Abstract
In the context of heightened enforcement, hundreds of thousands of immigrants have returned to their countries of birth by force, and others have left by (constrained) choice. Drawing on interviews with 1.5-generation return migrants in Mexico, this article examines how young adults navigate incorporation in various states and localities on both sides of the border. After facing barriers in the US because of unauthorized immigration status, return migrants continue to face challenges in Mexico due to social stigmas associated with immigrant populations and bureaucratic obstacles that block access to educational institutions and labor market opportunities. The data suggest that exclusionary immigration laws have enduring and transnational impacts over the experiences of both “voluntary” return migrants and deportees.
Keywords
Introduction
Deportations from the United States (US) reached an all-time high under the Obama administration, peaking in, 2013 at 435,000 (Gonzalez-Barrera and Krogstad, 2016). As Trump assumed office in 2017, he vowed to follow through on campaign promises to implement even more immigrant enforcement. Within this climate of “mass deportation” (Golash-Boza, 2015) hundreds of thousands of immigrants have been forcibly removed and hundreds of thousands more have left “voluntarily” (Gonzalez-Barrera, 2015). In Mexico, both deportees and “voluntary” return migrants continue to face limited access to educational institutions and the labor market due to language barriers, complications acquiring official records, or as a result of stigma and social isolation. Moreover, returnees from both groups feel that the local Mexican population perceives them as criminal deportees or social outsiders.
This article examines 1.5-generation immigrants who grew up in the US and returned to Mexico as young adults. Considerable attention has been paid to the incorporation of 1.5 and second-generation immigrants in the US both in adolescence (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001; Portes and Zhou, 1993; Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco, 2001), and during the transition to adulthood (Abrego, 2006; Cebulko, 2013, 2014; Gonzales, 2011, 2016; Silver, 2012). The incorporation of 1.5-generation “voluntary” return migrants and deportees in origin countries; however, has received far less attention. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 1.5-generation return migrants from various US states, this article explores how youth who spent their adolescent years in the US adapt to life in Mexico.
Although I note important distinctions between deportees and “voluntary” return migrants, their experiences also intersect. Most “voluntary” return migrants “chose” to return to Mexico only when they felt paralyzed by their limited opportunities for school or work, immobilized by chronic anxiety, or compelled to leave due to a family member’s deportation. Respondents from states with augmented immigration enforcement policies recalled particularly hostile living environments that made daily routines increasingly difficult to navigate. Upon return, both “voluntary” return migrants and deportees struggled to adjust to their new surroundings. But, just as it did in the US, location of residence in Mexico influenced return migrants’ opportunities and feelings of belonging in their country of origin. Many returnees expressed relief upon finding a community of peers in large cities or tourist destinations where they could use English at work and socialize with each other. Nonetheless, they continued to face restrictions on institutional access and international travel. In effect, the hostile climate of state control and “legal violence” (Menjívar and Abrego, 2012) extended its reach from the US into Mexico as return migrants continued to confront exclusion, criminalization, and limited opportunities for upward mobility in spite of human capital accumulated in the US and Mexico.
Context of exit: legal exclusion, disposability, and the importance of place
Deportations have risen exponentially in the last two decades as immigration law in the US has become increasingly linked with criminal law (De Genova, 2010; Golash-Boza, 2015; Kanstroom, 2012; Stumpf, 2006). Under the ever-present threat of a “deportation regime” (De Genova, 2010), immigrants’ daily lives become marked by exclusion and fear (De Genova, 2002, 2010; Gonzales and Chavez, 2012; Kanstroom, 2012; Menjívar and Abrego, 2012). Scholars have argued that state-control over immigrants’ routine movements and work opportunities exacerbates their positions as disposable workers and strips them of essential personhood rights (De Genova, 2010; Golash-Boza, 2015; Menjívar and Abrego, 2012). But, while the threat of deportation has grown throughout the US, the specific impacts of heightened enforcement policies vary considerably by state (Olivas, 2007; Varsanyi, 2010; Varsanyi et al., 2012; Wishnie, 2001). In recent years, states with conservative governments and more recently established immigrant populations have enacted policies limiting undocumented students’ access to institutions of higher education and expanding police authority to enforce immigration law (Olivas, 2007; Ramakrishnan and Wong, 2010; Varsanyi, 2010). This devolution of immigration law to the state level has resulted in immigrant incorporation experiences that are contoured by state and locality of residence.
