‘Alien’ation: Understanding how parent’s deportation and the out-migration of U.S.-born Mexican-Amer
Research Justification
By December 2014, the 6-year administration of President Barrack Obama had deported over 2 million undocumented immigrants, which is significantly higher than deportations (notwithstanding the debate over “returns” versus “removals”) during the entire 8-year tenure of President George W. Bush, his predecessor, and costing the U.S. over $25 billion. In addition to deporting undocumented immigrants, most of who are repatriated to Mexico, the Obama administration is pouring money into blockading the U.S.-Mexico border, including collecting biometric information (fingerprints, etc.) from the deportees in order to frustrate their return to the U.S. Thus, not only is the number of Mexican deportees increasing, their ability to return to the U.S. is also significantly diminished.
The deportation of undocumented immigrants, however, is having unanticipated effects on offsprings of deportees. Typically, when a parent(s) is deported (or removed) the child(ren), who in most cases were born in the U.S., are compelled by the prevailing circumstance to out-migrate with their parent(s). In December 2014, there were approximately 450,000 of such U.S. born Mexican-American youths enrolled in Mexican schools. Many of these youths face numerous challenges gaining admission into Mexican schools and when they are admitted, many struggle to learn Spanish and have trouble adjusting to the new schooling culture and teaching methods. Many of them also have problems adjusting to the larger Mexican culture. More importantly, the prevailing Mexican culture is increasingly challenged by these youths through subtle and not so subtle construction (and assertion) of identities that do not conform to the prevailing identities in Mexico and the U.S., thereby problematizing the cultural context not only by their lack of fit into both societies, but also by injecting their acquired but fundamentally different American cultural milieu into their Mexican experience.
The result is that we have a large number of monolingual, English-speaking hybrid Mexican-American youths, who do not typify U.S. or Mexican youths nor identify with either the U.S. or Mexican cultures. These youths are also not equipped to function competently in Mexican schools or U.S. institutions. For these youths, life in Mexico is a subtractive process that divests them of important social and cultural experiences, leaving them progressively vulnerable to transnational criminal organizations' (TCOs) and other illicit groups’ recruiting. The potential that these youths may integrate into sub-cultures and groups that pose threats to the U.S. homeland at a time when TCOs and ISIS are actively recruiting U.S. residents who lack fit but posses sufficient grievance and travel documentation, makes this study critically important to efforts to defend the U.S. homeland.
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand how the deportation experiences of U.S.-born Mexican-American youths alienate them from society in both countries, creating conditions favorable for integrating into sub-cultures or groups threatening to the homeland.
Research Objectives
1. Provide multi-layer social science insight into the micro-macro challenges with integrating into conventional society as a way to predict integration into illicit sub-cultures that threaten the U.S. homeland.
2. Understand how the potentially unbridgeable and inequitable difference between the youth’s identity construct and the social identity construct is problematic, permitting estrangement from conventional society and integration into illicit sub-cultures.
3. Understand how the creation of double boundaries, including a boundary that identifies U.S.-born Mexican-Americans from within American society as Mexican and the other that identifies them from within Mexican society as American, creates incentives for the repudiation of both identities and the assumption of hybrid identities amenable to illicit societies, sub-cultures, and groups that threaten the U.S. homeland.