“I too was an Immigrant”: An Analysis of Differing Modes of Mobilization in Two Bronx Mexican Migrant Organizations1

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper, based on dissertation fieldwork among Mexican migrant organizations in New York, examines differing modes of mobilization in two Bronx parish‐based voluntary associations. Even though the Mexican community in New York is consistently described as “new”, “young” and its migration as “recent”, there are some migrants who arrived decades ago, in the early 1980s, whose children and grandchildren have been born in the United States and whose experiences are quite different than those of newer migrants. Nonetheless, the network of fraternal societies founded on Guadalupan devotion which together comprises the largest and most visible Mexican organization in the city assumes commonalty of experiences, identity, faith and needs, based on the premise, “We are all undocumented”. In this paper I will unpack that “we” using ethnographic data from two Bronx parish Guadalupan committees to examine how a collective we is produced, contested, and complicated through time. What are the implications for the organizational strategies of the city‐wide association if some of the most established activists are no longer undocumented? What kinds of tensions exist within a community imagined to be unified but constantly faced with class and ethnic differences? These organizations posit a “citizenship” premised on all human beings sharing the same mother, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and ensuring the dignity and rights of all, irrespective of migratory status or nationality. What does it mean when some involved in the production of this discourse “regularize” their migratory status and are no longer in need of an alternative mode of citizenship? How effective will assertions of Mexican national identity linked to Guadalupan devotion be among second‐generation youths who are US citizens and have possibly never seen Mexico? What happens when activists begin to say “I was an immigrant”?