Return migrants from the United States to Mexico

Abstract

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 2008, 2009), 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”.