Banned from home: seeking socio-political agency and mobility post deportation/ post return, the case of "Dreamers" in Mexico.

• In Event: Undocumented and mobilized: the migrants´ fight for education and mobility in the U.S. and Mexico

Abstract

Human mobility often times is described as a basic human right at a universal scale. The liberating idea that any human being can freely navigate within geographical boundaries and, in any case, return to their native country in reality (and in practice) is a concept restricted to punitive laws related to the safety and sovereignty of states. Such restrictive laws grant governments the ability to specify, limit, and enforce border control in the name of national security. Sovereignty also gives local and state governments the right to create their own immigration laws and to enforce existing laws at the federal level. It is estimated that from 2009 to present over 2 million Mexican nationals have been forced to return to their native country, facing 10 year, 20 year, or in some cases lifetime legal bans from the United States. The “delinquencies” committed range in severity, some immigrants have been banned for basic traffic violations, while other have been banned for serious criminal convictions. Lumped in the same category are those who returned to Mexico without minor or major convictions; voluntarily returning to Mexico seeking family reunification or a future unattainable as an undocumented individual in the U.S. Furthermore, it is estimated that 500,000 young adults who would qualify as “Dreamers” returned to Mexico in the past decade; many facing legal bans from the U.S. for having lived there illegally. Systematically, both groups of repatriated Mexicans face the same stigmatization and criminalization by being equally banned from returning to the U.S in a legal manner. The use of legal bans against Mexican nationals post deportation/post return, perpetuates a cycle of criminalization giving space to other inhumane conditions such as a lifetime of family separation. If in fact, we are granted free mobility based on our intrinsic human condition, and we are in any case allowed to return to our native countries; this type of penalization should be analyzed from a human rights perspective taking into consideration mobility as a detrimental socio-political form of agency in the life of any human being irrespective of their legal status.

Author

• Patricia Ruiz