"Soy Mexicano pero tengo pensamientos americanos": Adolescent Return Migrants Navigating Belonging and Status

• In Event: Beyond National Boundaries: Transnational Ways of Knowing and Belonging in Mexico

Abstract

Objectives: From the years 2009 to 2014, 1 million Mexicans and their families (including U.S.-born children) left the U.S. for Mexico (Gonzalez-Barrera, 2015), a phenomenon that has been receiving increased attention in academic circles, begging us to see education, identity formation and belonging in a transnational framework. In this paper we analyze the experiences of adolescent return migrants in high school (prepas) in the state of Jalisco to uncover factors that affect belonging in a transnational space and offer recommendations for schools to pay closer attention to the possibilities of developing critical consciousness and democratic citizenship (Dyrness & El-Haj, 2019).

Theoretical Framework: Understanding transnational fields that adolescent return migrant and their families occupy as not only the movement between national borders, but also as media, cultural and social practices (Basch, Schiller and Szanton Blanc, 1994; Levitt and Schiller, 2004), we see their process of identity formation and belonging as tied to binational perspectives and experiences (Dyrness & El-Haj, 2019). Furthermore, these are intimately tied to the status conferred by social class, immigration status (both in the US and Mexico) and other axioms of power.

Methods and Data Sources: Semi-structured interviews were gathered from a study conducted in 2018-2019 in partnership with the Universidad de Guadalajara and the Sistema de Educación Media y Superior (SEMS) of this university, who coordinates high schools in the state of Jalisco. In order to understand adolescent return migrants’ notions of belonging and status, we draw from interviews with forty-three (43) adolescent return migrants in urban areas and pueblos (small towns) in the state of Jalisco.

Results: Our findings describe the complex navigation of belonging for adolescents in prepas in the state of Jalisco, with many factors affecting their sense of belonging: the social class and economic position of the family, their immigration status in the United States and their ability to process documentation in Mexico, theirs and their families’ transnational experiences of immigration and the amounts of years of U.S. schooling. We also find that although their experiences offer the possibility of developing a “critical awareness of disparities and inequalities in material conditions, opportunities, and access to rights” (Dyrness & El-Haj, 2019, p. 5), we uncover examples of how youth reproduce and internalize nationalistic, xenophobic, meritocratic and linguistic discourses.

Scholarly Significance: It is essential for schools in Mexico and the U.S. to discover the lived experience of transnational students in order to imbue their realities into curricula and school dynamics. Schools can be at the forefront of critiquing blind allegiance to assimilationist, monocultural identities based on national identity and other axioms of power, and the experience of transnational students can offer nuanced and complex examples to build critical consciousness.

Authors

• Julian Jefferies, California State University - Fullerton

• Alma Leticia Flores Avila, Universidad de Guadalajara