A ritual of integration: Power,elections and cultural reconstruction among Mexican migrants in New Zealand

Introduction

Writing a review on migrants’ electoral participation would have been a short and simple task only a couple of decades ago. However, what was once considered a rare and novel field of inquiry in political science is now a flourishing discipline that is continuously fueling the academic debate on migrants’ political acculturation. ¹ From early studies on naturalization and elections in the US (e.g., Garcia, 1981, 1987) to more contemporary exploration of electoral participation across the European Union (e.g., Andre et al., 2014), scholars in all corners of the world have contributed to this discussion in an incremental and surprisingly consistent manner. Today, while we know more about migrants’ electoral turnout and political partisanship, less is known on a number of topics regarding the intricate relationships between migrants and the polls. One such deficit refers to how migrants make sense of the act of voting. Although it may sound simple and straightforward, this question concerns the exploration of the long-term relationships between migrants and the state and how these reconfigured after moving to a new country. To put it differently, it involves the analysis of the long-held cultural components embedded in a particular political culture and of how these are transformed in the presence of a new one.

This article approaches the issue of migrants’ electoral participation from an interpretive perspective. Using the case of the Mexican community in New Zealand, it aims to demonstrate how understanding electoral participation as a product of semiotic practices at individual and group levels can provide a new dimension to the study of migrants’ political acculturation, one that allows entering domains that remain under-explored in the academic literature. Among these lie fundamental questions, such as, how concepts like state and citizenship are conceived in people’s minds, how contact with new social contexts shapes specific impressions of politics, how shared agreements of politics are reframed in the face of migration, and what the underlying meanings that accompany migrants’ political action are.

This article explores some of these questions and shows how voting can bear radically different, yet cohesively accepted interpretations at the individual and group levels. Moreover, it demonstrates that such interpretations cannot be understood devoid of the specific conceptions of politics and power relationships that shaped migrants’ original political cultures. In that regard, my mapping shows how long-held socio-historical assumptions and embodied practices with politics combine to form specific types of relations between Mexican migrants and the New Zealand polity.

Political symbols, rituals and migration

Decades ago, Lasswell (1948) argued that democracy and its institutions refer to both symbols and practice. From this perspective, he observed that our knowledge of democracy requires detailed records of how people move from symbolic representations of politics into concrete political actions. Positioning symbols within such an equation brings the issue of meaning-construction as a relevant factor in understanding political behavior. In the interpretive Geertzian tradition, political symbols are understood as any part of the political spectrum that is disengaged from its mere actuality and used to impose meaning upon experience (Geertz, 1973: 45). In other words, political symbols refer to virtually every single thing conceived as ‘political’ as this is collectively constructed and understood across groups of individuals. Throughout their lives, people interact with countless political concepts, practices, institutions and numerous other representations of state and power to which they attach meaning. Edelman (1967: 5) calls this ‘a passing parade of political symbols.’ In this same tradition it has been argued that cultures in general, and political cultures in particular, are articulated nets of meanings shaped by the socio-historical contexts upon which relationships between individuals and states have been constructed (Merelman, 1991; Chabal and Daloz, 2006; Ross, 1997; Weeden, 2002).

From this perspective, individuals are born and brought up not only within national borders but inside semiotic communities (Sewell, 1999; Weeden, 2002), which are complex nets of understandings of the world that include a political dimension. Such understandings are the product not only of individual life but also of the long-term arrangements historically assumed within political cultures. A view of culture as semiotic systems does not entail identical beliefs and behaviors within a polity but, rather, the ability of its members to recognize contrasts and engage in mutually comprehensible symbolic action (Wedeen, 2002). In other words, semiotic communities shape circles of intelligibility that are understood by people who have lived and experienced politics under similar circumstances regardless of the different positions and trajectories they have occupied in the social context. Consequently, what makes sense inside a semiotic community may not be fully graspable outside such a circle. This proposition is particularly relevant to the study of migration.

Wals (2011) argues that when migrants enter a new country they do not do so empty-handed. Rather, they bring with them ‘political suitcases’ filled with attitudes, beliefs and behaviors they have carried throughout their lives. Here I would add that such suitcases also contain understandings of politics, meanings articulated in complex systems of signification also known as cultures. Migrants do not enter a new country and simply forget all they know about the state. On the contrary, it is expected that their accumulated experience with politics can help them make sense of their new political environments (Black, 1987). Such accumulated knowledge is not simply an inventory of concepts and definitions, but an intricate semiotic inventory, a collection of understandings that together shape the rules of the game in a specific political system.

