This presentation examines Mexican return migrants belonging to generation 1.5 (Rumbaut, 2004) of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the U.S.. Generation 1.5 relates to young people who migrated at a very young age with their parents to the United States (U.S.), went to U.S. schools, and use English as their everyday language. This generation defies traditional notions of citizenship associated with nation-states, i.e., one language, one identity, one citizenship. On the one hand, they use English as their dominant language and adopted cultural and social values associated with the U.S. (González, 2016) even though they were born in Mexico. On the other, they formally enjoy basic rights in Mexico where they possess formal citizenship, but their linguistic repertoires, cultural codes, and norms do not fit in with the traditional notions of mexicanity. Building on critical citizenship theories (Isin 2008, 2009), specifically on the concepts of status, habitus (Bourdieu, 1980), and acts, this research aims to examine the process of formal and substantive citizenship construction that generation 1.5 follows once they forcefully, or voluntarily, return to Mexico.
The research is co-authored and part of a wider qualitative research funded by the Mexican National Research Council (CONACYT) which aimed to analyze educational trajectories and job prospects of generation 1.5 return migrants to Mexico. Data was collected in 2019 through questionnaires to know participants' migration and educational histories, and then through focus groups in five different Mexican states. For this research, we used focus groups from Puebla and Mexico City with the participation of 13 return migrants. Questions did not directly focus on citizenship, but the topic emerged naturally. Focus groups were recorded, transcribed, and then analyzed based on thematic analysis.
The analysis disaggregates the notions that these return migrants have regarding "being Mexican" and being bilinguals. Findings show how these return migrants experience and build notions of citizenship in Mexico while they develop additional linguistic repertoires in Spanish and acquire basic knowledge of Mexican culture. Results of the study suggest that return migrants go through various simultaneous learning processes to acquire Mexican habitus in Mexico even though they already possess formal citizenship. This learning process, we argue, occurs amidst multiple social, linguistic, and cultural tensions that trigger important acts of (linguistic) citizenship through which return migrants found their own definition of what it means to be "Mexican".
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Gonzales, R. (2016). Lives in Limbo. Undocumented and coming of age in America. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Isin, E. (2008). Theorizing Acts of Citizenship, ed. by Engin F. Isin, and Greg M. Nielsen in Acts of Citizenship, 15–43. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Isin, E. (2009). Citizenship in flux: The figure of the activist citizen. Subjectivity, 29: 367–388.
Rumbaut, Rubén (2004). Ages, Life Stages, and Generational Cohorts: Decomposing the Immigrant First and Second Generations in the United States. International Migration Review, 38(3), 1160-1205.
