The two faces of transnational citizenship

Abstract

This article situates the findings of three of my multi-sited ethnographic studies of political transnationalism on both sides of the US–Mexican border within a wider discourse positing a tension between dual loyalty and national identity formation. My studies contradict nationalist representations of Mexican migrants as culturally isolated and politically disengaged threats to US civic republicanism. They also challenge certain post-nationalist expectations that global media flows will impede migrants’ loyalty to their nation of settlement. My studies show: (a) that social and political capital accumulated in one country can be transferred to another over time; (b) that transnational electoral coalitions are forged by the interplay of transnational candidates, state-centered actors, non-migrating activists in the sending locales, and actors situated elsewhere on both sides of the border who become more than passive spectators of transnational politics; and (c) that key leaders of a Federation of Zacatecan Hometown Associations in Southern California have become active at all levels of US politics and society. The article extensively illustrates this second face of transnational citizenship – political engagement in the receiving context.