Transfronterizo Families at the San Diego–Tijuana Border: Complicating Theories of Family, Migration, and Mobility

Abstract

Transborder or transfronterizo families straddle borders, living their daily lives across nations and commuting across international borders. This article draws on the case of transfronterizo family life at the San Diego, California–Tijuana, Baja California border. Based on existing scholarship, emerging transnational policies, and our own experiences growing up in the San Diego–Tijuana borderland, we suggest a distinction between the form of transnational familyhood often explored in family science: long‐distance transnational families with limited in‐person interactions and the form of transnational familyhood that transfronterizo families represent. The latter is a short‐distance transnational family model, where issues like daily governmental monitoring and time scarcity are highly salient. We examine how inequalities on both sides of the border thwart the economic promise of migration, create the need for transfronterizo family life to achieve economic survival and social mobility, and uniquely shape transfronterizo family dynamics and processes.