Immigrants who have settled in the Southeast and Arizona have faced particularly hostile legislative climates (Capps et al., 2011). Amplified enforcement efforts in the Southeast, a new destination region, were implemented to encourage “self-deportation” through the purposeful cultivation of inhospitable environments (Capps et al., 2011). In Arizona, similar enforcement models made national headlines when, in 2010, the state legislation passed SB 1070, allowing police officers to request identification from people suspected of immigration violations in any routine interaction. Along with heightened immigration enforcement in these areas, 1.5-generation unauthorized immigrants have also confronted limited access to colleges and universities.
Unauthorized immigrants are barred from federal financial aid throughout the US, but states vary considerably in their policies on in-state tuition and institutional access for unauthorized immigrants. In South Carolina and Alabama, state legislatures banned undocumented students from public institutions of higher education in, 2008 and 2011, respectively. Without enacting outright bans on enrollment, other states and public institutions have also implemented restrictions on undocumented students, including denying access to in-state tuition. Even after over 700,000 young unauthorized immigrants were granted legal presence through the, 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, states including Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona (with some exceptions) continued to require DACA beneficiaries to pay out-of-state tuition (Migration Policy Institute, 2015). In contrast, more traditional immigrant-destination states like California and Texas offer in-state tuition for unauthorized immigrants and DACA beneficiaries.
Even in hostile states, however, immigrants develop strong social, familial and cultural attachments to the US. Moreover, many express appreciation for the tranquility of non-urban, new destination areas (Marrow, 2011; Schmalzbauer, 2014 Silver, 2018). Thus, upon return to their countries of birth, many 1.5-generation immigrants from all regions in the US express nostalgia for the US and face a new adjustment period (Anderson, 2015).
Context of return: adapting to origin countries
Many return migrants continue to be haunted by the stigma of criminality as assumptions about deportees and low-income immigrants stretch across international borders (Coutin 2007, 2010). In effect, the reach of “legal violence” against immigrants (Menjívar and Abrego, 2012) can extend beyond national boundaries to affect incorporation processes both nationally and transnationally. Just as immigrants in the US confront legislative, institutional and social barriers to incorporation, return migrants face similar obstacles in their countries of origin. Particularly for young adults who grew up speaking English and attending US middle and high schools, adapting to their country of birth can be challenging.
Return migration has traditionally been discussed as the completion of the migration cycle and is often associated with the end of an immigrant’s highest earning years in the labor market (Massey, 1987). Increasingly; however, younger immigrants are returning to origin countries as a result of deportation or out of frustration with the social climate in receiving countries. Though recent research acknowledges increasing diversity in return migration flows (Masferrer and Roberts, 2012), scant attention has been paid to 1.5-generation return migrants’ incorporation experiences in origin countries. For young adults who spent much of their childhoods and teenage years in the US, the “context of return” (Medina and Menjívar, 2015) is wrought with layered complexities surrounding institutional and social incorporation.
After enduring hostile immigration policies in the US, return migrants often discuss the benefits of “freedom” upon return (Zúñiga and Hamann, 2015). They also, however, confront the harsh realization that their experiences with exclusion do not cease upon return to Mexico. Although they are legally Mexican citizens, deportees are often stigmatized in their countries of origin due to criminal associations embedded within social constructions of illegality (Coutin, 2007, 2010; Golash-Boza, 2015). Ample research suggests that deportees struggle to secure employment due to discrimination and insufficient structural and social support systems (Bhatt and Roberts, 2012; Coutin, 2010; Golash-Boza, 2015; Hagan, Rodriguez and Castro, 2011; Rodríguez and Hagan, 2004). Although less is known about the incorporation of 1.5-generation “voluntary” return migrants, they may also confront assumptions of criminality due to their similar mannerisms, ways of speaking, and styles of dress.
