Enunciations of Transnational Citizenship

2018 ◽  
pp. 19-55
Author(s):  
Adrián Félix
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Discrimination ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Political Ethnography ◽  
Transnational Citizenship ◽  
The Moment

Chapter 2 examines how Mexican migrants enunciate transnational citizenship as they navigate the naturalization process in the United States. This chapter treats naturalization—the so-called political baptism of migrants—as the first stage of the migrant political life cycle insofar as this is the moment where migrants contest state scripts of singular loyalty. Drawing on a political ethnography of the naturalization process and the citizenship classroom, this chapter captures Mexican migrants’ mythologies of citizenship as they collectively expose the central contradictions of U.S. citizenship and constitutionalism. The bureaucratic arbitrariness and institutional discrimination that Mexican migrants perceive throughout the naturalization process infuse their mythologies of citizenship and inform their alternative enunciations of transnational political membership and belonging. When naturalization is sought in response to an antimigrant context, the so-called political baptism of Mexican migrants may in effect mark the political birth of transnational citizens.

Specters of Belonging

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrián Félix
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Mexican Migrant ◽  
Transnational Citizenship

In the context of research on the “thickening” of borders, Specters of Belonging raises the related question: How does transnational citizenship thicken across the political life cycle of Mexican migrants? In addressing this question, this book resembles what any good migration corrido (ballad) does—narrate the thickening of transnational citizenship from beginning, middle, to end. Specifically, Specters of Belonging traces Mexican migrant transnationalism across the migrant political life cycle, beginning with the “political baptism” (i.e., naturalization in the United States) and ending with repatriation to México after death. In doing so, the book illustrates how Mexican migrants enunciate, enact, and embody transnational citizenship in constant dialectical contestation with the state and institutions of citizenship on both sides of the U.S.-México border. Drawing on political ethnographies of citizenship classrooms, the first chapter examines how Mexican migrants enunciate transnational citizenship as they navigate the naturalization process in the United States and grapple with the contradictions of U.S. citizenship and its script of singular political loyalty. The middle chapter deploys transnational ethnography to analyze how Mexican migrants enact transnational citizenship within the clientelistic orbit of the Mexican state, focusing on a group of returned migrant politicians and transnational activists. Last, the final chapter turns to how Mexican migrants embody transnational citizenship by tracing the cross-border practice of repatriating the bodies of deceased Mexican migrants from the United States to their communities of origin in rural México.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Adrián Félix
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Face ◽  
Transnational Citizenship

The opening chapter of Specters of Belonging introduces the theoretical framework informing the ethnography presented throughout the book—namely, the thickening of transnational citizenship and diasporic dialects across the arch of the migrant political life cycle. Just as the US and Mexican states have thickened their borders, escalating the racialized policing of migrants, so too have migrants thickened their transnational claims of political belonging. These specters of belonging are best captured by the concept of diasporic dialectics—the process by which migrants are in constant political struggle with the state and its institutions of citizenship on both sides of the border. Mexican migrants enunciate, enact, and embody these diasporic dialectics in the face of imperial citizenship in the United States and clientelistic citizenship in Mexico, facing the ever-present danger of domestication. Thus, the introduction raises the political potentialities and pitfalls of diasporic dialectics as migrants negotiate transnationalism in life and death.

What is Happening in the United States? How Social Classes Influence the Political Life of the Country and its Health and Quality of Life

2021 ◽  
pp. 002073142199484
Author(s):  
Vicente Navarro
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
United States ◽  
Access To Health Care ◽  
Universal Access ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Race And Gender

This article analyses the political changes that have been occurring in the United States (including the elections for the presidency of the country) and their consequences for the health and quality of life of the population. A major thesis of this article is that there is a need to analyse, besides race and gender, other categories of power - such as social class - in order to understand what happens in the country. While the class structure of the United States is similar to that of major Western European countries, the political context is very different. The U.S. political context has resulted in the very limited power of its working class, which explains the scarcity of labor, political and social rights in the country, such as universal access to health care.

