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Building upon an abundance of theoretical literature describing the role of deportation in the assertion of nation-state sovereignty, this article asks how deportees experience state sovereignty. Its conclusions are informed by an 'ethnography of removal' drawing on 62 interviews with 25 Mexican deportees interviewed in their communities of origin in Oaxaca after '3D' (detection, detention and deportation) removal. Acknowledging deportation as an example of legal violence, the paper describes various other types of violence (physical, structural and symbolic; executed by state agents, private contractors, other deportees, criminal organisations, and communities of origin) that produce US sovereignty at the level of individual experience. '3D' deportation causes suffering, embarrassment and fear. The paper shows how US borders are externalised on the micro and meso level without the involvement of state actors as deportees, invested with a new governmentality after being violently deported, exercise border controls over themselves and refrain from returning to the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that transnational relations between the Mexican government and Mexican immigrants in the US are not new. However, the characteristics of these connections have varied across time, depending on the evolution and characteristics of migrant organisations, political and economic circumstances in Mexico, and foreign policy considerations involving US-Mexico relations. The historical links between the government and the Mexican population abroad have influenced the development of current organisations of Mexican immigrants in the US as well as the recent creation and development of the Mexican government's institutions to manage this relationship. For more recent years, we identify a change in Mexico's traditional approach to migration issues in the bilateral agenda, as well as a shift in the relationship between the Mexican immigrant communities and the government. The process of institutionalisation of this new relation began with the Program for Mexican Communities Abroad in 1990, and was strongly consolidated in 2003 with the creation of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME). We argue that IME is the first transnational institution dealing with these issues and we explore some of the challenges it faces in order to achieve its objectives and exert a positive influence for Mexican migrants in the US. The paper is in three parts. In the first, we discuss the value of using a historical perspective for the study of transnational politics. The second part offers a historical account of the development of transnational relations between the Mexican government and the organised Mexican immigrant community from 1848 to 2005. In the third and final part we analyse the challenges faced by IME as a transnational institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the skills and competence acquisition of migration entrepreneurs in the H-2 visa programme, a U.S. temporary worker scheme. This programme, which nowadays largely recruits Mexicans, is managed by a migration industry of labour contracting agencies, recruiters, document processors, and transporters. This article focuses on recruiters, in charge of selecting workers, and document processors, responsible for completing visa application forms. Hailing mostly from the rural working class, recruiters derive expertise from membership in the social world of the migrant. The competences of document processors closely track their belonging in the urban middle class, reflecting experiences of formal education which prepare them to deal with the bureaucratic interface of the programme. These migration entrepreneurs also acquire skills by cooperating and competing with colleagues, migrants, contracting firms, employers, advocates, and government officials – interactions that expose them the risks and benefits of a more expansive role in the brokerage apparatus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies of wives and young children of migrants to the USA highlight implications of migration for family members who remain behind. This emerging research on transnational families is beginning to address multiple perspectives within the family system, especially beyond the nuclear family. The current phenomenological study explores the perceptions of adapting to familial transnationalism of: parents of migrants, spouses of migrants and return migrants in Mexico. Ten focus groups (N = 51) were conducted focusing on the experiences of transnational families. An inductive, comparative method was used to analyse the data and identify emerging themes. Within the global theme of interpersonal dynamics, three salient subthemes emerged: cohesion, disclosure and criticism. Findings highlight the importance of examining multiple perspectives surrounding familial transnationalism including during and after migration, those who migrate and those who stay behind, as well as immediate and extended family members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interdisciplinary field of migration studies is split into internal and international migration, characterised by different literatures, concepts, methods and policy agendas. Most migration scholars nowadays research international migration, even though, quantitatively, internal migration is more important. Yet the distinction between internal and international moves becomes increasingly blurred, not only because of geopolitical events and the changing nature and configuration of borders, but also because migrants' journeys are becoming increasingly multiple, complex and fragmented. We present a schematic model that sets out 10 migration pathways that combine internal and international migration, and return migration, in various sequenced relationships. We survey the limited literature that attempts to compare and integrate internal and international migration within the same theoretical framework, both general models and some case-study literature from Mexico. We consider three approaches where theoretical transfer seems to hold potential: systems approaches, migrant integration, and the migration-development nexus. We conclude that considerable potential exists for integrating the study of internal and international migration, at both the theoretical and the empirical level. Too often one is studied without reference to the other, yielding a partial analysis. However, we baulk at attempting any 'grand theory' of migration which incorporates all types of migration, in all places and at all times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]