According to Wittgenstein (1953), the best way to recognize how strange one human can be to another is to enter a country with entirely different traditions. He observes how, even mastering the language of such a country, sometimes we cannot understand the people, what they do, and why they do it. ‘We cannot find our feet with them’ he stresses. It is in this context that a newly encountered political symbol can be both a fresh seed sown on the ground of interpretation, and an intimidating experience reminding migrants how oblivious they are to the meanings of a new country. Consequently, the process of political acculturation cannot be reduced to how far or how close individuals are to mimicking the behavior of a mainstream society. Instead, I propose to see it as an intricate process of continuous meaning-construction upon which political action is rationalized.

Rituals are forms of symbolic behavior that operate within the realm of signs and systems of signification. They communicate messages about the world and human conditions as these are culturally constructed (Hanson, 1981). According to Kertzer (1988: 8) a ‘ritual is an analytical category that helps us deal with the chaos of human experience and put it into a coherent framework.’ In the realm of politics, the ritualistic connotations of elections have been explored by a number of political scholars. Lukes (1975: 304) calls them ‘the most important form of political ritual in liberal democratic societies.’ Similarly, Bennet (1980: 174) refers to them as the most ‘sweeping’ and ‘important’ rituals in politics. ² Perhaps the most exhaustive attempt to analyze elections as rituals is Orr’s (2015), which explores elections as a form of ritualistic expression with distinctive and well-articulated stages. As he accurately argues, the meanings attached to elections are multiple, diverse and sometimes contending. Moreover, although normally thought of as an exclusive product of liberal democracies, he observes how today, 217 countries with different political systems hold at least some form of elections at the national level.

It is in this context that distinctive understandings of the ritual are shaped by the historical and contextual dynamics that sustain relationships between individuals and the state. What may be considered as a meaningful ritual of political efficacy in one country can be seen as a nationalistic construct to demonstrate allegiance to the traditional structures of power in another. From this perspective, exploring how migrants from authoritarian political systems perceive, comprehend and appropriate the ritual of voting is essential if we are to expand our knowledge of political acculturative phenomena in consolidated liberal democracies. This is even more so if we consider the increasing number of newcomers coming from diverse and sometimes radically opposed political cultures that are granted membership to participate in elections in multicultural societies such as Sweden, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, every year.

A tale of two countries: Voting in Mexico and in New Zealand

Following Edelmans’ remarks that people will try to find meaning when placed in a confusing or ambiguous situation (Edelman, 1967: 16), New Zealand can be considered to be quite a confusing place for a Mexican migrant. Historically, New Zealand has been considered a social laboratory, a mixture of civic virtue, fairness and social progress achieved through a political system that is close to the heart of its citizens. Indeed, at the height of the mass party era, one in four New Zealanders were not simply voters, but active members of a political party (Marsh and Miller, 2012: 213). At the heart of such a virtuous system lies shared agreement on the importance of free, fair and inclusive elections (Miller, 2015: 52).

Broadly speaking, there are at least three shared meanings underlying such positive connotations. First, there is an instrumental one, through which most New Zealanders conceive elections as a means of keeping governments accountable for their actions. A strong sense of political efficacy is thus often described by authors as a fundamental component that makes New Zealanders believe in the importance of elections (Vowles, 1995, 2004, 2010). A second dimension is efficient–representational, articulated through the idea that elections are able to bring real representatives to power. Decades of strong links between political parties and partisans still make New Zealanders perceive that their political institutions are evocative of their society as a whole. For many years, the average New Zealander has not conceived their elected officers as being distant people living a life diametrically opposed to their own. On the contrary, a sense of closeness to politicians and political institutions has traditionally characterized the New Zealand political scene. ³ Finally, there is an allegoric dimension based on the agreement that elections are not only the ultimate proof of civic duty but also an enjoyable act performed by responsible citizens. This has been historically reflected in some of the highest electoral turnouts in the world (Miller, 2015; Vowles, 2004; Mulgan, 2004; Karp and Banducci, 1999).

