Mexico-U.S. Migration and the Nation-State: A Transnational Perspective on Transformations since 1990

A Transnational Perspective on Migration and the Nation-State

The book Return to Aztlan by Massey et al. (1987) represents a benchmark in migration scholarship, pioneering the MMP’s ethnosurvey, which combines statistical sampling and ethnographic techniques. This comparative study of four different types of communities identifies six principles that establish the dynamic nature of migration, based in networks that develop into a social infrastructure enabling this demographic movement to expand and become self-sustaining. Of particular significance, “it views the migrant community as a binational entity and collects data from migrants on both sides of the border,” emphasizing the linkages between “sending” and “daughter” communities that form “a single continuum of social relationships” (Massey et al. 1987, 7). As such, the authors consciously moved beyond previous research that had begun to take note of how migration tends to modify conditions in communities of origin to promote further migration (e.g., Reichert 1981; Dinerman 1982; Mines 1981), referring to them as “binational communities” (Dinerman 1982, 78) or a “binational village migrant community” (Mines 1981, 46).

Indeed, the findings and arguments of Return to Aztlan are consistent with Durand’s idea of “migratory circuits” (1986), which resulted from long-term migration between western Mexico and the United States in which migrants settled to become established as workers and consumers in multiple economic spheres. As Durand observes, “the antiquity of migration by people from the western region of Mexico to the United States, their long-term settlement there, their presence and demand in all realms of the U.S. economy, and the emergence of a Mexican labor market have created and maintained networks that promote the continual interchange of information, goods, and people between the two nations” (Durand 1986, 55). These circuits are accompanied by profound social and cultural changes based in social networks grounded in reciprocity that entail a specific “lifestyle” and “code of conduct” (Durand 1986, 62).

Around 1990, U.S. anthropologists, building on these insights and their own ethnographic research, proposed the term “transnational” to refer to social formations that span international borders as a result of contemporary migration (Rouse 1991, 1992; Kearney 1991). ¹ They promoted a new perspective that aimed to transcend some of the major conceptual pitfalls of earlier research on migration, as well as in Mexican “community” studies—in particular, research that (unlike Return to Aztlan) treated Mexican migration from a “bipolar” viewpoint, assuming that it was a movement between two discrete contexts and sets of social relations. In a programmatic statement, Michael Kearney asserted that “‘transnationalism’ implies a blurring, or perhaps better said, a reordering of the binary cultural, social, and epistemological distinctions of the modern period” (1991, 55) that “corresponds to the political, economic and sociocultural ordering of late capitalism” (1991, 57).

Drawing on his ethnography of migration between Aguililla, Michoacán, in México, and Redwood City, California, in the United States, Rouse echoed Durand’s insights, arguing that “through the continuous circulation of people, money, goods, and information, the various settlements have become so closely woven together that, in an important sense, they have come to constitute a single community spread across a variety of sites, something I refer to as a ‘transnational migrant circuit’” (1991, 14). In addition to these experts on Mexico-U.S. migration, anthropologists who studied migration that originated in other countries, such as Haiti, the Philippines, and Granada, observed similar transformations and contributed to establishing the transnational paradigm as a widely accepted optic in migration studies (Glick Schiller, Basch, and Szanton-Blanc 1992; Basch, Glick Schiller, and Blanc 1994).

My initial research, conducted equally in Iguala and Chicago beginning in the early 1990s, explored the nature and dimensions of migration viewed from a transnational perspective. I used a methodology that included the MMP’s ethnosurvey as well as intensive ethnographic research conducted on both sides of the border. Grounded in the concerns of anthropology, it sought to elucidate transformations in social spaces and consciousness. It highlighted the development of dual or bifocal orientations and simultaneous participation in geographically dispersed locales that constitute transnational social forms. Notably, these changes apply not only to people who migrate, but also to those with whom they interact and maintain social contact at different locations (Boruchoff 1999a, 1999b). Transnational social forms imply the development of a transnational habitus (Bourdieu 1977, 1984) or practical consciousness (Giddens 1979) that transcends articulated reasoning and contributes to shaping actions and cultural frameworks on a community or societal level, interacting with institutions and agents of the state.