In addition to social sanctions and labor market discrimination, both deportees and “voluntary” returnees also face institutional barriers to incorporation. Return migrants who enroll in school upon return to Mexico often struggle to overcome limited language skills and cultural knowledge (Zúñiga and Hamann, 2009). Others find themselves barred from institutions of higher education and much of the formal labor market as they confront challenges translating and validating transcripts and records from the US (Anderson, 2015; Anderson and Solis, 2014). In spite of their citizenship, many youths who were frustrated by barriers to higher education and the labor market in the US thus find themselves similarly frustrated in Mexico. Although return migrants may leave behind the chronic stress of “deportability” (De Genova, 2002), they continue to confront hurdles impeding their pathways toward upward mobility.
Despite a myriad of obstacles to incorporation, some return migrants find at least partial relief upon encountering a community of peers. Many 1.5-generation return migrants in Mexico express comfort upon finding work in call centers with other return migrants (Anderson, 2015). Smaller towns are far less likely to have English-dominated industries than large cities and tourist destinations. Consequently, recent return migrants tend to concentrate in metropolitan areas and tourist destinations where they can create communities of belonging (Masferrer and Roberts, 2012). Nonetheless, many continue to feel stuck between two nations without a full sense of inclusion in either.
Methods and research sites
The majority of the data for this article comes from two months of fieldwork in Mexico during the Spring of 2015. Targeting localities where recent return migrants have concentrated, I conducted 28 semi-structured in-depth interviews with return migrants in the touristy beach town of Sayulita, Nayarit, in Mexico’s two largest cities, Mexico City and Guadalajara, in two colonial tourist destinations adjacent to Guadalajara and Mexico City, and in one urban center on the outskirts of Mexico City. In the tourist destinations, 7 of the 10 respondents I interviewed worked in restaurants catering to English-speaking patrons. In urban areas, 13 of the 18 respondents I interviewed worked in call centers where they used English daily, serving clients of American companies such as T-Mobile, AT&T, American Express, and HP. In total, I interviewed 11 women and 17 men during this initial phase of data collection. I also followed-up with seven of the respondents in the two years after their initial interviews.
This on-going research continues research I began in an earlier project in North Carolina, conducted between 2007 and 2015 (see Silver, 2018). Two of the 1.5-generation immigrants that I interviewed for the North Carolina project had returned to Mexico and I reached out to them to request follow-up interviews and to ask if they could connect me with any additional return migrants from their social networks. Building on their contacts as well as my own efforts, I utilized a combination of snowball and convenience sampling to recruit young adults who had attended at least middle and/or high school in the US and spoke English fluently. Respondents had returned to Mexico at various ages, but all were bilingual and most had to work hard to improve their Spanish. Prior to returning to Mexico, 10 of the 28 return migrants had resided in states with particularly harsh immigration enforcement policies (North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona). The remainder had lived in: California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. Most respondents had returned as a result of their own or their family members’ deportations, or to escape the limitations of living in the US without immigration authorization (see Table 1). More men than women were deported, and more women left for family-related reasons than men. Interviews lasted from 40 min to nearly four hours, with most lasting about 90 min. During our conversations, I asked participants about their experiences with immigration enforcement in the US, family life, work and school experiences, feelings of belonging, and plans to return to the US.
Reason for return (N = 28 a ).
aThe numbers do not add up to 28 because respondents fell into more than one category; one person was deported once and left “voluntarily” a second time, another left “voluntarily” the first time and was deported the second.
Findings
By tracing the entire return migration process, from the social forces precipitating departure from the US to responses upon arrival in Mexico to adaptation over time, the findings of this study offer a glimpse into the transnational impacts of exclusionary state laws. Despite the diversity of their experiences living in the US and the variety of reasons for return, deportees, and “voluntary” return migrants from both hostile and more hospitable states in the US faced similar challenges upon return to Mexico. A majority stated that they fit in better in urban centers or tourist destinations than in small “pueblos” (villages), where they could use their English for work and earn livable wages. Furthermore, return migrants from all states described missing friends in the US, and expressed relief upon finding a community of other return migrants, as they had all felt socially dislocated after returning to Mexico.