Three hundred years of colonialism (1521–1821), fifty of internal conflict and public mismanagement (1821–1876), thirty of a stable dictatorial state (1876–1911) and more than eighty of a hegemonic regime (1911–2000) have made relationships between Mexicans and elections complicated, to say the least. ⁴ Different from New Zealand, Mexico has not yet enjoyed the benefits of a shared agreement on elections as a means of achieving political efficacy, or fostering accountability among politicians. Moreover, for most of the 20th century, voting in Mexico was a mere ritual of continuation, a way of pledging allegiance to the ideas and values fought for in the Mexican revolution and not a real way of choosing between viable political options (Goméz-Tagle, 1986).

Such conceptions of the ritual have been slowly changing in the past decades, though. Public demands to democratize Mexico became a common discourse in the late 1980s, after a series of economic crises, scandals of corruption—including electoral fraud—and poor government decisions forced the hegemonic party to open up Mexico to free and fair elections (Magaloni, 2008; Levy and Bruhn, 2006). To regain trust in the ritual, a ‘bullet proof’ electoral system was established in the early 1990s. This included a new Federal code of electoral institutions, Codigo Federal de Instituciones y Procedimientos Electorales (COFIPE), and an independent electoral authority, Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE), to oversee federal elections. A massive campaign of electoral registration was launched to incorporate tens of millions of Mexicans into the electoral roll under new methods for preventing electoral fraud. A judicial entity to decide election controversies, the Tribunal Federal Electoral (TRIFE), was created, limits on campaign spending were established, and reforms of political party finances were introduced (Scherlen, 1998).

In this context, from 1994 to 2006, Mexico experienced what has been called a ‘democratic romance’ (Gutmann, 2002) based upon the assumption that free and fair elections were a means to achieving social and economic progress. Such shared agreement detonated a democratic transition that reached its peak in 2000 with the defeat of the hegemonic party, Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). Nonetheless, making elections the symbol of and not a symbol within democracy quickly took its toll on Mexican political culture. Two decades after this democratic transition started, Mexicans have grown skeptical of democracy in general and elections in particular (Corporacion Latinobarómetro, 2015). Clearly, the results of the democratic transition have fallen short of the high expectations posited in elections.

From this perspective, next to a new generation of voters who still consider the ritual as the ultimate expression of civic duty lie a number of less flattering interpretations. Interestingly, the established categories that sustain traditional electoral taxonomies have proved to be insufficient for framing Mexican voting traits. Such are the cases of the traditional clientelistic voter (Aparicio and Corrochano, 2005), who will always vote but only according to the exchange of goods and services delivered by vote-buying practices; the self-imposed non-voter, a person with a high sense of civic duty who decides to restrain him/herself from the electoral realm as a form of protest against the system (Alonso, 2010; Camargo-González, 2009); or the disenchanted voter (Hughes and Guerrero, 2009), a person with extreme dissatisfaction with politics, politicians and the outcomes of democracy yet enthusiastic about elections. It is in this convoluted environment that the ritual of voting in Mexico is far from being simple and direct. On the contrary, its meanings are diverse and sometimes contradictory, yet understandable within the borders of a unique semiotic community.

The research: Mexican migrants in New Zealand

The Mexican community in New Zealand is a small group comprising approximately 700 individuals, equally balanced between men and women. Most of its members arrived in the country either as a consequence of being recruited by a New Zealand company, joining a New Zealand partner or obtaining a working holiday visa which later allowed permanent residence. As such, it is shaped mostly by middle- and lower-middle-class migrants, most of whom originated from urban areas of Mexico. The median age of Mexicans in the country is 27 years, and 94 percent of those aged 15 and over have formal educational qualifications. In terms of their geographical distribution in New Zealand, 80 percent live in the North Island, mostly in the urban centers of Auckland and Wellington, although a significant portion (11 percent) is located in the Canterbury region on the South Island. Approximately a third of the total number of Mexicans in New Zealand is under the age of 18; this means that roughly 460 Mexicans are adults (Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2014; Statistics New Zealand, 2014).