While most studies taking an explicitly transnational perspective on migration consider a single community, it is important to recall that, from its inception, the term was proposed as a conceptual framework that encompasses not only individuals and their communities, but the broader forces and structures that shape them, including the nation-state. For instance, the title of Kearney’s seminal article refers to “Borders and Boundaries of State and Self” (1991, emphasis added). Likewise, Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc in their book Nations Unbound (1994) wrote of “deterritorialized Nation-States” (emphasis added). Rouse himself concluded that “this pattern of migration must be understood as symptomatic of the way in which broad politico-economic developments involved in the unfolding of transnational capitalism have refracted themselves through the specificities of local circumstance” (1991, 13). Indeed, early formulations of the concept coincided with the great interest and debates about globalization, which questioned the status of the nation-state as the predominant geo-political form that organizes the contemporary world (Hall 1991; Appadurai 1993).

At the height of these debates in the early 1990s, some argued that the nation-state was “in crisis” (Appadurai 1993), and Kearney even suggested that one meaning of the term transnational connotes “postnational” (1991, 55). However, there is no question that states continue to be transcendent in their capacity to establish orders, identities, and borders [as Kearney (2006) cogently argued in subsequent work]. In fact, states intervene even in the most intimate details of life, such as gender and family relations (Boehm 2012), a point well established in scholarship theorizing the state (for example Corrigan and Sayer 1985; Abrams 1977/1988). This point is also underscored in anthropological literature on the state (Gupta 1995; Nugent 1994; Comaroff and Comaroff 2000; Ferguson and Gupta 2002; Trouillot 2001) and, for Mexico, in Joseph and Nugent’s (1994) edited volume on the Everyday Forms of State Formation.

Far from denying the continuing importance of the nation-state, Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2003) contend that the problem instead resides in “methodological nationalism,” the tendency in the social sciences to naturalize the nation-state rather than interrogating and problematizing it. Hence, the analytical challenge is to denaturalize the nation-state, especially its normative imposition of a “container model of society” (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2003, 579). This model posits an isomorphism between the three elements of i) territory; ii) state and political belonging; and iii) nation, or, more specifically, the “imagined community” posited by Anderson (1983).

As Pries explains in a similar vein, the basic principle of the modern nation-state is the assumption that “each nation-state is defined by a unique and coherent territory within which the state is established as the representation and incarnation of the nation. … It is this connection of double exclusivity of the social space and physical/geographic space that constitutes the basic principle conceptualizing the nation-state as a container” (Pries 2002, 583, emphasis in original). Contrary to this conventional model, however, recent findings on Mexico-U.S. migration, when viewed through a transnational lens, suggest that we ought to question the relationship between these elemental components of the nation-state and, in this way, better understand the current status of this geo-political form and how it shapes and responds to transnational migration. As Fitzgerald remarks, “mass emigration cracks apart the triple rings of government, people, and territory that are fused in the nation-state” (Fitzgerald 2009, 13).

Here, I explain the ways in which Mexico-U.S. migration, viewed from a transnational perspective, point to reconfigurations of the nation-state, as it is conventionally understood. I developed my arguments independently through analysis of my own research materials, but there is a general convergence between my conclusions and those of other scholars who have written about the Mexican State and its relation to Mexicans living in the United States (e.g., Goldring 2002; Smith and Bakker 2008; Smith 2003; Fitzgerald 2009; Bada 2014). Still, as Waldinger and Fitzgerald (2004) observe, the “absence of any concerted effort to analyze the relationship between immigrant transnationalism and receiving states and civil society actors is a fundamental omission” (p. 1180, emphasis added).

Indeed, a transnational perspective highlights the fact that migrants participate simultaneously in multiple nation-states, as Bauböck conveys in his concept of “citizenship constellations,” which he defines as “a structure in which individuals are simultaneously linked to several such political entities, so that their legal rights and duties are determined not only by one political authority, but by several” (Bauböck 2010, 848). Hence, the work I present also includes an explicit consideration of the U.S. nation-state as it pertains to foreign nationals residing within its territorial borders and points out that each nation-state diverges from the conventional model in a distinct way.

Mexico: Nation Building and Statecraft beyond Territorial Borders

Analysis of migrant organizations in the United States, in particular hometown associations (HTAs) and federations, provides a key site to examine the relationship between migrants and the Mexican State. Whereas only a small percentage of migrants actively participate in such organizations, they have nonetheless played an important role in prompting the Mexican government to institutionalize mechanisms for the continued participation and inclusion of expatriates within the nation-state.