In contrast, their memories of the US varied according to their previous US states of residence, and their experiences in the US helped shape their experiences in Mexico. Return migrants from the South were more likely to discuss standing out in the US because of their Latino heritage and appearance than those from other regions in the US. Furthermore, those from more hostile states in the US painted more harshly contrasting pictures of their ability to move freely in Mexico in comparison to their feelings of entrapment in the US. Yet respondents from rural areas and small towns, including those with hostile enforcement policies, were also more likely to discuss missing the peacefulness and open space of the US when they compared their former homes to their current urban surroundings in Mexico. Respondents in Mexico repeatedly raised concerns about muggings, kidnappings, and assault, which tempered some of their positive feelings about their newfound freedom of movement.
Even after years of living in Mexico, both deportees and “voluntary” returnees continued to face challenges as they attempted to build their human capital and provide for their families. Particularly when they attempted to pursue educational or work opportunities, or after they had children, return migrants felt acutely aware of the enduring impacts of exclusionary immigration laws. Deportees, especially, were limited by deportation records which prevented them from seeking jobs requiring travel to the US and precluded them from applying for visas to visit the US.
Context of exit: limitations and fears in hostile contexts
All 28 return migrants I interviewed recalled their time in the US with both fondness and lingering frustration. Most, however, regarded it as home while they resided there. They were grateful for their bilingualism, and proudly discussed personality traits that they attributed to their US upbringings. Despite positive recollections of the US, respondents from southern states and Arizona, in particular, recalled being profiled as a result of their Latino appearance. For example, Amaya 1 noted how her life in Arizona became increasingly stressful, commenting, “When the whole thing happened with the undocumented stuff in Arizona…if you looked Mexican, they would just literally pull you over. It was just out of control.” 2 Amaya left Arizona with her family after her father was deported for a DUI. She missed her friends in Arizona deeply, but she appreciated the comparative lack of anxiety in Mexico.
In a parallel story, Mariela left Georgia with her family after her brother got deported in a routine traffic stop. Her brother’s deportation was the final push they needed to return, but aggressive policing had already affected their quality of life. As Mariela explained: There was a lot of immigration stuff, and people didn't want us there. And the county that we lived in, Cobb County, it was really tough because there were cops everywhere and they would just…stop you and ask for papers. So [my brother] got stopped, and he got deported…Sometimes I would want to go to my friend's house, and my dad would say, “No we can't go because there's a lot of cops around that area…it's not safe, you're not going.” So we really just couldn't go out of our house anymore. So I guess it's good that we came over here, because we can move freely. Here we are free, and over there we were kind of trapped.
Similar pressures of police surveillance in North Carolina prompted Luis to return to Mexico “voluntarily,” but under duress. When I interviewed him in 2008, Luis had already moved to Mexico. Though he wanted to enroll in college in North Carolina, state policies prohibited unauthorized immigrants access to in-state tuition and, as an unauthorized immigrant, he was not eligible for financial aid. Consequently, Luis saw no feasible way to continue his education in the US. Moreover, he saw immigration enforcement policies mounting in his home state, and he began to fear for his safety. He explained the pressures that prompted his return to Mexico, and the pain he felt surrounding his decision: Seventy percent of me died when I crossed that border…After I graduated high school, it just seemed like everywhere I turned it was like, “are you legal?” So, I decided that I should be in the country where I was legal, or could develop better…I did not want to build a career in a place where I was always watching my back.
In contrast, Manuel, who had resided in Oregon never worried about driving or “watching his back” in the US because he had a license, which he had acquired before Oregon overturned its policy on licenses for unauthorized immigrants. He left the US voluntarily because his options for work were limited, but he rarely felt threatened in daily life. Even from Mexico, Manuel maintained a strong loyalty to Oregon. After the, 2016 election of Donald Trump, Manuel commented that he was thankful that Oregon had voted against Trump. Criticizing Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall between the US and Mexico, Manuel joked that the west should build a wall separating the democratically leaning western states from the rest of the US. Manuel’s comments echo previous research which found that unauthorized immigrants can feel magnified state loyalty when confronted with federal or regional anti-immigration legislation (Cebulko and Silver, 2016). In this case, Manuel’s feelings of state-level belonging traveled with him to Mexico and amplified as he watched the national climate in the US become increasingly hostile toward immigrants.
