Abstract
Mexico has one of the highest numbers of emigrants in the world (Martin, 2009) and Canada is one of the states with the highest per capita immigration rates globally (Léonard, 2011). Mexico and Canada are typical examples of immigrant and emigrant countries and both countries have developed policies and strategies that aim to foster civic participation among their immigrant and emigrant population respectively (Martin, 2009; Goldring, 2002; Barry, 2002; Li, 2002; Reitz, 2005; Bauder, 2011). In Canada, academic research on immigration has centred on the effect immigration policies and practices have on including and excluding immigrants from exercising citizenship rights but it has tended to ignore the effect emigration policies have in the development of transnational citizenship practices, such as civic engagement, political participation, social activism, and acts of solidarity that transcend the frontiers of the nation-state. This has left important questions unanswered on how transnational citizenship is developed and exercised in a migration context including: 1) which policies and practices immigrants use to exercise transnational citizenship; 2) what is the impact of transnational citizenship practices in terms of the expansion and contraction of citizenship rights in the context of migration; 3) who is included and excluded by emigration policies promoting transnational citizen engagement; and 4) how do internal community issues, conflicts, cooperation, and solidarity affect the process of transnational enacting of citizenship? I attempt to fill this research gap by studying the effects Mexican emigration policies have on promoting transnational citizenship practices among middle class Mexican immigrants in Toronto and other cities in Ontario and by showing the avenues these immigrants use in order to participate civically with Mexico and with the Mexican diaspora in Canada.
Highlights
Introduction to Mexican Emigration PoliciesInstitute of Mexican Abroad (IME) and Consejo Consultivo del IME (CCIME) are part of a long Mexican governmental tradition of enacting policies and developing practices to protect and procure the support of its emigrant population
Since Canadian immigration and citizenship policies have enacted significant barriers to the movement of people from Mexico to Canada, the transnational and globalization literatures can help further problematize the imperative contradictions of the neo-liberal policy regime in North America, which on the one hand facilitates the movement of capital and services and on other hand increasingly restricts the movement of racialized people
There are a number of conclusions that can be derived from the experiences of research participants who collaborated with CCIME
Summary
Introduction to Mexican Emigration PoliciesIME and CCIME are part of a long Mexican governmental tradition of enacting policies and developing practices to protect and procure the support of its emigrant population. As early as the 1860s, the Mexican government established a number of citizen-based organizations known as Juntas Patrióticas in order to get financial assistance and political support of Mexicans emigrants in the United States (Delano, 2006). Mexico was under French occupation and the Juntas Patrióticas initiative provided the government of Benito Juarez with much-needed financial support to continue the struggle against the French (Delano, 2006). The Mexican government has long experience providing services to its emigrant population, in the area of repatriation. During the 1907 and 1908 economic recession in the United States, the Mexican government managed to repatriate and provide consular services to more than a hundred thousand Mexican citizens returning from the United States (Delano, 2011). The modernization of the Mexican civil service went in hand with the adoption of a policy regime that reflected Social Darwinian principles of racial superiority and included discriminatory policies against Mexico’s Indigenous people as well as the generous sponsorship of European immigration (Priego, 2016)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