Although Guerrero was considered to be an “emergent” region for U.S. migration during the 1990s, as indicated by the relatively low number of migrants recorded in the MMP’s ethnosurveys, ² the first HTAs actually began to form in Chicago around the end of the 1980s and played a pioneering role in the following decade. Indeed, this was a time when migration from Guerrero was increasing rapidly, especially from the northern region of the state, which was experiencing growing settlement in the region of Chicago. ³ The first HTAs developed organically with the goal of funding and carrying out public works in their members’ impoverished rural hometowns, which generally lacked basic amenities such as roads, potable water, and electricity. In the early 1990s, these clubs joined to form a federation with the objective of gaining more influence vis-à-vis their home state and the federal government. As José Luis, a long-time participant in one of the founding HTAs explained, their intention was “to have more influence, more power before the government in order to ask more of the government and … to be heard and acknowledged.” ⁴

Early on, leaders of the pioneering club from Amealco had sought out the governor and received his commitment to collaborate in a road construction project, setting a precedent for other towns in the area to enter into similar agreements. The federal and state governments in Mexico responded to their initiatives and lobbying by creating programs, notably the Programa para las Comunidades Mexicanas en el Extranjero (Program for Mexican Communities Abroad), created in 1990, and the Programa Estatal de Atención a Comunidades de Guerrerenses Radicados en el Extranjero (State Program for Attention to Communities of Guerrerans Abroad), created in 1991. ⁵ Both organizations actively sought to include emigrants in Mexico’s nation-building project.

My research and that of other scholars (Goldring 2002; R. Smith 1998, 2003; Lanly and Valenzuela 2004; M. Smith and Bakker 2008) attests to a complex interaction between migrants and the state, in which HTA members were treated with the utmost respect and offered open access to high-ranking government officials with whom they collaborated as equals to finance and carry out public works that migrants proposed in their home towns. As a result, in the course of the 1990s, the Mexican State experienced a modification such that it began to actively encompass Mexicans residing outside the national territory.

This transformation represents a shift that Délano (2009) characterized as going “from limited to active engagement,” in which the Mexican government abandoned its “policy of no policy” (Ayón 2010, 232) and instead initiated a politics of rapprochement with migrants. Rather than considering them to be traitors or promoting their return, as had previously been the case in accordance with the traditional container model of the nation-state, the Mexican State adopted a posture of advocating that migrants continue living in the United States while encouraging them to maintain their involvement in Mexico, especially by means of their individual and collective remittances.

This position was expressed in political discourse at the highest levels. President Ernesto Zedillo (1994–2000), for instance, asserted in his 1995 National Development Plan that “the Mexican nation surpasses the territory contained in its borders. For this reason, an essential element of the Mexican Nation Program will be to promote constitutional and legal reforms so that Mexicans can preserve their nationality independent of any citizenship or residency they may have adopted” (Gobierno de México 1995). Likewise, his successor Vicente Fox (2000–2006) declared, in a radio speech on Independence Day, 2005: “We all make up Mexico—those who live within its national boundaries and also those who live outside of them—always carrying in their hearts the land, culture, and family members who remain here. We are all the same nation and there are no borders that can divide us.”

Beyond such rhetoric, constitutional and legal reforms were passed in 1996 and implemented in 1998 (as promised in Zedillo’s 1995 plan) to recognize the right to dual-nationality, followed by reforms authorizing the right to vote in presidential elections from abroad, approved in 1998 and enacted in 2006 (though with significant logistical hurdles that continue to limit actual participation). At the same time, various states (most notably Michoacán and Zacatecas) have implemented legal changes that open possibilities for political representation and participation at the state and local levels by extraterritorial and binational citizens (Schütze 2013; Moctezuma Longoria 2003; M. Smith and Bakker 2008).

