The contentious debate in the U.S. Congress over enacting comprehensive immigration reform is viewed as among the most crucial policy debates in government since the late 1990s and its importance has intensified with the rise of antiforeigner sentiment following 9/11 and the global financial crisis (GFS) in 2008 that has increased unemployment and poverty. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have both viewed immigration reform as a key to their legacies, yet to date, such policies have failed to be enacted due to contentiousness in Congress and civil society. The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which passed with the support of President Ronald Reagan in 1986, and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which passed with the support of President Bill Clinton in 1993, are both viewed by political and economic analysts as contributing to the expansion of the reserve army of labor, lower wages, and higher unemployment and to a range of policy proposals to solve America's immigration “problem.”

Alexandra Délano asserts that most US discussions of immigration policy fail to take into consideration the Mexican government and its policies toward its diaspora in the United States who comprise the vast majority of migrants there since the passage of IRCA. From 1848 to the mid-1990s, Délano argues, the Mexican government had been largely indifferent to migrants living in the United States. As the Mexican migrant population living there has expanded rapidly and become integral to foreign and domestic policy, she maintains that the government has had to rapidly adopt new strategies and practices that reflect the new realities.

The central contribution of Mexico and Its Diaspora in the United States is its theory of the changing bilateral relationship between the Mexican government and this diaspora. Of equal importance, Délano interrogates the prevailing perspective that the Mexican government is subordinate to the United States and lacks the capacity to regulate their common boundary. This fresh and innovative study challenges the established literature on migration to the United States that concentrates on the economic hegemon by shifting the research focus from receiving country to sending country. In so doing, Délano's work provides a rich historical framework for analysis that compels political scientists who study migration to the United States exclusively through the prism of American government bilateral policies to also take into account the changing interests of the Mexican government. The Mexican state has actively engaged in developing and enacting policies toward its diaspora over the last 160 years and, in particular, since the late 1980s, when migration expanded dramatically.

A second analytic goal of the work is rooted in an effort to reframe the historic concept of diaspora. Délano's reconceptualization of the term diaspora extends beyond the traditional meaning related to migration caused by forcible dislocation as a result of rampant religious discrimination and ethnic cleansing of those fleeing their countries of origin, as in the case of Armenian and Jewish diasporas. The author expands the term to encompass the characteristics of the Mexican historical experience and the formation of transnational identities and relationships of about 30 million Mexicans escaping abject poverty in order to work in the United States and send money in the form of economic remittances to support their families back home (pp. 1–26). As such, this political history provides bountiful theoretical tools for understanding the policies and actions of the Mexican state, which contributes and is shaped by those who move north of the border to sustain themselves and families.

Formulating policies has become increasingly difficult in an environment of discrimination against migrants and exploitation by business in the United States. While bilateral relations are significant for understanding state actions, the failure of the US government to enact comprehensive immigration policy reform compels the Mexican state actors to try to defend nationals who are sought by US employers who benefit from their status as “illegal.” Mexicans who live and work in the US are subjected to flagrant exploitation in the labor market through underpayment of wages and the failure of the state to enforce labor regulations. The growth of a police and criminal justice apparatus further marginalizes Mexicans, who are discriminated against by persistent nativist xenophobia and the dramatic rise in government deportations (pp. 93–95, 240). Thus, the Mexican state formulates policies in a political system that relegates migrants to illegal status yet is dependent on low-wage labor. Especially since the GFS, the Mexican state has had to cope with a rising tide of discrimination and xenophobia in the United States that compels its government to strategize and formulate policies in a distorted environment when it must respond to violations of human rights, labor rights, and mass deportations, even as the United States has used its security forces to militarize border controls (pp. 243, 250).

Consequently, while Délano asserts that political calculations by the Mexican government are integral to an understanding of the bilateral relationship, efforts to develop rational and coherent policies are hindered by the failure of the US state to manage migration in a consistent and predictable manner. Government consular officials must therefore engage in activism to support claims of its nationals who face harsh and unreasonable challenges, including discrimination, underpayment of wages, racial profiling, arrest, and deportation. Considering the vast number of Mexican migrants living and working in the United States who are subjected to these abuses, Mexican government policies are operating in an incoherent policy environment.

Historicizing the political economy of US–Mexican relations is crucial in understanding why the contemporary era is a point in a trajectory of bilateral state relations. While Délano does reveal the specific changes in state, societal, and economic relations in the period since the mid-1990s, the book does not engage in grand theorizing on the new form of constantly changing state–capital relationships that are situated within a precise form of global capitalism defined by most analysts as neoliberalism. Still, she rigorously describes the dynamics of US–Mexican bilateral relations in this period, stressing “the process of economic liberalization that paved the way toward NAFTA and the learning process implied, which led the Mexican government to a more complex and multifaceted understanding of the US system and to redefine its foreign policy discourse and strategies” (p. 231). In this context, the author applies a multivariate analysis that examines how the Mexican state actively pursues its interests that, contrary to prevailing notions, are not always subservient to its northern neighbor. These policies include a more direct engagement with its diaspora by actively responding to U.S. policies and legislation that are often inimical to its diaspora, engaging and defending emigrants in the United States, lobbying to improve their conditions, and appealing to the international community over human rights violations (pp. 231–32).

Using a multivariate analysis, Délano documents the evolution of the Mexican state between the 1980s and 2010, “[f]rom a defensive and reactive attitude … and a foreign policy discourse strongly based on principles of nonintervention and defense of sovereignty” (p. 232) to the passage of NAFTA and the establishment of bilateral relations with the United States on a more level playing field.

The study of migration as a major area of inquiry within political science has emerged in the past two decades as realist and state-centric approaches that dominated international research during the Cold War era are unable to explain external agencies in the current era of neoliberal capitalism. In view of the declining capacities of states to determine policies, political scientist James Hollifield stresses the importance of taking into account migration as central to the discipline. Délano's detailed examination of the role of bilateral state relations and the growing importance of the diaspora is an important contribution to both theory and comparative-historical research. The work also has important implications for research on other countries with large recent diasporas in the United States.

Délano presciently accomplishes two important tasks: 1) theorizing on the actions of a subordinate state that expanded its influence vis-à-vis the United States, and 2) providing a study of changing Mexican multilevel policies that provide an innovative corrective to those interpretations that document only the dominant power or fail to recognize weak states in relations with the United States. In the case of Mexico, the author reveals why it asserts itself to defend its diaspora through bilateral relations and domestic policies of decisive importance to emigrants in the United States.