The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration

by David Bacon

The story of the growing resistance of Mexican communities to the poverty that forces people to migrate to the United States

People across Mexico are being forced into migration, and while 11 percent of that country's population lives north of the US border, the decision to migrate is rarely voluntary. Free trade agreements and economic policies that exacerbate and reinforce extreme wealth disparities make it impossible for Mexicans to make a living at home. And yet when they migrate to the United States, they must grapple with criminalization, low wages, and exploitation.

In The Right to Stay Home, journalist David Bacon tells the story of the growing resistance of Mexican communities. Bacon shows how immigrant communities are fighting back--envisioning a world in which migration isn't forced by poverty or environmental destruction and people are guaranteed the "right to stay home." This richly detailed and comprehensive portrait of immigration reveals how the interconnected web of labor, migration, and the global economy unites farmers, migrant workers, and union organizers across borders.

In addition to incisive reporting, eleven narratives are included, giving readers the chance to hear the voices of activists themselves as they reflect on their experiences, analyze the complexities of their realities, and affirm their vision for a better world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Labor, Unfinished

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

David Bacon is a writer and photojournalist based in Oakland and Berkeley, California. He is an associate editor at Pacific News Service, and writes for TruthOut, The Nation, The American Prospect, The Progressive, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. He has been a reporter and documentary photographer for 18 years, shooting for many national publications. He has exhibited his work nationally, and in Mexico, the UK and Germany. Bacon covers issues of labor, immigration and international politics. He travels frequently to Mexico, the Philippines, Europe and Iraq. He hosts a half-hour weekly radio show on labor, immigration and the global economy on KPFA-FM, and is a frequent guest on KQED-TV's This Week in Northern California. For twenty years, Bacon was a labor organizer for unions in which immigrant workers made up a large percentage of the membership. Those include the United Farm Workers, the United Electrical Workers, the International Ladies' Garment Workers, the Molders Union and others. Those experiences gave him a unique insight into changing conditions in the workforce, the impact of the global economy and migration, and how these factors influence the struggle for workers rights. Bacon was chair of the board of the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights, and helped organize the Labor Immigrant Organizers Network and the Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health. He served on the board of the Media Alliance and belongs to the Northern California Media Workers Guild. His book, The Children of NAFTA, was published by the University of California Press in March, 2004, and a photodocumentary project sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, Communities Without Borders, was published by the ILR/Cornell University Press in October 2006. In his latest project, Living Under the Trees, sponsored by the California Council for the Humanities and California Rural Legal Assistance, Bacon is photographing and interviewing indigenous Mexican migrants working in California's fields. He is currently also documenting popular resistance to war and attacks on immigrant labor and civil rights. He has received numerous awards for both his writing and photography.

Reviews

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This is the reason the right to not migrate is integrally connected to the right to migrate and the rights of migrants themselves. Migration should be a voluntary process in which people can decide for themselves if and when to move, and under what circumstances. It is a profoundly democratic demand, one that asserts that the ability to make individual decisions over where to live is meaningless unless people also have the ability to decide how the resources of their communities and countries are used” (Bacon 284).

I just completed David Bacon’s The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration, and it is certainly an eye-opener! I did not before know just how culpable globalization and NAFTA were in bankrupting rural businesses, evicting farmers, destroyed environments until they were literally uninhabitable, and impoverishing entire nations’ economies. This book unflinchingly sheds light on how multiple U.S. presidents' administrations damaged the livelihood of immigrant workers, enforcing policies that only penalized the workers and not the employers, and the employers who used the sanctions against workers who tried to fight for better working conditions--including not getting sexually harassed on the job! The book is DENSE with information, as Bacon did his homework on just about every person and organization related to the topic. Occasionally he’ll introduce one or the other without explaining who or what they are until a chapter or two later, and the “Fighting the Firings” chapter did get a bit repetitive, but otherwise, this is a strong book.

If I had to locate the thesis of the book: “Bill Ong Hing, law professor at the University of San Francisco, described the administration’s justification as divorced from reality: ‘Employer sanctions have not reduced undocumented migration at all. They’ve failed because NAFTA and globalization create great migration pressure. Trying to discourage workers from coming by arresting them for working with authorization, or trying to prevent them from finding work, is doomed to fail in the face of such economic pressure. To reduce it, we need to change our trade and economic policies so that they don’t produce poverty in countries like Mexico’” (203).

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Illegals need to go back to where they came from!" "Migrants steal our jobs!" "Illegals need to be deported."

Ever hear those sayings? I have. And, sometimes, depending upon the news article I have read, I have felt that way. Reading "The Right To Stay Home" opened my eyes to the REAL problem as to why Mexicans migrate illegally to the United States. In all honesty, most seem to WANT TO STAY home! Imagine that! Wouldn't you? But they can't get ahead, nor can they survive working in Mexico. So, they move to the US in hopes of a better life for their children. Work the low paying jobs that no American would take. But, after awhile some are moving BACK to Mexico because they don't see a future here in the US! Yipes. Now that is saying something! Read "The Right To Stay Home" to see how NAFTA, Unions, Americans and 'Illegals' have created this never-ending system of the need for income, the desire to get ahead, the frugality of American shoppers, and the results of greed.

I received this book as a Goodreads First Read.

[victor harris · Rating 2 out of 5]

The criticism of NAFTA is certainly accurate but the reading is a monotonous collection of essays with a morass of organizations, acronyms, and groups.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important book for those seeking to understand U.S. immigration policies, and for those seeking more compassionate policies to know better just what they contend with.

[Kaite · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won a free copy from the Goodreads First Reads Giveaway Program and think that it interesting. I would recommend it to everyone.