Building on the precedents set by pioneer Guerrero HTAs in Chicago ⁶ (Boruchoff 1999a, 2013a), and by Zacatecans in Los Angeles (Goldring 2002; R. Smith 2003; Moctezuma Longoria 2011; M. Smith and Bakker 2008; Iskander 2010), transnational reconfigurations in the Mexican nation-state were institutionalized in public policy, above all in the Three-for-One Program for Migrants created by President Fox. ⁷ This initiative foments the organization of migrants into transnational associations that collaborate with all three levels of Mexican government (local, state, and national) to finance and carry out public works in migrant home towns. The extent of this program is indicated by official accounts reporting that in 2017 “1,468 migrant clubs participated in the design and execution of projects carried out in 28 states of the Mexican Republic,” a number that has multiplied many times since the program’s initiation. ⁸ As the representative from SEDESOL in the Mexican Consulate of Chicago observed, what distinguishes the 3x1 Program is that “it promotes the constant participation of migrants with the Mexican government” (see Boruchoff 2013a, 64–65, 2013b, 362). ⁹ As a result, the 3x1 Program established a structure that contributed to opening new spaces for political action in which migrants exercised significant political agency, even beyond the scope of the program (M. Smith and Bakker 2008; Lanly and Valenzuela 2004; Escala Rabadan 2004; Bada 2014).

Whereas various earlier discussions of Mexican HTAs posited a distinction between transnationalism “from above” and that “from below,” in line with the perspectives on the state cited earlier one might view this dichotomy as ill-conceived, or, at least, limiting (cf. M. Smith and Bakker 2008, 19; Goldring 2002, 78, 93–94). Rather, citizen agency and actions exercised “from below” are always constrained and shaped by the limits and possibilities presented “from above,” as formal government structures and officials constantly take into account and respond to agency “from below,” though of course various parties at different levels differ significantly in the degree of power they wield to influence outcomes.

Beyond interactions between organized migrants and Mexican officials, a significant factor contributing to the government’s initial outreach to migrants was the legitimacy crisis emerging from the 1988 presidential elections in Mexico. Indeed, officials of the Salinas administration acknowledged the importance of securing political support, as well as economic remittances, from the millions of Mexicans residing in the United States, especially in the face of unprecedented challenges by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and his opposition party. At the same time, notwithstanding the impressive degree of respect, attention, and empowerment achieved by Guerrerans and other organized migrants since the 1990s, the Mexican government has made frequent efforts to co-opt citizens and to limit and obstruct the exercise of their civil rights and political participation (Boruchoff 2013b). Nonetheless, while they may not enjoy the full political rights granted to all citizens (at least in theory), Mexicans residing outside the national territory have achieved a much stronger voice and influence vis-à-vis the Mexican government than many of their paisanos living within the country’s borders—a fact that is particularly striking in a state such as Guerrero.

Instead of framing the discussion as a debate about transnationalism from above or below, focusing on the interactions among government actors and citizens provides an analytical optic that sheds light on the nation-state itself and its possible transformation by transnational migration. Accordingly, the preceding analysis has demonstrated that, as Mexico-U.S. migration increased significantly in the post-IRCA period, and as migrants sought to maintain their ties to, and participation in, their home country even while becoming incorporated in the United States, the Mexican State extended its reach beyond the national territory to actively encompass members of the nation who reside abroad. Consequently, Mexico presents a case in which the traditional nation-state model was modified as the relationship between the nation and state, on one hand, and the territory by which they have been historically defined, on the other hand, were transformed over time by migration.

United States: Disjuncture between State and Nation within the National Territory

A transnational perspective highlights the apparent inconsistency between migrants’ continued participation in their country of origin and their incorporation and assimilation in the country of destination. As such, migrants are constituents of a “citizenship constellation” (Bauböck 2010), subject to, and capable of, making demands on the state, not only within Mexico but, increasingly, in the United States as well. Mexico presents a clear and steady trend toward extending the state structure beyond its territorial borders, but the United States presents a different, more ambiguous scenario in its treatment of migrants, especially those coming from Mexico, and their inclusion or exclusion from society.

As Massey, Durand, and Malone (2002, 2009) have cogently demonstrated, the results of U.S. policies frequently run counter to stated goals. Far from constraining undocumented migration, “U.S. immigration and border policies after 1990 transformed what had been a circular flow of temporary migrants into a settled immigration of permanent residents” (Massey, Durand, and Malone 2002, 131). As more than three decades have passed since the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) provided a mechanism for undocumented migrants to regularize their status, the undocumented population of Mexican origin has grown to roughly 5.6 million (Passel and Cohn 2016), with a majority being resident in the nation for more than 10 years, and some for as much as 30 years.