Context of return: new limitations
Though return migrants and deportees may have felt more freedom upon return to Mexico, they nonetheless felt surveilled due to their conspicuous US-American style and mannerisms. Even in the urban capital, Ezequiel commented that he regularly felt judged for his appearance, including his baseball hat and saggy pants. Ezequiel moved to Mexico City after getting deported from North Carolina when he was apprehended for running a red light. He felt he had been racially profiled by the police in North Carolina, but he felt far more socially surveilled in Mexico. He explained, “Now people look at me like I'm probably going to go ahead and rob them, seriously!…That's one thing I don't like about living here. When other people look at you here, they give you that look. I hate that.” When I asked him why he thought people looked at him askance, he replied: Because I'm different and we’re different. We carry ourselves very differently. One day I was on the metro when I was coming out of work with my coworkers and we're loud…And people here, they have a problem with that…So they hear you talking English and…they just give you that look.
Beyond social sanctions, return migrants also struggled to smoothly transition into educational institutions in Mexico. For example, Enrique was forced to sit out a semester of high school because the school was “overcrowded.” Enrique had moved from North Carolina to Guadalajara after his father was deported for a DUI. Although his parents legally could have fought to ensure their son a spot in school that semester, they took the school at its word. Mariela had a similar experience when she returned in the middle of the semester. Her parents enrolled her in a private high school because the public-school administrator told them that they would have to wait until the following year to enroll her. These stories stand in contrast to previous research that indicates Mexican-citizen children can more easily enroll in Mexican schools than their US-born peers who lack Mexican-citizen registration (CURP) numbers (Medina and Menjívar, 2015). Indeed, these Mexican-citizen youths faced fewer obstacles enrolling in US primary and secondary schools, where they were guaranteed equal access to education as a result of the, 1982 Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court Decision.
Return migrants faced even greater challenges enrolling in Mexican institutions of higher education. For example, Estella reported confronting a gauntlet of bureaucracy and misinformation when she attempted to apply for college in Guadalajara. The college admissions personnel told her that her US high school diploma would not suffice for admission, and that she would need to take three separate tests, with expensive fees, to replace her missing elementary, middle, and high school transcripts. When she learned that she could get her paperwork from the US translated and validated, they insisted that her credentials nonetheless marked her as an out-of-state student. Protesting, she explained, “No! I was born here!”
Estella was familiar with the higher costs of tuition for out-of-state students from North Carolina, but she never dreamed that she would face the same barrier in Mexico. Ultimately, she decided that it was too expensive to attend college in Mexico. Moreover, she saw that she was already making as much money working in a call center as her college-educated, English-speaking Mexican co-workers. Frustrated and homesick for the US, she set her sights on eventually returning to the US for college.
Of all the return migrants who tried to enroll in school in Mexico, only one described a relatively simple transition. Blocked from colleges in North Carolina because of the high cost of out-of-state tuition, Elias decided six months before high school graduation that he would pursue an engineering degree at the prestigious Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM). Renowned world-wide as a top-tier university, Elias was never disheartened at the quality of his education, unlike his peers who had attended lesser-tier universities in Mexico. Elias was a straight-A student in high school, and he came from a more well-to-do Mexican family than many of his peers. Elias’s education and family connections helped him immensely. After college graduation, he took an engineering job with Nissan. He traveled to the US for work sometimes, and estimated that he used English about 40% of the time at work. Because he was “part of an elite team of engineers” working in an international corporation, he felt that that he was a “global citizen,” and he did not describe his transition to Mexico as particularly trying. Because of his socioeconomic status, and more professional dress code, he was also one of the few respondents who did not describe feelings of social ostracization resulting from his US upbringing.
Unlike Elias who adapted easily to college in Mexico, other return migrants who enrolled in college classes faced language difficulties and were frustrated with the quality of their educations. Manuel explained that he had to use “Google translate” or read academic texts multiple times to understand them. He decided to postpone college until his Spanish improved. Similarly, when Luis first enrolled in college, he struggled with academic writing, and did not always feel supported by his professors. One professor even asked him if he was “dumb.”
Luis initially went to what he described as a “bad college” in Mexico City before switching into a better school once his language and writing skills improved. But even with a law degree from the better university, he struggled to find a good job, explaining that his lack of social connections hampered his chances. After taking a call center job, he landed a “good job” with the legal department for a timeshare branch of the Hard Rock Café and Hotel. Because the job required a multiple hour commute, however, he struggled to balance work and family. He decided to return to call center work even though it paid less and did not make use of his legal degree. Although Luis had come to accept, and in many ways embrace, his life in Mexico City, he continued to feel limited by his job options.
