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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 21:4 (2022) ► pp.567–588

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Return migrants from the United States to Mexico

Constructing alternative notions of citizenship through acts of (linguistic) citizenship

ORCiD logo with link | Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
 | Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla
 | University of Oxford
Published online: 1 February 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.21004.jac
Abstract
This article examines Mexican return migrants belonging to the 1.5 generation of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Our analysis disaggregates the notions that these return migrants have regarding “being Mexican” and speaking Spanish after spending most of their lives in the U.S. Building on critical citizenship theories (Isin, Engin. F. 2008. “Theorizing Acts of Citizenship”, ed. by Engin F. Isin, and Greg M. Nielsen in Acts of Citizenship, 15–43. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, Isin, Engin F. 2009. “Citizenship in flux: The figure of the activist citizen.” Subjectivity, 291: 367–388. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), specifically on the concepts of status, habitus, and acts, we analyze how these return migrants experience and build notions of citizenship in Mexico while they develop additional linguistic repertoires in Spanish and acquire basic knowledge of Mexican culture. Our findings suggest that return migrants go through various simultaneous learning processes to acquire Mexican habitus in Mexico even though they acquire formal citizenship. This learning process we argue occurs amidst multiple social, linguistic, and cultural tensions that trigger important acts of (linguistic) citizenship through which returnees found their own definition of what it means to be “Mexican”.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.1.5 Generation: Temporary integration, illegality, and acts of political belonging
  • 3.Disaggregating citizenship: Status, habitus & acts of citizenship
  • 4.Methods
  • 5.Acquiring Mexican habitus
  • 6.Acts of (linguistic) citizenship
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (36)
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