A Review Essay: The Sexuality of Migration: Border Crossings and Mexican Immigrant Men (2009) by Lionel Lionel Cantú Jr. and edited by Nancy A. Naples and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz

Abstract

This book sees a dialectic relationship between macro level forces such as the global market and micro level processes such as identity formation in which the interaction between the two constitutes sexuality, and sexuality in turn shapes those macro and micro level processes. As the authors write, “sexuality, as a dimension of power, shapes and organizes processes of migration and modes of incorporation. In turn, the contextual and structural transitions that mark the migration experience impacts the way in which identities are formed” (p21). This mutually constitutive relationship is what the authors call the “queer political economy of migration.”