In Search of Providence - 2nd Edition by Patricia Foxen (Paperback)

About the Book

How the experiences of Indigenous Guatemalans at the US border must be understood within the context of violence, exclusion, and dislocation

Book Synopsis

In the mid-1990s, Patricia Foxen traveled back and forth between the Guatemalan highlands and Providence, Rhode Island, to understand the migration paths of K'iche' Mayan Indians who had fled the Guatemalan civil war to work in the factories and fisheries of New England. More than two decades later, many Mayans are still migrating to the US, today part of the "border crisis" that prompted the Trump administration's ruthless immigration and asylum policy backlash. As Foxen argues, the recent surge in Mayan border crossings must be contextualized within both the longer history of violence, marginality, and exclusion that has long led Guatemala's Indigenous populations to be "survivors on the move," as well as contemporary push factors such as climate change and growing inequality that have forced people from their communities.

And yet one of the most significant drivers of continued emigration today, ironically, is the very culture of migration (described in the book) that has accelerated social change within many Indigenous communities, setting in motion a complex series of economic and cultural shifts that have compelled a continuous movement of people and generations to the US. Reading this story in 2020--at a time of massive growth in flows of irregular migrations around the world--can help us better understand the highly complex set of factors that propel long-term migrations and that shape transnational communities on both sides of the border.

In Search of Providence offers a layered, historically grounded perspective that speaks to the local specificity behind the migration experience in order to point to the universal themes and contradictions of contemporary global displacements.

Review Quotes

"In Search of Providence is a unique gem of a book that takes readers deep into the lives of Mayan immigrants in their homes in highland Guatemala and in hardscrabble neighborhoods of Providence, Rhode Island. It's the only work out there that goes into deep ethnographic detail on the impact of genocide on migrants and their families across borders. Absolutely essential reading for understanding the human side of US foreign and immigration policies."
Aviva Chomsky, author of Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

"In this timely and important study, Patricia Foxen has accomplished the rarest of feats by presenting a multi-sited ethnography of migration that is equally sensitive to both sending and receiving contexts. Originally published over a decade ago, Foxen's study is more relevant today than ever, and she has included a new preface that updates the dire circumstances around migration in the age of Trump. This is a must read not only for students of migration and the Maya, but for anyone who wants to understand the complicated ways lives and livelihoods are intertwined in the globalized world."
Edward F. Fischer, author of Cultural Logics and Global Economies: Maya Identity in Thought and Practice

"A brilliant and thorough anthropological investigation guided by compassion, respect, the greatest inquisitiveness, and conviction."
Francisco Goldman, from the Foreword

About the Author

Patricia Foxen, a cultural anthropologist, is currently the Deputy Director of Research at UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La Raza) and a Research Fellow at American University.