Studying Mexican migrants in New Zealand may seem like a strange decision. Nonetheless, as I will argue in this paper, the contrasts that characterize both political cultures make a strong case for the exploration of political acculturative processes in general and electoral behavior in particular. Moreover, small communities of migrants from distant countries can provide valuable information regarding the processes of incorporation within host societies. Given the remoteness and usual absence of ethnic networks in their receiving countries, these groups are expected to have the most difficulty incorporating into the host society. Thus, small migrant communities are suitable candidates for testing the effectiveness of integration policies. This is even more so, considering that, in contrast to other multicultural countries, New Zealand is the only consolidated liberal democracy to grant full voting rights to newcomers from the moment they become residents.

This paper is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in New Zealand between November 2012 and December 2015. The study uses an interpretive–semiotic approach to understand the phenomena that occur when groups of individuals, who are born and brought up in an authoritarian political culture, come into continuous first-hand contact with symbolic representations of politics shaped in a consolidated liberal democracy. It combines participant observation ⁵ and a series of in-depth interviews with 60 first-generation Mexican migrants in different cities across New Zealand. The average age of the interviewees was 30 years, within an age range of 24 to 79. Levels of education were high among the majority of interviewees, with 8 percent holding a post-graduate degree, 43 percent a Bachelor’s degree, 41 percent some university education, and 7 percent with high school education only. In terms of length of stay in New Zealand, the average was 7 years, within a range of 2 to 43 years. Forty-four percent of participants were men, while 56 percent were women. English language proficiency among participants was high overall.

Following the introduction and theoretical considerations, the rest of the paper is structured around three main empirical sections that discuss the following themes: the underlying sentiments of Mexican migrants in New Zealand toward concepts such as government, power-relationships, national identity and political action; the individual and collective negotiations upon which participants of this research conceive themselves as political players; and a vignette of a migrant family that has been traditionally absent from the political realm. Focusing on this family, my intention is to provide contrast and illustrate the complexity of the meaning-making process.

Traitors and intruders: Positioning toward the state

In everyday discourses, members of the Mexican community often invoke terms such as ‘unimportant,’ ‘boring’ and ‘dull’ to refer to New Zealand politics. While acknowledging that life in Mexico is difficult, most participants nostalgically noted that political life in the homeland involved a mixture of contradictory feelings flowing from a plethora of deeply entrenched political symbols. These range from obvious nationalistic constructs, such as an anthem or a flag, to more condensed representations of the state, its priorities, limits, purposes and architecture. Overall, Mexico is seen as a hopeless case of rampant corruption, violence and misgovernance, but also as a place of worship, a vibrant world of political ideals, institutions, social movements and rituals engraved in hundreds of years of history and tradition. New Zealand, in contrast, is considered to be, in the words of participants, ‘a small and novel country,’ ‘a place with almost no history,’ ‘a society with no real problems’ and ‘a place where nothing happens.’

The political integration of Mexican migrants in New Zealand has been previously explored in the academic literature. It has been proposed that members of this community live transnational lives through constant contact with numerous informational outlets both in Mexico and in New Zealand. Processing such information is a complex and convoluted process. ⁶ The diametrically opposed social conditions between two polities often result in distortive effects when scaling symbolic representations of politics. When compared to New Zealand, Mexico comes to symbolize not only a glorious culture but also one affected by ‘real’ social and political problems in the minds of most participants: ‘here, people care about trees and birds; in Mexico, we face poverty, crime and social injustice,’ as a participant from Wellington emphatically observed. One cannot understand such spirit of grandiosity without locating its epicenter at the core of well-documented official nationalism. Indeed, it has long been argued that Mexican nationalism is organized in an efficient symbolic system, a political mythology ⁷ that portrays Mexican political institutions as a reward for years of suffering and fighting (Sheppard, 2011; Pansters, 2005). In his influential study, Segovia (1975) suggests that early socialization into such a system was a determining factor in the maintenance of the Mexican presidential regime throughout the 20th century.

