Vulnerability and Adaptation for Deported Americans in Mexico City

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 13. Return migration / migration to Mexico

Abstract

Large-scale U.S. deportations have produced a growing population of return migrants navigating reintegration under conditions of social, economic, and emotional precarity. While scholarship has extensively examined undocumented immigrants residing in the United States, far less attention has focused on post-return experiences. This study examines vulnerability and adaptation among formerly U.S.-resident Mexican-origin adults who returned to Mexico City between 2020 and 2023, either voluntarily or through deportation.

Data are drawn from Tirando Muros: Salud sin Fronteras, an NIH-funded, multi-site study (NIMHD R01 MD013628) employing a concurrent mixed-methods nested design. The parent study recruited 560 Mexican-origin participants across Los Angeles and Mexico City; this analysis focuses on 308 return migrants residing in Mexico City. Ethnographic social mapping and adaptive sampling strategies guided recruitment across all 16 delegaciones and adjacent municipios. In-depth phenomenological interviews were conducted with 28 return migrants to explore lived experiences of reintegration.

Findings reveal three interconnected domains: isolation, uneven adaptation, and substance use. Despite being Mexican by birth, many participants described feeling culturally American and socially marked as outsiders due to language, dress, and behavioral norms. Family reunification often produced emotional estrangement rather than belonging. Adaptation trajectories varied; some leveraged English fluency and U.S.-acquired skills to secure employment, while others experienced prolonged economic instability and discrimination. Substance use frequently intensified following return, emerging as a patterned coping response to depression, downward mobility, and chronic uncertainty rather than solely individual pathology.

These findings highlight return migration as a critical but underexamined stage of the migration process, revealing how post-return environments shape isolation, substance use, and adaptation among individuals of Mexican descent. Understanding post-return isolation, uneven adaptation and substance use risk is critical for migration and binational public health policy addressing disparities among forcibly returned populations.

Authors

• Alice Cepeda, University of Southern California

• Avelardo Valdez

• Jessica Frankeberger, Arizona State University

• Nefertari Rincon Guerra, Arizona State University