In recent decades, there have been noteworthy moments when migrants were able to increase their civic participation, especially in the mega marches of 2006. However, since the 1980s, the general tendency has been to reinforce and militarize the border and to criminalize migrants, which has been combined with a lack of capacity or political will to pass comprehensive immigration reform. The political strategy of symbolically converting migrants into a threat was established in the 1980s during the Reagan administration (Massey, Durand, and Malone 2002, 86–87). It then intensified after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when border enforcement was decisively transformed from a matter of labor control into one of national security. The purported immigrant threat has now become a central element in the politics of fear promoted by Donald Trump, even though Mexico-U.S. migration is in steady decline and has been net zero or negative since 2009, after hitting an all-time high in 2007 (Passel and Cohn 2016).

Massey, Durand, and Malone (2002, 103) argue that “this seeming contradiction persists because border enforcement represents more of a ritualistic performance than an actual strategy of deterrence,” and that the emphasis on enforcement “had much more to do with domestic fears and insecurities than any real upsurge in undocumented migration or change in the nature of Mexican immigration.” This statement rings even more true today, 17 years after its original publication (in 2002), with Trump’s mantra to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border despite the effective cessation of undocumented Mexican migration.

Contemporary U.S. migration policy has produced a contradictory situation in which migrants are pressured and disciplined to assimilate owing to their vulnerable status of “deportability” (DeGenova 2002), but at the same time they are excluded from the possibility of legal inclusion and citizenship. The central contradiction of “simultaneously moving toward integration while insisting on separation” (Massey, Durand, and Malone 2002, 73) has led migration scholars to question the very concept of “citizenship” and offer a variety of alternate terms to capture different modes and degrees of belonging, which, I argue, lend insights into the current status of the nation-state.

As a point of departure, Marshall’s seminal text On Citizenship and Social Class (1950, 10–11) underscores that citizenship consists of three aspects: the civil (having to do with rights necessary for individual freedom and justice), the political (having to do with rights to participate in political power), and the social (having to do with rights to economic welfare and a share in social heritage), with each aspect consecutively undergoing its formative period in a different century. Whereas he defined citizenship as “a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community,” he observed that the concept developed hand-in-hand with capitalism and the inequalities that characterize it (Marshall 1950, 29), noting that “citizenship has itself become, in certain respects, the architect of legitimate social inequality” (Marshall 1950, 9). In this sense, paradoxically, “the single uniform status of citizenship provided the foundation of equality on which the structure of inequality could be built” (Marshall 1950, 34).

Whereas Marshall did not contemplate the situation of transnational migrants, these observations are useful in analyzing the disjuncture between the different aspects of citizenship—civil, political, and social—that characterize each nation-state, in particular the United States with regard to its treatment of transnational migrants. Indeed, Marshall acknowledged that current configurations of this three-dimensional conceptualization of citizenship was a “phase [that] will not continue indefinitely” (Marshall 1950, 84), thereby leaving open the probability of future shifts in the three constituent elements and changes in the relations between them. While some scholars, such as M. Smith and Bakker (2008), have used the term “transnational citizenship” to refer to the dual engagements that characterize migrants’ practices of political transnationalism, I agree with Fox that “the concept’s usefulness—so far—is limited to those migrant civic and political rights and memberships that could also be described, perhaps more precisely, as ‘dual’ or ‘multiple citizenships’” (2005, 172).

Perhaps more useful in addressing actions and belonging beyond that which is usually included in legal, political citizenship is the concept of “substantive citizenship,” which refers to social and civic participation (also discussed by Marshall) that migrants may achieve even when they do not enjoy full political rights. ¹⁰ Whereas Marshall posited a historical progression in the development of civil, political, and social rights, respectively, as the concept of citizenship evolved from the eighteenth to the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, around the turn of the twenty-first century scholars are challenged to assess the implications for understanding citizenship and the nation-state posed by transnational migrants’ struggles to exercise their rights within a country in which they are not formally recognized as citizens.

Whereas substantive citizenship seems to emphasize the political agency of migrants (even the undocumented), another related term, “contingent citizenship” (defined by Boehm [2012, 130] as “national membership that is partial, conditional, or relational”) highlights its limitations. Within this category, Boehm refers to two variants, which I illustrate with recent ethnographic data to highlight the current problematics associated with the U.S. nation-state when viewed from a transnational perspective.