Being Mexican is in itself a category of symbolic connotation, a conceptual representation of group membership to which people cling tenaciously. While affection and gratitude to New Zealand and its political system and institutions is often acknowledged by participants, there is a sense of fear in recognizing its political problems, institutions, rituals and practices in positive terms due to a perceived threat to one’s national identity. Broadly speaking, the process is seen as pledging allegiance to the political system of a foreign country. As mentioned by a participant, ‘it is like your grandmother’s soup, even if a new one tastes better, you wouldn’t dare to admit it.’ When talking about the issue, a participant I will refer to as Pedro ⁸ stated:

There is nothing worse than a Mexican pretending to be a Kiwi. Some people use New Zealand politics simply as a way of showing off; it is their way of saying ‘I am a Kiwi now, not a Mexican,’ ‘I know and care about what is here and not there.’ By doing that, they reject their past and culture.

The acknowledged impossibility of adopting a New Zealand identity comes with the underlying assumption that one is not a real stakeholder in the New Zealand political arena. Such impressions flow not only from mere logic but also from deeply entrenched cultural constructs at the core of Mexican political culture. While recalling her political acculturative process, a participant I will refer to as Blanca mentioned:

In Mexico, we don’t allow foreigners to do anything political. I mean they cannot even come close to say anything remotely political because immediately we invoke Article 33 to put them in their place.

Moving to a new country has semiotically transformed many participants into foreigners; and, based on the abovementioned cultural conceptions, many of them do not consider themselves to be legitimate stakeholders in the political affairs of New Zealand. Generally speaking, the decision to distance oneself from the New Zealand political world is seen in terms of respect. For instance, after decades of living in the country, one participant observed that, ‘if you don’t want foreigners meddling in your internal affairs, you are not going to come and meddle in theirs, it is a matter of respect.’ What is conceived at the individual level assumes more collective connotations when such principles are adopted on behalf of the community, as a guideline to follow. When talking about the rules of a popular Internet forum for Mexicans in New Zealand, one of its administrators observed: ‘We show our respect to New Zealand by not discussing politics here… we don’t bite the hand that feeds us well.’ Similarly, an active member of a Mexican association in New Zealand commented:

Our intention is to create a sense of community among Mexicans in New Zealand but not, in any way, to become involved in political issues. We think it is a matter of respect, especially in a culture that has been so graceful and generous to take us all in. We don’t want them to see us as an intruder in their house.

A new type of relationship: Pacts of gratitude and tactics of visibility

One could easily assume that the factors described so far would create all sorts of impediments to joining the New Zealand electoral ritual. However, when talking about elections, members of the community normally referred to them in almost enthusiastic terms. Moreover, several of them acknowledged having changed from being occasional or non-voters in Mexico to regular voters in New Zealand. Those who did not yet have electoral membership spoke highly about the possibility of voting in the near future. In describing their almost religious attendance at the polls, participants revealed a number of meanings attached to the ritual; but, overall, it is plausible to state that voting is quintessentially seen as a way of demonstrating the ‘good character’ of the community.

Political anthropologists have argued in favor of conceptualizing elections as an important site of self-definition for participants of the ritual (Brink-Danan, 2009; Herzog, 1987). From this perspective, beyond the traditional meanings associated with the act of voting, electoral participation can help individuals and their communities to send messages such as presence (Brink-Danan, 2009), belonging (Baringhorst, 2001) and integration (Baumann, 1992). This is particularly important in the case of ethnic groups that have been traditionally seen as ‘less prompt’ to embrace democratic values and behaviors and have thus been affected by discourses of exclusion. In his ethnography of the Punjabi community in Sussex, England, Baumann (1992) highlights the relevance of joining rituals—including political rituals—to demonstrate the integration of migrants into British communities. He suggests that rituals can be performed not only by native communities but also by competing constituencies looking to demonstrate cultural change.

Following this line, fieldwork in this research has revealed how a constant threat of exclusion, shaped by negative stereotypes regarding Mexicans, directly affects members of the community and their acculturative processes. A common concern is to avoid being seen in stereotypical terms as ‘drug-dealers,’ ‘lazy people’ or ‘trouble-makers.’ As pointed out by a participant I will refer to as Sandro:

Voting is important for so many reasons, but it is even more important for Mexicans because we have so much to prove. I mean, people have all sorts of preconceived ideas and negative stereotypes about Mexicans… what they see on TV is that we are lazy, troublemakers, drug dealers and things like that. So of course, you want to prove that you are nothing like that. You want to prove that you are a grateful migrant, obedient of the laws and well integrated to your new country.

