Together and apart: transnational life in the US–Mexico border region

ABSTRACT

The term ‘transnationalism’ evokes notions of unity and strong bonds cultivated across international borders, and scholars of transnationalism have highlighted the ways in which international migrants’ cross-border ties have reduced the social and emotional distance between home and host communities. Based on data from interviews with 24 mixed-citizenship couples living in Mexican border cities, I find that the experience of transnationalism for these families is, surprisingly, quite the opposite of its outcomes: while transnational actors unify individuals, families, and communities that would otherwise be disconnected, the transnational actors themselves assume that burden of disconnection. Whether or not they regularly cross the border, borderlands transmigrants and their families experience the intrusion of the border on their lives in three specific ways: through the physical and symbolic presence of the border; through the act of crossing the border; and through US immigration laws and their associated punishments embodied by the border. While these families epitomise ‘transnationalism’ as it is described in the literature, their day-to-day experiences do not resonate as life across, beyond, or through borders, but rather an ‘entre-national’ life between borders, one bifurcated by the border and the sovereign powers it represents.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational
• family
• border
• migration

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the many scholars and friends who have provided much-needed comments and recommendations for the various drafts of this paper, including the participants of the 2016 Gender and Intimacy across the US–Mexico Borderlands workshop at UC Santa Barbara, participants of the UC San Diego Sociology Working Papers Workshop, my dissertation committee members, my mom, and the anonymous reviewers at this journal. I would also like to thank the UC San Diego Center for US–Mexican Studies, the National Science Foundation, and UC Mexus for helping to fund this research. Finally, I would like to thank the study participants who invited me into their homes and their lives for their generosity and candor.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 I refer to these families as ‘mixed-citizenship’ rather than ‘mixed-status’. Emphasizing the mixed citizenship of these couples not only helps to clarify the types of couples studied here, but also highlights the fact that both partners in each couple possess a citizenship, even if not from the United States. In fact, it is the non-US citizen’s possession of citizenship in another country that enables their deportation and other punishments that often force mixed-citizenship couples out of the United States. I interview couples spanning the spectrum of immigration statuses (both with regard to US immigration law and Mexican immigration law) and recognize that some statuses subject families to greater precarity and punishment than others.

2 Couples in which one or both spouses naturalised following marriage were included in the study.

3 Unmarried cohabiting couples do not qualify for family reunification purposes and thus were not included in this study. Married mixed-citizenship couples and engaged couples applying for a fiancé(e) visa were included in the project.

4 Enrique inherited US citizenship from his mother, who was born in Los Angeles.

5 Sabrina and Joaquin have consulted immigration attorneys in the hopes of challenging his permanent bar to legal entry to the US, but non-citizens accused of illegally posing as a US citizen have practically no hope for relief under current law (Taylor 2009).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the following institutions: the UC San Diego Center for U.S.-⁠Mexican Studies (predoctoral fellowship 2016–2018); the National Science Foundation under grant no. SES-1519088); and the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC Mexus) Grant for Dissertation Research (2015).