Iraq and the mutual accumulation strategy between the international and regional powers: The United States of America and Iran are a model

2020 ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
Salah Mahdi Hadi ◽  
Noor Abdul-Ilah Ajrash
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regional Powers ◽  
Hostage Crisis ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Relationship

The rules of (mutual accumulation strategy) overshadow the history of the crisis relations between the United States of America and Iran four decades ago, and if we recall that, we will notice several collision joints between the two parties, starting with the hostage crisis of the American embassy in Iran from 4/11/1979 to 20 / 1/1981 AD, to the "Marines" attempt to storm this embassy in an operation called "Eagle Claw" on 4/24/1980 AD, to the tanker war in the eighties of the last century, to the exchange of downing drones in 2019, and finally what happened between the United States The United States and Iran from the moment targeting (Qassem Soleimani), commander of the "Quds Force" on 1/3/2020, until the Iranian missile response and targeting of the American forces in the two "Ain al-Assad" bases in Anbar province, and the "Harir" base in Arbil province on 1/8/ 2020 AD, all of this falls within the context of (mutual accumulation strategy) between the two parties, without going to a comprehensive confrontation through war or a knockout, because the logic of war or comprehensive confrontation is outside the political and military mindsets of the two parties, and the meaning of all of this is that turmoil forms the basis of the relationship between the states The The United States and Iran, because the turmoil and the limited clash with it through mutual strikes, do not necessarily lead to an open clash.

Cultural and Institutional Factors Affecting Political Contention over Moral Issues

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Tatalovich ◽  
Mildred Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Institutional Factors ◽  
The Political ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Political Contention

AbstractAbortion and same-sex marriage are moral issues that remain highly contentious in the political life of the United States compared to other countries. This level of contention is explained through comparison with Canada. Contrasts in culture and institutions shaping issues and the political avenues that allow their enactment account for differences in the tenor of politics in the two countries.

Human Rights Watch

2020 ◽  
pp. 204-232
Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
International Human ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
The Moment

This chapter focuses on the Human Rights Watch as one of the two most important institutions for the protection of human rights worldwide in the late 1970s. It points out that the Human Rights Watch was established during the moment of burgeoning public concern on the cause of international human rights, particularly in the United States. It also highlights the radical political shift in the United States in 1981 from the Carter administration to the Reagan administration. The chapter describes the Human Rights Watch's development of reporting that entered into political combat with officials of the Reagan administration who were intent on co-opting the human rights cause for their own Cold War purposes. It discusses the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 and the emergence of Solidarity in Poland in August 1980 as part of the political developments that helped transform Helsinki Watch into Human Rights Watch.

Challenging American Boundaries: Indigenous People and the “Gift” of U.S. Citizenship

2004 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Bruyneel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Political Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Citizenship Status ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Cultural Boundaries ◽  
The Gift

On June 2, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed into law the Indian Citizenship Act (ICA), which unilaterally made United States citizens of all indigenous people living in the United States. This new law made citizens of approximately 125,000 of the 300,000 indigenous people in the country (the remainder were already U.S. citizens). Usually, people who have been excluded from American political life see the codi- fication of their citizenship status as an unambiguously positive political development. In the case of indigenous people and U.S. citizenship, however, one cannot find such clear and certain statements. All indigenous people certainly did not look at U.S. citizenship in the same light; in fact, very few saw it as unambiguously positive. This study demonstrates that the indigenous people who engaged the debate over U.S. citizenship came to define themselves, in various ways, as “ambivalent Americans,” neither fully inside nor fully outside the political, legal, and cultural boundaries of the United States. This effort to define a form of ambivalent American-ness reflects a significant tradition in indigenous politics, which involves indigenous political actors working back and forth across the boundaries of American political life to secure rights, resources, and/or sovereignty for the indigenous people they represent.

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