Contesting the “Bad Hombres” Narrative: U.S. and Mexican Media Diplomacy and Presidential Strategic Narratives about Immigrants

Diplomatica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-73
Author(s):  
Vanessa Bravo ◽  
María De Moya
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Transnational Media ◽  
Strategic Narratives ◽  
National Media ◽  
Mexican Migrant

Abstract During the candidacy and following the election of U.S. president Donald Trump, there was an emphasis on framing the Mexican immigrant as a criminal and on building a wall between the United States and Mexico. This narrative revived the debate on the treatment of immigrants and immigration in cross-national media. Within this context, this study analyzes the construction of the image of the Mexican migrant to the United States by both (former) President Enrique Peña Nieto and President Donald Trump during the first 100 days of the latter’s presidency, through news stories published in two U.S newspapers and two Mexican newspapers. Findings show that news stories describe Mexican migrants in contrasting ways, ranging from criminals (in the U.S. framing) to good migrants (in the Mexican efforts), and both frames are picked up by the transnational media, hindering long-standing public diplomacy efforts in both countries.

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.

The Tradeoff of Temporariness: Economic and Social Impacts of H-2A Status on Mexican Migrant Men

2022 ◽  
pp. 019791832110660
Author(s):  
Shelby O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
The United States ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Mexican Migration ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Formal Economy ◽  
Discernible Effect ◽  
Mexican Migrant ◽  
Economic And Social Impacts

As the H-2A visa program expands to become a core component of contemporary Mexican migration to the United States, questions emerge about the tradeoffs migrants face between temporary and undocumented statuses. This article employs propensity score matching of participants in the Mexican Migration Project—an extensive binational survey of Mexican migrants and their families—to compare economic and social outcomes of H-2A visa recipients vis-à-vis undocumented migrants. Findings indicate that although H-2A visas offer benefits like a lower cost of living while abroad, they do not produce a discernible effect on wages relative to wages earned by undocumented migrants. While H-2A migrants are more likely to work in the formal economy, they are also less likely to build social capital or language proficiency in the United States than undocumented migrants, indicating a degree of social isolation that can be exploited by employers. This comparison contributes to a growing literature on the proliferation of temporary migratory statuses and the marginality experienced by migrants within these statuses.

Emigrants Get Political

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S. Danielson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
Mexican Migrant ◽  
Return Home ◽  
Multi Method Approach ◽  
Original Survey

Migrants who live abroad or who return home after many years have become an important constituency throughout the world. This book examines Mexican migrant engagement in origin communities and finds that at times migrants powerfully impact political dynamics there, both from abroad and upon their return. Migrant hometown engagement, the subject of the book, can result in a range of different political outcomes in migrant-sending municipalities. However, these do not uniformly enhance local democracy. This is the central contention of the book and explaining what causes variation in migrant impact is the principle goal. The findings challenge the arguments of scholars, policy makers, and migrant politicians themselves who expect migrants to learn democracy in the United States and bring it back with them when they return home. Not only do migrants remit dollars, the argument goes, they remit democracy. The book employs a multi-method approach to answer these questions, providing two statistical chapters—including analysis of an original survey of more than 400 mayors from the state of Oaxaca—with two qualitative chapters based on field research in 12 Mexican municipalities and their satellite communities in the United States. The project began with an expectation that the engagement of millions of Mexican migrants in their home towns would result in thousands of political earthquakes. Instead, what may be most noteworthy is the ability of the Mexican political system to incorporate these new actors without instituting fundamental changes to the way that politics are done.

La Apatrida and TPS: Counter-Hegemonic News and Reclaiming Dignity in Haitian National Newspapers

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-403
Author(s):  
Shearon Roberts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Haiti Earthquake ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Migrant Families ◽  
Newspaper Articles

This study examined the news coverage of two immigration stories involving Haitian migrants that made international headlines. Those two news stories were (a) the deportation of Dominicans of Haitian descent and (b) the end of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for displaced Haitians residing in the United States after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. This study sampled 198 Haitian newspaper articles over the 6-month period that both stories made global headlines in 2015 and then in 2017. The two Haitian national newspapers Le Nouvelliste, the country’s paper of record, and Le Nacional, the country’s newest daily, affirmed the rights and dignity of people of Haitian origin displaced by policy attributed as xenophobic and racist. Haitian newspapers described Haitian migrant families as being equally Dominican, regardless of their status, and in the United States, as being lawful migrants with rights under TPS. Haitian newspapers varied in their coverage of the governments of the two countries, being more critical of the administration of President Donald Trump, but more nuanced in their coverage of the Dominican Republic’s government.