How such a ‘good character’ is translated into the electoral realm is ambiguous and sometimes contradictory in participants’ narratives. For many, being a good voter means sending a message of obedience and compliance, and not making an informed decision. Indeed, it was not uncommon to find participants who were unfamiliar with the parties and candidates they voted for. ‘I think it is the action that counts,’ a participant stated after acknowledging she did not know ‘anything’ about the party she voted for in the last election. Others interpret such goodness as honoring a debt held with the party in office. For instance, when people were asked why they voted for the National Party in the 2011 general election, a common response was ‘because we are happy in New Zealand.’ Further exploration of the field revealed that many participants had consistently voted for the ruling party—regardless of who this was—across the years, based on similar premises. Other participants interpret goodness as passing on their voting experiences to potential new voters in an attempt to raise awareness about the importance of following New Zealand practices. In this context, a participant proudly mentioned how he helped a group of recent Filipino residents to fill in the electoral registration forms in an attempt to ‘show them how important it is to vote in this country.’

While some of these myriad interpretations may suggest at least some basic political involvement, most participants admitted their overall discomfort with the idea of getting involved in New Zealand politics. Even those continuously voting for the ruling party acknowledged that their choice is seen, at least in part, as an efficient way of following the decision of the majority while avoiding ‘getting into political stuff one should not get into.’ Only a minority of participants, normally those who had been traditionally engaged in politics, were the ones to express the importance of an informed electoral decision as a standard of good citizenship.

Seeing electoral participation as a tactic of visibility involves a central symbolic function, which is to represent a unified and strong community despite the smallness of its size. Whereas at the individual level there seems to be recurrent conviction of the advantages of honoring the moral–transactional pact, such agreement is seen as insufficient by community leaders who constantly speak about the importance of disseminating messages and finding ways to ensure compliance in a geographically dispersed community. As a reputable member of the community suggested, ‘every Mexican out there represents us, so if I can, of course I am going to try to advise them to go out and vote.’ Similar expressions suggested that there are relevant incentives to remain vigilant of the collective adherence to the agreement. Such vigilance involves several interrelated components. First, it requires common awareness of the pact, as one participant stated: ‘if they don’t know they are not alone, they would hardly know what to do.’ Second, vigilance entails persuasion, or as mentioned by another participant, a way of ‘convincing others about the consequences of their acts.’ Finally, vigilance involves pressure or, as we will see in the following section, ways of escalating common persuasion into attempts of forced compliance.

It is this context that a number of well-articulated networks created through ethnic associations and Internet forums showed themselves to be effective in performing such tasks. When talking about his presence in a popular Internet group for Mexicans in New Zealand, a participant, I will refer to as Carlos, observed:

Mexicans in New Zealand are very aware of what other Mexicans do or don’t do. I have seen how they ask questions about voting every time an election comes. If you say you didn’t vote, they can make you feel like an ungrateful savage who does not deserve to live here. That is why you need to be careful when people tell you that they always vote in New Zealand. In the end, you need to understand that some may feel judged and may not be telling you the truth.

A vignette of otherness: Doña Juana’s family

I met Renato, Doña Juana’s eldest son while catching a bus in the Auckland region. After a short chat about our lives in New Zealand, he volunteered to participate in the study. Thereafter, he and two other members of his family became recurrent informants of my research. Doña Juana arrived in Auckland approximately eight years ago. She was brought to New Zealand by Renato, who moved three years before her, after obtaining a resident visa through a partner he broke up with shortly afterwards. In the first years after her arrival, Doña Juana used a series of loopholes in immigration law to stay in the country. Shortly after her second year, she obtained sponsorship from the company where she worked as a cleaner, to stay. Over the course of the years, Doña Juana has been joined by several members of her family. All of them have managed to stay in the country by using the same loopholes which allowed Doña Juana to enter New Zealand in the first place. All members come from a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of a populated Mexican urban center. Their levels of education are lower than most members of New Zealand’s Mexican community, and their patterns of political socialization denote extremely negative experiences with the structures of power. When remembering her early days in her neighborhood, Doña Juana mentioned:

It was really hard because we did not have electricity, and my mother’s house lacked proper flooring. It was a really poor neighborhood, almost a ciudad perdida (shantytown)… We didn’t hear much from the government except during election times when buses arrived to take my parents and brothers to the polling stations to vote for the PRI. They were afraid if they did not go, the government would claim our house because it was built on irregular land, but there was also always the hope that if they supported the PRI, we would get electricity in our block. Of course that happened eventually but it took several years… I saw with my own eyes how the government used to take people to electoral-related events as relleno (filling material) to pack stadiums. They did not go voluntarily, they did it because they were hungry and by going there, their families received a torta and a refresco (a sandwich and soft drink); sometimes, they got some money too, not much but enough to survive the week. I put up with that shit for many years, but I promised myself that I would do my best to give my children a better education so they did not have to experience what I had.

