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.

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.

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.

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.

Embodiments of Transnational Citizenship

2018 ◽  
pp. 101-135
Author(s):  
Adrián Félix
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
Rural Mexico ◽  
Migrant Family ◽  
Transnational Citizenship

Chapter 4 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. Far from being a strictly private transnational practice, migrants’ desire for a posthumous return and burial in their homelands is collectively expressed in the memories, music, and everyday exchanges of the Mexican diaspora. Drawing on a transnational ethnography of migrant mourning between Los Angeles, California, and Zacatecas, México, this chapter documents how the Mexican state has institutionalized this practice at the transnational, national, state, and municipal levels of governance. Next, the chapter discusses the role of migrant family and social networks in these repatriations. As an intimate ethnography, the chapter also critically reflects on my accompaniment of Mexican migrants as they navigate transnationalism in life and death.

Horror and Death: Rethinking Coco's Border Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 41-49
Author(s):  
Orquidea Morales
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Walt Disney Company ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Walt Disney ◽  
Day Of The Dead ◽  
Animated Film ◽  
Border Politics ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The U.S

In 2013, the Walt Disney Company submitted an application to trademark “Día de los muertos” (Day of the Dead) as they prepared to launch a holiday themed movie. Almost immediately after this became public Disney faced such strong criticism and backlash they withdrew their petition. By October of 2017 Disney/Pixar released the animated film Coco. Audiences in Mexico and the U.S. praised it's accurate and authentic representation of the celebration of Day of the Dead. In this essay, I argue that despite its generic framing, Coco mobilizes many elements of horror in its account of Miguel's trespassing into the forbidden space of the dead and his transformation into a liminal figure, both dead and alive. Specifically, with its horror so deftly deployed through tropes and images of borders, whether between life and death or the United States and Mexico, Coco falls within a new genre, the border horror film.

How Long do Mexican Migrants Work in the U.S.?

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dwight Steward ◽  
Amy Raub ◽  
Jeannie Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
The U.S

The Religious Functions of Near-Death Experiences

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Schlieter
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Life After Death ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Near Death Experiences

This final chapter secures the result of the survey by discussing the religious functions of near-death experiences for affected individuals, but also the functions of the reports for the audience. It outlines (a) ontological, (b) epistemic, (c) intersubjective, and (d) moral aspects. It has been argued that experiencers feel closer to God, are less attracted to religion, and are significantly more inclined to believe in life after death. A function of the narratives consists in the claim that, in atheistic and secular times, individual religious experience is still possible. Several reports argue with a copresence of life and death. Discussing cognitivist approaches, the chapter finally concludes that, given the Latin etymology of “experience,” harboring, among others, the meaning of “being exposed to danger” or “passing a test,” near-death experiences can be seen as a match for conceptions of religious experience as a transformative, gained by surviving a life-threatening danger.

Immigrant Incorporation in an Era of Weak Civic Institutions

2011 ◽  
Vol 55 (9) ◽  
pp. 1189-1213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis DeSipio
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Community Engagement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Immigrant Incorporation ◽  
Institutional Barriers ◽  
Naturalized Citizens ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
Civic Institutions ◽  
The U.S

In this article, the author analyzes five domains of immigrant incorporation and participation in the United States—civic and community engagement among immigrants; naturalization patterns; immigrant (and co-ethnic) partisanship and electoral behaviors; the election of naturalized citizens, and their U.S.-born co-ethnics, as elective officeholders; and immigrant transnational efforts to influence the civic or political life of their communities or countries of origin—in an effort to highlight both the opportunities immigrants and naturalized citizens have seized in U.S. politics and the barriers, particularly, institutional barriers, they continue to face. Although the primary analytical focus is immigrants in the United States, the author is attentive to the challenge raised by Irene Bloemraad (2011 [this issue]) in her introductory article to identify opportunities for comparative insights from the Canadian case. As will be evident, the author ultimately identifies more apples and oranges in the comparison of the U.S. and Canadian cases than peas sharing an analytical pod.

scholarly journals The Transnationalization of Labor Mobility: Development Trends and Selected Challenges Involved in Its Regulation

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Ludger Pries ◽  
Martina Maletzky
Keyword(s):  
Labor Mobility ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Labor Conditions ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Term Labor

Internationalization of value chains and of for-profit as well as non-profit organizations, and as a result of cheaper and safer mass migration, transnational labor mobility is of increasing importance. The article presents the development of the different types of cross-border labor mobility (from long-term labor migration over expatriats/inpatriats up to business traveling); it analyses crucial aspects of labor conditions and how the collective regulation of working, employment and participation conditions in general is affected: could local or national forms of labor regulation cope with these new conditions? What are the main challenges when it comes to collective bargaining and the monitoring of labor conditions? The article is based on a three year international and comparative research in Germany and Mexico. First, different ideal types of transnational labor mobility are distinguished that have emerged as a result of increasing cross-border labor mobility. Then potential sources of labor related social inequality and challenges in the regulation of the working, employment and participation conditions for transnational workers are discussed. Finally, some conclusions are drawn for further research.

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