How U.S. Immigration Policies Drive Out Undocumented Grandparents and Restructure their Mixed-Status Families

• In Event: 30860 - Section on Aging and the Life Course Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 8. Social Relationships Over the Life Course

Abstract

When undocumented immigrants return to their country of origin after decades spent
living in the United States, the majority leave behind many family members. Some of these kin
are U.S. citizens; some are undocumented immigrants themselves. How does return migration in
later life transform mixed-status immigrant extended families, and what does this tell us about
how immigration policies transform families beyond the nuclear form? To answer this, I use
fieldwork and life-history interviews with return migrants in Puebla and Tlaxcala, Mexico and
their families who remain in the United States. I find that, for undocumented immigrants and
their families, return migration in later life is a significant rupture, which fundamentally
transforms families by limiting the care and economic support they can provide to each other and
altering or severing ties between grandparents and grandchildren. Moreover, this rupture is
typically unexpected by migrants and leads to a consequential disjuncture between how
grandparents imagined later life and their actual experiences of aging and grandparenthood.
Where once they were active caregivers for their grandchildren, shaping children’s development
and socialization, return migrants who were undocumented now must wait to see if “the ones
with papers” will visit them in Mexico. Grandchildren experience a role transformation, as well.
Some families react by sending U.S. citizen children to visit their grandparents in Mexico. Other
grandchildren lose contact with their grandparents altogether, which has significant implications,
not only for their familial bonds but also for their cultural identities and those of future
generations. These findings contribute to research examining the collateral impacts of immigrant
exclusion policies –– by highlighting transgenerational collateral impacts –– as well as a wider
literature on how the state interferes with the family formation of marginalized groups.

Author

• Kristina M. Fullerton Rico, University of Michigan