The consequences of U.S. border policies through the experiences of Honduran migrants.
Hondurans have been at the heart of some of the most visible migration phenomena in the last few years, as well as the direct target of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy. In Leave If You Can, Amelia Frank-Vitale offers a detailed portrait of the Honduran exodus and what it reveals about the broader consequences of changing US border enforcement policies. She highlights the stories of those who are often presented as unsympathetic: deported young men implicitly associated with the very violence they are trying to flee. In the process, she challenges underlying assumptions frequently held by policy makers and humanitarian agencies.
Connecting overlapping regimes of mobility control, from the invisible gangland borders within San Pedro Sula to the growing expansiveness of the U.S. border's reach, this book shows how deportation does not deter migration but, in fact, keeps people moving, and how U.S. policies fuel the migration "crisis" they claim to address. Drawing from her own experiences accompanying migrant caravans over many years, Frank-Vitale also explores how caravans emerge as both protest movement and migration tactic in response to this expanding border regime.
Amelia Frank-Vitale is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at Princeton University.
"Leave If You Can is a captivating ethnography that explores the scars of US intervention, the securitization of migration, and the social marginalization of young men in Honduras. Amelia Frank-Vitale challenges conventional understandings of deportation as exile, revealing it instead as an ordinary, yet no less violent, facet of everyday life."—Lauren Heidbrink, author of Migranthood: Youth in a New Era of Deportation
"Rigorously researched, Leave If You Can captures the ordinary violence of deportation that weaves seamlessly with the everyday violence of poverty in Honduras. Frank-Vitale writes with clarity and compassion against the cruelty of shifting global immigration policies, making this a timely and essential read."—Leisy Abrego, author of Sacrificing Families: Navigating Laws, Labor, and Love Across Borders
272 pp.6 x 9Illus: 6 b/w images, 2 maps, 2 tables
9780520421356$29.95|£25.00Paper
Mar 2026