well as with Mexicans who had decided to permanently settle in the United States, and they learned information about prospective employers, organizations that provided aid to migrants, and ways to bypass policies that aimed to restrict entries into the United States. That information was then passed on to other migrants in the United States and, crucially, to relatives and acquaintances in Mexico who were considering making the trek north. These information networks thus helped facilitate journeys to and within the United States. And they also proved valuable to Mexican migrants who organized in the 1930s to lobby the Mexican government for redistributed lands and to press the US government to extend New Deal protections to them.

Deeply researched and well written, this book is a valuable addition to the growing body of scholarship on twentieth-century Mexico–US migration. By casting light on how official policy, economic structures, and migrant-built information networks all combined to influence early twentieth-century migration patterns, it broadens our understanding of a period that proved critical to the foundation of an enduring migratory tradition.