The [Re]construction of Diasporic Policies in Mexico in the Era of Globalization and Democracy: The Case of the Clubes de Oriundos

Abstract

The homeland/global nation policy literature provides a framework to study how the governments of the ancestral countries have developed ways to encapsulate the identities and loyalties of immigrants and have created institutionalized interchanges through designing and implementing a wide array of policies. The case of Mexico is critical, since this country has been developing outreach policies toward its diaspora in the United States from the nineteenth century onward. This article studies the current challenges of Mexico's diasporic policy, emphasizing the dominant meaning of diaspora, as an “economic asset,” held by governmental agents in the current era of globalization and democratization in regard to a particular case study: the ties between the Mexican government and the philanthropic hometown associations of Mexicans in the United States, the clubes de oriundos.