The first variant of contingent citizenship she identifies pertains to “citizen aliens,” a category that includes “de facto members of the nation who are not state-recognized citizens” (Boehm 2012, 133). The young migrants who have received DACA ¹¹ exemplify this category, which is a product of the complex and contradictory effects of U.S. migration policy. Given that they arrived as undocumented migrant children and were educated in the United States, these “dreamers” are culturally indistinguishable from their U.S.-born citizen siblings. Although they may identify culturally as “American,” they live, however, with the constant uncertainty that, at any moment, they or their parents might be deported.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services holds that “deferred action does not confer lawful status.” Nevertheless, as a result of the disciplinary effects of living under a constant state of “deportability” (DeGenova 2002), and having been raised and schooled in the United States where “they are legally and socially incorporated … and taught how to be good citizens alongside their peers,” DACA recipients frequently personify the ideal of model citizens (Seif, Ullman, and Núñez-Mchiri 2014, 178; see also Gonzales 2011, 603–04; Marrero 2013).

As Bernardo, whose parents took him from Guerrero to Utah when he was four years old, explained, “for me the experience of being an undocumented migrant in the United States is one of always working and reinventing oneself to get ahead.” ¹² Aldair, who was only two when he arrived in Long Island, NY, from his birthplace in the state’s montaña region, expressed even more poignantly the pressure he felt, exclaiming that “You always have to be the best, to be the ambassador, the representative of your country. How can you do all this and continue to move ahead?”

Whereas Massey, Durand, and Malone (2002, 112) observed that the previous generation of undocumented migrants “have become socially invisible and politically inconspicuous,” for many in the DACA generation it is their undocumented status that frequently is invisible. Rafael, who departed his village in Guerrero’s Costa Grande region for Santa Ana, CA, at six years old, expressed a common sentiment about being undocumented, labeling it an existence of “pure excuses, pure lies, and it is a secret that you have to live in all aspects of your life.” In fact, as Gonzales (2011, 606) reveals, a majority of the undocumented youth he studied were unaware of their undocumented status until they reached adolescence and wanted to get a driver’s license or apply for financial aid for college, at which point they underwent a process he calls the “transition to illegality” (2011, 606). Since having been raised in the United States tends to render their migration status invisible, DACA youth perceive themselves and to a large extent are perceived by others as members of the nation, as defined by Anderson (1983, 7), being an “imagined community based on deep horizontal comradeship,” even though the state refuses to recognize or authorize their right to participate or belong fully.

If young undocumented immigrants raised in the United States and other “citizen aliens” exemplify a disjuncture between their status in the nation (inclusion) and before the state (exclusion), the disjuncture is configured in the opposite manner in the second variant of contingent citizenship, “alien citizens.” This category includes U.S. citizens who “are presumed to be foreign by the mainstream of American culture and, at times, by the state” (Nai 2004, 2). Raymundo, who left his village in northern Guerrero 33 years ago to go live in Chicago, clearly articulated this predicament. Like many of his generation, upon arriving in the United States undocumented, he went to work in a factory. He was able to regularize his migration status and, subsequently, travelled and became acquainted with most of the country, working as a truck driver.

Despite his long-term residence in the United States, he maintains strong ties to his native land as an active participant in his hometown’s HTA and an integrant of the Executive Committee of the Guerreran Federation of Chicago. Soon after President Trump’s inauguration, Raymundo expressed his concern about the circumstances confronting migrants in the United States. He noted that even though Obama won the presidency two times thanks to the Latino vote, he was unable to carry out a reform to the country’s migration system, and, on the contrary, deported more undocumented migrants than any previous president. “What can we expect from this guy” he inquired, referring to Trump. ¹³

Clearly upset, Raymundo expressed the dilemma of many transnational migrants who had left their hearts in Mexico, explaining that “one lives there [in the U.S.] without forgetting Mexico.” Since they have children who were born and raised in the United States and have sold their properties in Mexico, should they have to return to Mexico it would be “to begin again, readapting to another life.” While it is evident that Raymundo has assimilated to life in the United States and has been able to prosper materially, he speaks of the discrimination Mexicans experience in the United States. Using the first person plural, he observes that “most of us work in factories at minimum wage. When several of us travel in a single car, they check us out. One feels how they are seeing us.” In these comments, Raymundo underscores the processes of racialization through which Latinos are symbolically constructed as “illegal aliens,” a category inscribed with its own essence or nature (cf. Stephen 2007, 144). As a result, according to Raymundo, “we know that the United States is not our land”; and he says this despite having acquired U.S. citizenship.

