Explores the transnational movements of Mexican migrants in pursuit of labor and civil rights in the United States from the 1920s onward. This book examines the relationship between ethnic Mexican expressive culture and the practices sustaining migrant social movements.

Throughout, she demonstrates how Mexicans and Mexican Americans imagined their communal ties across the border, and used those bonds to contest their noncitizen status. "Migrant Imaginaries" places migrants at the center of the hemisphere's most pressing concerns, contending that border crossers have long been vital to social change.