Belonging: Place, Care, and Masculinities Among "Criminal Alien" Men Deported to Mexico
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Date
2019-09-18
Authors
Hansen, Tobin
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
In what ways do long-time U.S. residents come to belong to families, local communities, and nations before and after deportation to Mexico? And how are they perceived not to belong? This dissertation explores the relationships between social and legal membership, identity formation, and belonging to place in the context of noncitizen criminalization, forcible expulsion, and place-making after deportation. It provides insights into the hardships of deportation and how people attempt to cope.
This study is based on 19 months of ethnographic work. It examines the lives of long-time U.S. resident men who the U.S. government designates “criminal aliens” and deports to Mexico. The men at the heart of this research migrated from Mexico as children and grew up considering the United States home. Fifty-seven deported men contributed to this community-based research, shedding light on the impact of deportation on their lives by giving extensive interviews and allowing participation in their day-to-day activities.
The dissertation elucidates multiple ways in which deported men come to belong and not belong, to populations and territories, across their life histories. Study participants were, as adults, incarcerated in U.S. prisons, designated “criminal aliens,” and expelled over the northern Mexico border by the U.S. government, experiencing various legal, social, and embodied exclusions. This research considers their participation in U.S. social and cultural life and how, in unfamiliar northern Mexico receiving communities, they navigate the social marginalization of family separation and, as stigmatized post-prison, “Americanized” Mexicans, encounter alienation, a lack of work, and embodied violence. They carve out narrow spaces of belonging by mobilizing U.S. Latinx identities, building solidarity with other deportees, harnessing memory, and struggling to make home in northern Mexico. Regional and personal histories, cultures, and interpersonal relationships enable limited social inclusion despite rigid and exclusionary U.S. immigration enforcement. In the present-day context of broad illegalization and criminalization of migrants, refugees, and other noncitizens around the globe, this dissertation suggests that social and cultural aspects of belonging must be better understood.
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Keywords
border, criminalization, deportation, masculinities, Mexico, migration