Reframing Deportation: Community, Responsibility, and the Promise of Post–American Dream Politics in Mexico

• In Event: Open Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 11: Immigration, Legal Status, and Incorporation

Abstract

In recent years, as the number of deportees from the United States has increased, scholars have dedicated more time and resources to understanding the physical and emotional trauma of being separated from family and expelled from the country. Much of this literature tends to focus on real and perceived injustices associated with deportation and the continuing struggles of recent deportees to seek redress and try to make whole what has been lost or broken. The paper looks beyond the legitimate grievances associated with recent deportations to focus on the communities that select deportees are forging in geographies and contexts not of their choosing. Interviews and participant observation with more than 50 deportees living in Tijuana, Oaxaca, and Mexico City serve as the primary mode of analysis. While participants in this study refer to past wrongs committed by the U.S. government, they also appear to accept partial responsibility for decisions and events that led to their deportation. Such a perspective, according to these deportees, helps them reframe the experience of deportation as an opportunity rather than a trauma that will never heal. While this reframing can appear off-putting at first and perhaps naïve, it reflects a much deeper political analysis that rejects what they now consider the false hope of pursuing the “American Dream” in favor of achieving a much more expansive definition of success through solidarity and collective action in Mexico.

Author

• Patrick Inglis, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas