Specters of Belonging: The Political Life Cycle of Mexican Migrants

As the United States hardens its border with Mexico, how do migrants make transnational claims of citizenship in both nation-states? By enacting citizenship in both countries, Mexican migrants are challenging the meaning of membership and belonging from the margins of both citizenship regimes. With their incessant border-shattering political practices, Mexican migrants have become the embodiment of transnational citizenship on both sides of the divide.Drawing on his experiences leading citizenship classes for Mexican migrants and working with cross-border activists, Adrian Felix examines the political lives (and deaths) of Mexican migrants in Specters of Belonging. Tracing transnationalism across the different stages of the migrant political life cycle - beginning with the so-called political baptism of naturalization and ending with the practice by which migrant bodies are repatriated to Mexico for burial after death - Felix reveals the varied ways in which Mexican transnational subjects practice citizenship in the United States as well as Mexico. As such, Felix unearths how Mexican migrants’ specters of belonging perennially haunt the political projects of nationalism, citizenship, and democracy on both sides of the border.