For Doña Juana’s family, moving to New Zealand has given them safety, but reality is still perceived as difficult and unfair. Broadly speaking, the family lives a modest life in which economic pressures are obvious not only in their housing arrangements but also in other symbolic actions. In order to save money, Renato and his brother made arrangements with the landlord to clean the communal areas of the building every week in exchange for a rent reduction. This action is strongly felt by both men for whom doing manual labor is perceived as a regression on the social ladder and a threat to their masculinity. Doña Juana started her career in New Zealand as a cleaner; she is now a supervisor and as such, is regarded as an example to follow. Most members of the family work in the retail sector, earning the minimum wage. The family lives on a tight budget that is religiously administered by Doña Juana. She makes all payments for food, services and other expenses such as school supplies for the grandchildren, clothing when this is necessary, and occasional entertainment expenses. When speaking about their overall situation, Renato observed a number of parallels between life in Mexico and New Zealand: ‘We lived from pay check to pay check in Mexico and now we do the same here.’

Instability about the migratory status of some family members is a constant concern for Doña Juana who cannot understand how after ‘all these years,’ they have not been granted permanent residence. ‘We pay thousands of dollars to get them a student visa so they can work only one year,’ Renato observed, mentioning how these types of arrangements ‘are another scam from the government to make money out of migrants’ pockets.’ Moreover, as Elsa stated, ‘we all work, we all pay taxes, but not all of us are entitled to social security, or at least medical coverage.’ Reflecting further about their absence in the polls, Doña Juana said that governments ‘are not that different across the world’ and that voting ‘is just a way to hacerles el caldo gordo [dance to their tune].’

This vignette reveals the complexity of cultural mediation in the process of political acculturation. It moves the discussion on migrants’ electoral participation beyond the simplicity of the civic and non-civic dichotomy, and positions individual decisions of political participation as a product of embodied practices with the state. Doña Juana’s is a story of a politically marginalized family which decided to marginalize itself further after years of abuse and exclusion. ¹⁰ But it is also an illustrative example of the internal dynamics of a community marked by cultural constructs articulated along the axes of class, hierarchy and status. Renato’s observation that, ‘Obviously their side of the story is different than ours,’ is especially relevant here to illustrate how there are many Mexicos inside Mexico and how, regardless of widespread common agreements within a community, positions and trajectories within the social context are relevant to processes of meaning-construction.

Conclusions

Mainstream literature on migrants’ electoral participation normally starts from the assumption that the embracement of political values and beliefs is reflected in observable political behaviors, the most important of which is the act of voting. By exploring voting as a performative ritual of semiotic connotations, I have attempted to focus attention on the diverse and sometimes contending ways in which migrants infuse meaning into it. My mapping shows that, among members of the Mexican community in New Zealand, elections come to represent an amalgamation of understandings that are not necessarily aligned with those of the receiving semiotic community. Conceiving cultural reconstruction as a product of semiotic practices thus positions the ritual of voting as a polysemic signifier with multiple points of entry. The analysis of semiotic practices offered here has shown that the ritual of voting can bear radically different, yet cohesively accepted, connotations at the individual and group levels. Moreover, the analysis has demonstrated how such interpretations cannot be understood devoid of the specific conceptions of politics and power relationships that shape migrants’ original political cultures. From this perspective, distinct and divergent socio-historical factors are both reproduced and reinvented in a new political setting in order to generate appropriate responses to challenges posed by living in a new political setting. Regardless of its highly contextual nature, these conclusions open future areas of exploration for policy-makers in the field of migration; in particular, they can be seen as an invitation to reflect on the complexity of political acculturative phenomena and the current methods upon which understandings of political integration are articulated.