What is striking in this instance is that, in contrast to the dreamers who are, to a considerable extent, members of the nation although not sanctioned by the state, Raymundo is a legally sanctioned member of the political community authorized by the state, yet feels rejected by, and left out of, the nation. While the viewpoints of the DACA youth and of Raymundo may not be shared by all who find themselves in similar circumstances, taken together, these cases and the contrast between them point to the complexities of the paradoxical situation engendered by America’s contradictory migration policies, which have important implications for understanding the nation-state at this historical moment. They indicate that, in defining citizenship within the territorial borders of the United States, there is a clear disjuncture between nation and state that is becoming increasingly pronounced.

Conclusion

The preceding suggests that analyzing migration from a transnational perspective makes it problematic to view the nation-state in conventional terms. It attempts to move beyond the “container model of society,” (as suggested by Wimmer and Glick Schiller [2003] in their critique of methodological nationalism), and, furthermore, investigate changes in the relationships among state, nation, and territory that have appeared of late. In doing so, this article emphasizes that each nation-state will transform in different ways, as demonstrated in the cases of the United States and Mexico.

Mexico experienced an apparent democratic opening at the turn of the twenty-first century, with the election of Vicente Fox as the first opposition-party candidate to win the presidency in seven decades, but the ensuing alternation of parties has not yielded an improvement in democratic quality. On the contrary, Mexican states like Guerrero have witnessed a notable resurgence in repressive politics, militarization, and impunity that once characterized the earlier years of the dirty war, but are now exacerbated by the ruthless and brutal taint of the narcos.

As the extension of the state structure beyond the territorial border has become increasingly institutionalized, the incorporation of migrants as extraterritorial citizens has matured to such a degree that, at least in the case of Guerrero, they are becoming one more class within the traditional corporatist structure of the Mexican state, though still a preferred corporatist class. Mexican officials and politicians routinely visit migrants in their place of U.S. residence to convene the Committee of Validation and Attention toward Migrants (the COVAM, which determines which projects will be implemented under the 3x1 Program for Migrants) and to celebrate annual festivities put on by various migrant federations.

In addition, the government has created programs, such as the Fund for the Support of Migrants, which offer returnees material assistance for income-generating projects, support that is not granted to the majority of citizens who reside within the national territory but lack economic resources, opportunities, and political clout. This preferential treatment is logical, given Mexico’s longstanding dependence on remittances and the benefits—both economic and political—derived from migrants’ continued loyalty to Mexico.

It has been correctly argued that the objective of Mexican government officials was, from the start, to co-opt migrant organizations, benefit from migrant remittances, and draw on the respect migrants frequently command in their hometowns (M. Smith and Bakker 2008, 6; Goldring 2002, 68). But it appears that the period of courtship and honeymoon that accompanied these efforts at co-optation has waned. The era when the treatment of migrants was extraordinarily solicitous and they were offered exceptional access to government power-holders seems to have passed.

In the United States, the situation of its “citizen aliens,” along with the contrasting situation of its “alien citizens,” signals an even starker disjuncture between state and nation emerging within the bounds of the national territory. As the citizenry has become increasingly politically polarized in recent years, especially since the election of Donald Trump, the struggle for equal empowerment; full civil, social, and cultural rights; and political liberties—the very definition of the nation—is played out in heated contentions over immigrants and the policies that shape their fates. These struggles parallel those of other movements such as Black Lives Matter.

As we review the results of the MMP and the critique of migration policy offered by Massey, Durand, and Malone (2002) in Beyond Smoke and Mirrors, we may ask whether the current anti-immigrant posture of the Trump administration and its political base represents an intensification of processes well-established during the neoliberal era, or whether it is merely one of the cyclical ups and downs of inclusion and exclusion that have occurred throughout U.S. history. Whatever the case, a transnational perspective that situates migrants at the intersection between two nation-states opens analytical tracks that lead us beyond the experiences of migrants per se to instead interrogate the relevance of this predominant geo-political form and to ask how its characteristics may change over time, with each nation-state following its own dynamics and requirements in accordance with its structural position in the neoliberal (and, perhaps one day, post-neoliberal) global regime.