Everyday Ruptures: Children, Youth, and Migration in Global Perspective

8. Here/Not Here: Contingent Citizenship and Transnational Mexican Children

161 Chapter 8 Here/Not Here Contingent Citizenship and Transnational Mexican Children Deborah A. Boehm He is here, and he is not here. It is within this condition of existence that they exist. —Nadine Gordimer, The Pickup There are multiple nonexistences and gradations of existence. It might be most accurate to say that, like characters who experience a temporal rift in a Star Trek episode, [unauthorized migrants] come in and out of existence and exist simultaneously in multiple ways. —Susan Bibler Coutin, Legalizing Moves When I was recently in Mexico, I spent an afternoon with a friend,­ Liliana, as she cared for a chaotic house full of children. They ran back and forth between a dusty courtyard filled with goats and chickens and the living room where we were talking. “Come, niños,” she called to the two smallest of the group, “I have someone for you to meet.” Liliana then introduced me to her grandsons, Victor and Claudio, ages two and five. “They have been here for nearly a year,” Liliana explained. “My son and daughter-in-law—they are mojados [unauthorized migrants, literally, “wetbacks”], as you know—and so it is safer for the boys to be here with me. Their parents work all the time, so really it is better this way.” Liliana went on to describe the difficulties her daughter-inlaw was having, being so far from her young children. “But the boys are U.S. citizens,” Liliana proclaimed proudly. “They are the Americans in 162 Everyday Ruptures the family, aren’t you, mis cariños?” She teased her grandsons, as they ran out of the room laughing. Victor and Claudio are in many ways here and yet not here, U.S. citizens with what I understand to be a form of contingent citizenship—they are citizens of the United States living in Mexico explicitly because of the undocumented status of their parents. The situation of these young boys—specifically their parents’ placement of them in Mexico despite their U.S. citizenship—underscores the spatial and symbolic shifts across territory, and in understandings of national belonging and exclusion, among individuals within undocumented migrant families or families of mixed U.S. legal status. Among Mexican migrant families, the legal status of individual family members vis-à-vis the U.S. state has concrete implications for the well-being and places of residence of both documented and undocumented children. Describing themselves as “from neither here nor there,” transnational Mexicans live both within and on the margins of two countries. I consider this liminality in relation to children and youth against the backdrop of the labor migrations of parents and other caregivers, developing the concept of contingent citizenship.1 In what ways is the experience of being here/not here mediated by age? How do the youngest members of families move in and out of different forms of citizenship or national membership? What do the physical movement and locations of children reveal about the contradictions of citizenship within a transnational frame? Contingent citizenship is national membership that is partial, conditional , or relational. Contingent citizens include U.S. citizens who are culturally, socially, politically, or physically excluded from the nation, as well as unauthorized residents of the United States who are de facto members by virtue of their employment, education, residence, political participation, and civic engagement. Constructed as simultaneously here and not here, transnational Mexican children move through layers of belonging and exclusion, “en route” (Coutin 2005) to distinct physical places and the embodiment of particular state categories. Here, the “flexible”—and inflexible—elements of citizenship come into relief (Ong 1999). Six-month-old Julia, who crossed with her mother and a coyota last month; Tomás, an unauthorized migrant about to graduate from a U.S. university with a degree in biochemistry; and José and Daniela, U.S. citizens living in Mexico while their mother works cleaning hotel rooms in Los Angeles—all are arguably contingent U.S. citizens; their lives must be understood in relation to U.S. immigration laws and the many U.S. state actions that permeate family life. Contingent Citizenship and Transnational Mexican Children 163 My arguments build on the work of scholars of “illegality” (Coutin 2000; De Genova 2002), drawing on research that explores the contradictory ways state regimes construct “legal/illegal” subjects (e.g., Coutin 2000, 2007; De Genova 2002, 2005; De Genova and Peutz, 2010). Much of this research employs metaphors...