Context of return: gradual adaptation
Facing barriers to school, work, and social incorporation, most 1.5-generation immigrants experienced emotional hardships upon return to Mexico. For deportees, the disruption in their lives was most stark, as they often experienced family separation and were ill-prepared for life back in Mexico. For example, when Ezequiel was deported, he explained that he felt isolated and lost, unsure of where to begin searching for a job. He saw kids shining shoes and, out of desperation, began to do the same thing until he met a cousin who told him about call centers. The stable income and steady job made Ezequiel feel far more secure, and the atmosphere of the call center was comforting to him. He explained: You're so used to seeing people that speak English, especially in call centers. That's why most of us work there. In a way, it makes you feel like you're back home, you know? And then we'll go clubbing and go grab a couple of beers, speak English, so it makes you feel at home.
Other return migrants also relished the community of peers they found in call centers, though they complained about the uninspiring work and constant noise. These peer networks were vital in helping young return migrants adapt to life in Mexico. Youth who worked outside of call centers sometimes lacked this community of support. For example, when searching for restaurant work in Cancún, a Mexican server told Juan, a return migrant from North Carolina, “You immigrants just come down here and think you can steal our jobs because you speak English.” Though his English eventually helped Juan find a job in a different restaurant, Juan felt isolated and unwelcome. The comment that he was stealing jobs, a sentiment regularly directed at immigrants in the US, was something he never expected to hear in Mexico.
Juan’s experience in Cancún, however, was different from the experiences of servers in the tourist destination of Sayulita, who did connect with other return migrants. However, like deportees described in previous research (Coutin, 2007, 2010), deportees and return migrants in tourist destinations discussed how their job searches were hindered by assumptions about their criminal histories. For example, Alvaro, who was deported from Arizona after getting pulled over with a gun in his car, revealed that he struggled to get restaurant work in Sayulita. Employers were suspicious of return migrants whom they assumed were deported because of criminal activity. Indeed, Alvaro was hired by the assistant manager while the restaurant owner was on vacation; she was not happy about the new hire, but she agreed to give him chance. Her gamble paid off. When I interviewed him, Alvaro had been working at the restaurant for over a year and was well-liked by staff and customers alike. Unlike servers, call center workers I interviewed never mentioned being discriminated against at work because of assumptions about criminal histories. Like the call center workers in Anderson’s (2015) study, most felt that it was easy to get a job at a call center.
Returning again? Seeking paths back to the US
Though most of the return migrants in this study discussed a gradual adaptation to Mexico, the majority also hoped to return to the US, at least to visit. Even though many, particularly those from more hostile states, recalled exclusion in the US, they continued to feel out of place in Mexico. For some, having children led to a renewed nostalgia for the US. Luis recalled his own childhood in North Carolina as he contemplated returning for the sake of his children: I was very free as a kid. It was a small town, and I was very free to explore nature…and not worry about things that are going on here. Like, a while ago there was a rumor that they were kidnapping kids around [my son’s] school, so you come to work and have that fear, like, is my son going to be okay? So, it's really different living in a big city. And recently, I've been thinking about, what if I bring my family over there? What if I give [my son] that opportunity too?…When I lived over there, I used to get on my bike and just ride anywhere…It's a little piece of freedom, and I'd love for him to have that.
Safety concerns led new parents to think about migrating for the sake of their children. Even though return migrants, including Luis, recalled feeling restricted in the US, their feelings of freedom upon return to Mexico waned once these young adults had children of their own. Moreover, particularly for immigrants from the South, their memories of green spaces and small-town safety colored their memories of the US as much as their resentment about immigration enforcement policies.
The dangers of crossing over without papers made parents hesitant to attempt a journey back with their children without a travel visa. Other returnees, however, decided to take their chances. Unable to bear the separation from his mother and brother, Ezequiel returned to the US only to be deported again, less than a year after he was first deported. With two deportations, Ezequiel knew that his opportunities to find an authorized pathway back into the US were nearly nonexistent. Permanently separated from his family, he felt exiled in Mexico.
