Deported "Americans" Products of California's Educational System

Children's Geographies

Since 2004, our research has focused precisely in those minors who 'returned' from the United States to Mexico. Our interest has been to know the social, geographical, educational, and symbolic trajectories of those migrant children and adolescents who are part of the contemporary move of returnees. Based on the children's narratives (all collected before US November 2016 federal election), we now have a multifaceted response to the question: How and why are young Mexican migrants returning from the United States to Mexico? Some of these returnees were born in Mexico and arrived to the United States when they were young. International migration literature describes them as members of the 1.5 generation. But others were born in the United States and often started school there. They did not 'return' to Mexico, they arrived to their parents' home country for the first time in their lives. We call them the 0.5 generation.

Children's Geographies, 2014

The paper has two goals. The first is to present the main quantitative findings drawn from four surveys we conducted in Nuevo León (2004, n=14,473), Zacatecas (2005, n=11,258), Puebla (2009, n=18,829) and Jalisco (2010, n=11,479) using representative samples of children aged 7 to 16. We classified children in the following categories: (a) children who are returnees (who were born in Mexico), (b) international migrant children (born in the U.S.), and (c) mononational Mexicans. Among the second group, we distinguish children who had school experiences in the U.S. and those younger transnationals who came to Mexico before enrolling in school. The second goal is consider these children's cosmologies, revealed through interviews and survey responses, and to interpret the ways children explain their return migration from the United States to Mexico within the context of increasing voluntary and forced-return migration to Mexico. So data drawn from our mixed methods inquiry add younger voices and complicate sociological typologies about migration, motives for migration, and returnees. Children and 'return' migration Migration between the U.S. and Mexico has long included 'return migration' (i.e., those from Mexico returning to Mexico after a stint in the U.S.), but that portion of the migration equation has received comparatively less attention than movement from Mexico to the U.S. (Gaillard 1994). Similarly, while migration may often be 'pioneered' by adults travelling without children, it has long been noted that children migrate in large numbers as well (Passel 2011; Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 2002). Nonetheless, children's participation in migration has also been comparatively under-emphasized (Dobson 2009, Ensor and Gozdziak 2010). Based on our 10-year research project studying children with prior backgrounds in the U.S. who we encountered in Mexican schools in five Mexican states, we found that, at the start of the 21 st Century's second decade, Mexican schools (for grades 1 to 9) hosted children with prior experience in U.S. schools. We have also found that, as a partially overlapping population, these Mexican schools also enrolled children who had been born in the U.S. Not only is it misleading to call these children retornados (they are not returning to Mexico, but rather immigrating to it), but these latter children are also U.S. citizens per U.S. law, although they are also Mexican citizens based on the citizenship rights conferred by their parentage. In the contemporary context of return migration from the U.S. to Mexico, this paper aims to a) show the main quantitative findings in four of the five state level surveys we conducted in 2004, 2005, 2009 and 2010, b) analyze and interpret children's answers and narratives related to that migration, including their negotiation of a new or returned-to community in Mexico and their continued relationship with those in their past place(s) of residence. In doing this, we tried to respond to Dobson's (2009) call for 'unpacking

2015

The paper has two goals. The first is to present the main quantitative findings drawn from four surveys we conducted in Nuevo León (2004, n=14,473), Zacatecas (2005, n=11,258), Puebla (2009, n=18,829) and Jalisco (2010, n=11,479) using representative samples of children aged 7 to 16. We classified children in the following categories: (a) children who are returnees (who were born in Mexico), (b) international migrant children (born in the U.S.), and (c) mononational Mexicans. Among the second group, we distinguish children who had school experiences in the U.S. and those younger transnationals who came to Mexico before enrolling in school. The second goal is consider these children’s cosmologies, revealed through interviews and survey responses, and to interpret the ways children explain their return migration from the United States to Mexico within the context of increasing voluntary and forced-return migration to Mexico. So data drawn from our mixed methods inquiry add younger voi...

One-and-a-half generation youths live in a paradox of being part of a country in which they were brought up but at the same time, specifically because of their migratory conditions, does not allow them to be fully integrated. Even though they might benefit from a cultural citizenship –they organize their values, beliefs, and practices according to American society- not having access to political citizenship results in a course that, as they come of age, diverges from that taken by their American peers. As they approach their late teenage years the reality of not fully making part of the country they grew up in beings to materialize.

Ethnicities, 2018

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.

ReVista: Harvad Review of Latinamerica, 2019

This article presents stories of young migrants who have been able to succesfully reintegrate in Maxico after spending their formative years in the U.S. The stories, provided in a narrative style, provide examples of how language and citinzenship are experienced and redefined by these young returnees once back in Mexico.

Children and Youth Services Review, 2020

This paper explores how nineteen teenagers who, having been raised and educated in the United States and forced to return, adapt and participate to the Mexican school system. This work specifically analyzes their adaptation process in three Mexican public High Schools in the State of Puebla, and how they negotiate the process of participating within a Mexican school setting while negotiating their sense of belonging to the US and Mexico. In this study, we explore different ways in which return students enact their own bilingual and bicultural citizenship through their educational process in Mexico. To a greater extent, we try to convey the idea of looking at multiple forms of participating in, or outside, classrooms settings while constructing and maintaining their communicative repertoires as a way of reclaiming their citizenship in both countries, the US and Mexico.

Focusing on children’s experience-driven cosmologies revealed through interviews and survey responses, this article seeks to analyze, and interpret the way children explain their return migration from the United States to Mexico within the context of the increasing voluntary and forced returning migration of Mexicans since 2005. It uses representative samples of students (aged 9-16) enrolled in both public and private schools in several Mexican states. The data drawn from the surveys are complemented by data drawn from in-depth interviews that complicate the sociological typologies about migration, motives for migration, and returnees. The goals of this article are: (a) to illuminate and value children’s own narratives about their migration experiences and (b) to discuss the contribution of diverse and apparently contradictory micro, meso, and macro-level approaches in studying migrant children.

Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies, 2012

The children of Mexican immigrants are at risk for “downward assimilation,” and on track to becoming the largest and most disadvantaged of America’s minority populations. The paper draws on the theory of segmented assimilation to explain the factors driving second generation outcomes among Mexican Americans. It also points to those factors that enable children to overcome their disadvantaged backgrounds, paying particular attention to the benefits of maintaining a connection to their cultural heritage and the role of mentors. It points to resources within the Mexican immigrant community that can be tapped to improve second generation outcomes, namely hometown associations and Latino college students. It considers one hometown’s efforts, the Los Haro Summer Camp, as a possible model for replication. In concludes with a proposal for MexiCorps, a bi-national community service program involving Latino college students serving as mentors and role models for under-privileged youth in their communities of origin. Keywords: Second generation, downward assimilation, Mexican hometown associations, cultural heritage, MexiCorps.