REVIEW ESSAYS Human Agency and the Search for Security in the Global Age MARIA A YSA-LASTRA Winthrop University aysalastram@winthrop.edu Following a long tradition of scholars in the international migration field, Elizabeth Aranda, Sallie Hughes, and Elena Sabogal offer a methodologically rich and theoreti- cally sophisticated study that vividly contex- tualizes modern processes of migration and immigrant incorporation. In Making a Life in Multiethnic Miami, they portray causes and consequences of migration from Latin America and problematize the incorporation of Latino and Caribbean immigrants into the social and economic fabric of Miami, which is the American city with the highest propor- tion of Spanish-speaking population (63.7 per- cent) and home to 1.3 million immigrants— equivalent to 51 percent of the population of the city—of whom 93 percent originate from Latin America. Detailed descriptions of immi- grants’ accounts through stages of departure, arrival, and settlement, and, in a few cases, return are examined through the concepts of ontological security and translocal social citizenship. I The book opens with the story of Alejandra, not a Mexican or Cuban immigrant, but an upper-middle-class Colombian immigrant with a college degree and a successful pro- fessional life. Alejandra exemplifies a profes- sional woman in search of higher income and gender emancipation who leaves her family behind. Although Alejandra, like many other immigrants, came to the United States in search of the American Dream, she regrets the consequences of having done so. Through the exploration and interpretation of immigrants’ voices, the authors juxtapose the image of Miami as a safe haven for Latino immigrants in search of greater human secu- rity with their exclusionary experiences in the city. Immigrants’ experiences are marked by processes of racialization, occupational seg- mentation, absence or limits of their legal sta- tus, and barriers due to national-origin, class, and gender hierarchies. The authors introduce two novel analyti- cal elements: subjective self-placements on social ladders and racial structures, and emotions. In the analysis of social mobility and race relations, the authors describe and categorize how immigrants amalgamate and internalize their social positions. The data show how immigrants subjectively use class hierarchies they are confronted with in Miami in combination with class structures from their countries of origin, resulting in a new self-identification in a joint hierarchy—leading to anxiety and contradictions for the majority of immi- grants who do not perceive upward mobil- ity. The second novel analytical element is the incorporation of a sense of loss through immigrants’ voiced emotions. Migration inevitably carries the loss of stable and affir- mative relationships for immigrants and the loss of their unconscious sense of trust, which the authors conceptualize by using Giddens’s concept of ontological insecurity. Immigration is described then as an ambiv- alent experience. Immigrants’ new destina- tions offer economic, physical, and in some instances psychic security at an emotional cost. Making a Life in Multiethnic Miami: Immigration and the Rise of a Global City , by Elizabeth M. Aranda, Sallie Hughes, and Elena Sabogal. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2014. 367 pp. $68.50 cloth. ISBN: 9781626370418. 615 Contemporary Sociology 44, 5 Ó American Sociological Association 2015 DOI: 10.1177/0094306115599355 http://cs.sagepub.com at ASA - American Sociological Association on June 8, 2016 csx.sagepub.com Downloaded from