Chicago has the largest Mexican population of any city in the United States after Los Angeles. Yet, quite unlike the City of Angels, Mexican Chicago has received very little scholarly attention. In the author's view, Mexican Chicago has fallen uncomfortably between area studies programmes (focused on the effects of US imperialism but facing outwards from the US) and Chicano studies programmes (that largely consider a historically defined territory in the Southwest, nominally Aztlán, and a community of US citizens of Mexican origin rather than “illegal” migrants). This probably justifies the publication of this book alone.

In Chapter One De Genova argues that turning anthropological tools inwards to a space situated within the geographic boundaries of the United States can problematize the traditional conception of anthropology as a science of study by whites of distant non-white peoples. In Chapter Two he argues that liberals and conservative scholars alike have largely failed to present migration from the perspective of the migrants. In Chapter Three he seeks to lay out his working definition of “Mexican Chicago” – a space that exists within the United States but is in certain ways of Mexico. And in Chapter Six he argues that the arbitrary classification of migratory illegality has evolved in such a way that “illegal alien” has become equated with “Mexican” to the detriment of Mexican migrant workers. This is all very well, but one wonders if these points really require 184 pages of densely packed verbosity in a monograph of 250 in total.

It is only in Chapters Four and Five that the author says much about his two and a half years in the mid-1990s teaching English as a second language courses to Mexican manufacturing workers. Here the observations of labour–management relations in wonderfully named second-tier corporations of American multinationalism like the Liberty Carton cardboard box manufacturer, and chemical waste disposal company Caustic Scrub; the all-pervasive language of total quality management; and the playful, bitter and wry interchanges between workers and De Genova are a tonic to many of the traditional images presented of American globalization, especially those that focus on the relentless movement of international capital abroad. Most powerful are the descriptions of Mexican workers' racial frameworks, where whites (güeros) become identified with privilege, and blacks (morenos) with misfortune. De Genova highlights a sophisticated language of positioning, irony and relajo, that participants use to complicate their status within and amongst these dominant conceptual categories. These chapters are definitely worth the wait; it is just a shame there are not more of them.