ABSTRACT
For Mexicans in the United States, families are situated within the borderlands of the multiple contradictory discourses. Additionally, some families also try to maintain some semblance of family life despite an international border separating family members. Borders are sites of exclusion as well as inclusion, and borderlands subjects must draw on their own creativity for assessing power relations and maneuvering within borderlands. Discursive elements of borderlands offer critiques of ideologies and practices related to class, racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual hierarchies and illuminate the malleability of these intersecting power relations. Migrant family formations illustrate the quotidian struggles of forming and maintaining places of intimacy, love and commitment, as well as the public acceptance and material benefits of forming a family. The chapter says that the social forces that pull families apart or bring them together may be exacerbated by migration where reconstructing home in the borderlands is a fraught enterprise.
