For thousands of Mexican laborers, life among the United States border represents an opportunity both to earn wages and to gain access to consumer goods; for anthropologist Josiah Heyman this labor force presents an opportunity to gain a better understanding of working people, "to uncover the order underlying the history of waged lives."

Life and Labor on the Border traces the development over the past hundred years of urban working class in northern Sonora. Drawing on an extensive collection of life histories, Heyman describes what has happened to families over several generations...