Enactments of Transnational Citizenship

2018 ◽  
pp. 56-100
Author(s):  
Adrián Félix
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Transnational Citizenship ◽  
And Control ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 3 deploys transnational ethnography to capture the enactments of transnational citizenship of returned migrant politicians and activists within the clientelistic orbit of the Mexican state. Under conditions of political cartelization, whereby Mexican political parties are congealing into a ruling bloc, Mexican migrants can be a critical cross-border constituency that can potentially challenge the hegemonic party system in México. However, in an autocratic system, these cross-border activists must avoid the ever-present danger of domestication. Indeed, Mexican migrants’ enactments of transnational citizenship can only come to fruition if they can resist the corruption, co-optation, coercion, and control of clientelistic party politics in México. While this chapter identifies the political pitfalls and contradictions of transnational citizenship, it also shows how the diasporic dialectics of Mexican migrants can further deepen democratic citizenship on both sides of the U.S.-México border.

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.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 136-142
Author(s):  
Adrián Félix
Keyword(s):  
Linear Logic ◽  
Institutional Racism ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Transnational Citizenship ◽  
The U.S

The final chapter concludes by raising the specter of transnational afterlife and the implications of the book for migration studies. By tracing the thickening of transnational citizenship across the migrant political life cycle, Specters of Belonging adds to our understanding of migrant cross-border affiliations, allegiances and attachments. In doing so, the book challenges the linear logic of neo-assimilationists, who contend that the U.S. continues to integrate migrants as it did during previous eras of mass migration, by pointing to the institutional racism that impedes the process of migrant “incorporation.” Conversely, the book also challenges the irresolute circularity of the transnational perspective, which depicts migrants as ambivalent about their sense of belonging to their country of settlement and of origin. By capturing migrants’ cross-border enunciations, enactments and embodiments of transnational citizenship, Specters of Belonging argues that Mexican migrants are tenaciously transnational, defying the border in life and death.

scholarly journals Texas-Mexico Cross Border Truck Operations: Are Mexican NAFTA Trucks Unsafe?

2010 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason West ◽  
Robert Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Public Safety ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Texas Department ◽  
Vehicle Inspection ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Service Rates ◽  
The U.S

Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) border safety inspection facilities (BSIF) have been in operation, in temporary and permanent forms, since 2001. This paper presents inspection results on trucks inspected at Texas BSIFs from 2003 to 2006, comprising over 326,000 vehicle inspection records. Analysis indicated that Mexico domiciled trucks have lower out-of-service rates than U.S. trucks at most Texas/Mexico border crossings. This finding is noteworthy since border (drayage) vehicles are older on average than typical Texas highway trucks and counters the opinion that trucks from Mexico are unsafe and therefore should not be allowed to enter the U.S.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jimmy Patiño
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
San Diego ◽  
Immigration Policies ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Immigration Reform ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
And Control ◽  
The U.S

The Conclusion is a brief analysis of how the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) both conceded to and fragmented the Chicano/Mexicano immigrant rights mobilizations facilitated in part by the CCR. Signed by a Republican, it was the first mass amnesty act revealing the influence of the human rights components of Chicano/Mexicano organizing that activists in San Diego had taken part in formulating beginning in the late 1960s. Yet the act also marginalized the abolitionist position of the movement, giving concessions by providing amnesty to a subsection of undocumented migrants, while further militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border. The chapter concludes with an analysis of two divergent responses by Chicano/Mexicano activists o the new law: those who invested their energies in politicizing and assisting undocumented migrants who qualified for the amnesty provisions of IRCA by working with immigration state mechanisms and other activists who continued to criticize the “carrot and stick” immigration policies and maintain the call to abolish immigration state apparatuses.

scholarly journals Understanding of Mexican Migration to the United States: Rifts and Challenges

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rana Basam Khan ◽  
◽  
Muhammad Nawaz Bhatti ◽  
Ghulam Mustafa ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
El Paso ◽  
Rio Grande ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Migration ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Social Defense ◽  
Basic Segment ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
The U.S

It has been decades since legislative issues have thought about social, defense, and compassionate issues of migration which has become a touchstone in U.S strategy discussion. Mexican migration to the U.S started in 1848. It has proceeded to the present with no critical interference, something that makes this work movement very particular as a basic segment of the American work advertise. Generally started with enormous development, driven by starvation, political problems, open doors in the U.S; that point eased back, tightened, or unexpectedly finished, from 1850 to 1882, similar to the case of the Chinese. The details show that Mexico is a key source of settlers in U.S and has long been a major source of enemy contact with refugees, but so many have been focusing on Mexico and not the other countries which have also become major sources of illegal immigrants. The United States and Mexico are bordered with California, San Diego, and Baja California, Tijuana, and the Pacific Ocean. The boundary stretches eastward to El Paso, Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, Texas, on the Rio Grande. From that point the border continues south-east along the Rio Grande River until the end of it in the Gulf of Mexico. Border stretching of over 1945 miles is insufficiently regulated. Only old solid markers, rusty safety clasp and spoiled dry fence posts can be found in many parts of the place, and the river Grande that over the centuries has continuously changed its course separating both nations. U.S endeavors to control passages and exit adequately have been focused principally along the most profoundly dealt transit courses driving to north. U.S. powerlessness to control all the Mexican boundary has proven that any Mexican involved in operating in the U.S seldom discovers that the frontier is an unlikely trap Through the span of the most recent 170 years, Mexican migrants have to a great extent worked in horticulture, farming, mining, and railroad development.

scholarly journals The effect of cross-border mobility on alcohol and drug use among Mexican-American residents living at the U.S.–Mexico border

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 28-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl J. Cherpitel ◽  
Yu Ye ◽  
Sarah E. Zemore ◽  
Jason Bond ◽  
Guilherme Borges
Keyword(s):  
Drug Use ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Alcohol And Drug Use ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
The U.S

The Political Realignment of Health: How Partisan Power Shaped Infant Health in the U.S., 1915–2017

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Rodríguez ◽  
Byengseon Bae ◽  
Arline T. Geronimus ◽  
John Bound
Keyword(s):  
Infant Mortality ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Panel Data Analysis ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Realignment ◽  
The U.S

Abstract The U.S. two-party system was transformed in the 1960s, when the Democratic Party abandoned its Jim Crow protectionism to incorporate the policy agenda fostered by the Civil Rights Movement and the Republican Party redirected its platform toward socioeconomic and racial conservatism. We argue that the policy agendas that the parties promote through presidents and state legislatures codify a racially patterned access to resources and power detrimental to the health of all. To test the hypothesis that fluctuations in overall and race-specific infant mortality rates (IMR) shift between the parties in power before and after the Political Realignment, we apply panel data analysis methods to state-level data from the National Center for Health Statistics, 1915–2017. Net of trend, overall, and race-specific infant mortality rates were not statistically different between presidential parties before the Political Realignment. This pattern, however, changed after the Political Realignment, with Republican administrations consistently underperforming Democratic ones. Net of trend, non-Southern state legislatures controlled by Republicans underperform Democratic ones in overall and racial IMRs in both periods.

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.

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