Other deportees lamented feeling similarly trapped in Mexico, particularly when their deportation records prevented them from taking jobs that required travel to the US. Elias, who had been deported from Las Vegas after serving a prison sentence for a drug-related charge, noted that he had achieved significant labor market mobility in Mexico. He had worked his way through various call centers before taking a managerial position for an Indian company that had contracts with several US-based technology companies. Despite being proud of his accomplishments, he also noted that his deportation record stunted his growth. He explained: I work side by side with vice presidents from several companies, and they know me personally…They take me out to eat. I travel with them…[They] want me to go over to the States, and I can’t…I’ve lost so many [contract] jobs…I tell them, “I’ve tried [to get a visa], but my green card expired and I couldn’t renew it, so I need to wait. They won’t give me a visa yet.” I’m just short with my explanations, because otherwise I have to tell them that I lied on the application.
Discussion and conclusion
For youth who grew up in the US, return migration often marked a violent fissure from the lives that they knew best. Industries with high concentrations of “voluntary” return migrants and deportees allowed 1.5-generation return migrants to connect with a community of their peers, but they nonetheless continued to feel like outsiders in their country of birth. They faced social sanctions from passersby who admonished them for speaking English, or eyed them suspiciously for their mannerism and dress. Just as US enforcement policies and media portrayals painted unauthorized immigrants as dangerous criminals, stereotypes about violent deportees traveled back to Mexico. Both deportees and “voluntary” return migrants, and particularly men, thus found themselves similarly criminalized and stigmatized in Mexico and the US.
Even when they had to contend with social exclusion; however, return migrants also celebrated the freedom that came with residing in their country of citizenship. Most respondents spoke at length and with great relief about the freedom of mobility that De Genova (2010) highlighted as a crucial human right. Importantly; however, local contexts of reception in both the US and Mexico shaped return migrants’ feelings of belonging and security. Returnees from hostile states in the US were particularly vocal about their decreased levels of daily anxiety. At the same time, however, many of those same individuals commented that they missed the tranquility and lush landscape of the US South. And while return migrants from these states no longer feared police in the US, some now found themselves fearing urban crime in Mexico.
Yet, despite high crime rates in cities, most return migrants felt less isolated in urban areas than in smaller Mexican towns where many had relatives. Although they stood out in large cities as well, they at least had a community of return migrants with whom they could connect. Overtime, these social networks helped return migrants find and create spaces of belonging in their countries of birth. But, life course milestones, such as having children, applying to college, and embarking on new careers, prompted new adjustment periods wherein return migrants reconsidered their newfound freedom and comfort.
With highly coveted English skills, young return migrants had advantages in the Mexican labor market, but often the industries they could access, such as customer service call centers and tourist restaurants, had limited opportunities for growth. Both “voluntary” return migrants and deportees had trouble securing more upwardly mobile jobs due to bureaucratic obstacles and their lack of social connections in Mexico. For deportees, opportunities for labor market mobility were even more limited as their opportunities to engage in higher level transnational business opportunities were stymied by their inability to travel to the US. Even more devastating, those that were separated from children, siblings or parents in the US knew that family reunification was uncertain and far off at best. As deportation records continued to constrain opportunities for deportees in Mexico, they were reminded of the transnational consequences of state control over immigrants.
Although many return migrants show remarkable resilience, they are also acutely aware of the myriad ways in which the transnational impacts of exclusionary immigration laws continue to constrain their mobility and regulate their relationships. As the narratives in this article illustrate, young return migrants often find themselves excluded from national membership despite their citizenship in one country and their social connections to another. In the current climate of immigration enforcement, increasing numbers of young 1.5-generation immigrants are returning to their countries of origin either by force or constrained choice. Discussions about immigrant incorporation, thereby, should extend to include the entire migration cycle, including return migration. This population has received far too little attention from academics as well as governmental officials and non-profit organizations. As a result, too many young return migrants find themselves facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles that impede their development and prevent them from reaching their full potential.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Jennifer Bickham Mendez, Leah Schmalzbauer, Kara Cebulko, Bernadette Ludwig and Stephen Ruszczyk for helpful feedback on previous drafts of this manuscript.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research is supported in part by the Faculty Support Award at Purchase College, State University of New York.