The Precarious Position of Latino Immigrants in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 666 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas S. Massey ◽  
Jorge Durand ◽  
Karen A. Pren
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
Latino Immigrants ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Mexican Migrant ◽  
Wage Penalties ◽  
The U.S

A majority of Mexican and Central Americans living in the United States today are undocumented or living in a marginal, temporary legal status. This article is a comparative analysis of how Mexican and non-Mexican Latino immigrants fare in the U.S. labor market. We show that despite higher levels of human capital and a higher class background among non-Mexican migrants, neither they nor Mexican migrants have fared very well in the United States. Over the past four decades, the real value of their wages has fallen across the board, and both Mexican and non-Mexican migrant workers experience wage penalties because they are in liminal legal categories. With Latinos now composing 17 percent of the U.S. population and 25 percent of births, the precariousness of their labor market position should be a great concern among those attending to the nation’s future.

On the Move

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filiz Garip
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
The United States ◽  
General View ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
True Diversity ◽  
Mexican Migrant ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

Why do Mexicans migrate to the United States? Is there a typical Mexican migrant? Beginning in the 1970s, survey data indicated that the average migrant was a young, unmarried man who was poor, undereducated, and in search of better employment opportunities. This is the general view that most Americans still hold of immigrants from Mexico. This book argues that not only does this view of Mexican migrants reinforce the stereotype of their undesirability, but it also fails to capture the true diversity of migrants from Mexico and their evolving migration patterns over time. Using survey data from over 145,000 Mexicans and in-depth interviews with nearly 140 Mexicans, the book reveals a more accurate picture of Mexico–U.S migration. In the last fifty years there have been four primary waves: a male-dominated migration from rural areas in the 1960s and 1970s, a second migration of young men from socioeconomically more well-off families during the 1980s, a migration of women joining spouses already in the United States in the late 1980s and 1990s, and a generation of more educated, urban migrants in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For each of these four stages, the book examines the changing variety of reasons for why people migrate and migrants’ perceptions of their opportunities in Mexico and the United States. Looking at Mexico–U.S. migration during the last half century, the book uncovers the vast mechanisms underlying the flow of people moving between nations.

Palestine Unbound

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 130-134
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Task Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Tel Aviv ◽  
The Us ◽  
Intention To Move ◽  
Arab Israeli Conflict ◽  
The U.S

This section, updated regularly on the blog Palestine Square, covers popular conversations related to the Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict during the quarter 16 November 2017 to 15 February 2018: #JerusalemIstheCapitalofPalestine went viral after U.S. president Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and announced his intention to move the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. The arrest of Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi for slapping an Israeli soldier also prompted a viral campaign under the hashtag #FreeAhed. A smaller campaign protested the exclusion of Palestinian human rights from the agenda of the annual Creating Change conference organized by the US-based National LGBTQ Task Force in Washington. And, UNRWA publicized its emergency funding appeal, following the decision of the United States to slash funding to the organization, with the hashtag #DignityIsPriceless.

Verán ustedes las chozas más humildes. El discurso de pobreza en la diplomacia pública cardenista dirigida a Estados Unidos

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Sylvia Dümmer Scheel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Government ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
The New Deal

El artículo analiza la diplomacia pública del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas centrándose en su opción por publicitar la pobreza nacional en el extranjero, especialmente en Estados Unidos. Se plantea que se trató de una estrategia inédita, que accedió a poner en riesgo el “prestigio nacional” con el fin de justificar ante la opinión pública estadounidense la necesidad de implementar las reformas contenidas en el Plan Sexenal. Aprovechando la inusual empatía hacia los pobres en tiempos del New Deal, se construyó una imagen específica de pobreza que fuera higiénica y redimible. Ésta, sin embargo, no generó consenso entre los mexicanos. This article analyzes the public diplomacy of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, focusing on the administration’s decision to publicize the nation’s poverty internationally, especially in the United States. This study suggests that this was an unprecedented strategy, putting “national prestige” at risk in order to explain the importance of implementing the reforms contained in the Six Year Plan, in the face of public opinion in the United States. Taking advantage of the increased empathy felt towards the poor during the New Deal, a specific image of hygienic and redeemable poverty was constructed. However, this strategy did not generate agreement among Mexicans.

Comparative analysis of the trade policy of Barack Obama and Donald Trump

2020 ◽  
pp. 59-71
Author(s):  
V. Iordanova ◽  
A. Ananev
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Trade Policy ◽  
World Economy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Barack Obama ◽  
Scientific Article ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Entire World

The authors of this scientific article conducted a comparative analysis of the trade policy of US presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. The article states that the tightening of trade policy by the current President is counterproductive and has a serious impact not only on the economic development of the United States, but also on the entire world economy as a whole.

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