Mexico, Nation in Transit

Contemporary Representations of Mexican Migration to the United States

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Mexico, Nation in Transit examines how the Mexican migrant population in the United States is represented in the Mexican national im-aginary—on both sides of the border. Exploring representations of migration in literature, film, and music produced in the past twenty years, Christina Sisk argues that Mexico is imagined as a nation that exists outside of its territorial borders and into the United States. Although some Americans feel threatened by the determined resilience of Mexican national identity among immigrants, Sisk counters that the persis-tence of immigrant Mexicans’ identities with their homeland—with the cities, states, regions, and nation where they were born or have family—is not in opposition to their identity as Americans.

Sisk’s transnational investigation moves easily across the US–Mexico border, analyzing films made on both sides, literature de la frontera, Mexican rock music, migrant narratives, and texts written by second- and third-generation immigrants. Included are the perspectives of those who left Mexico, those who were left behind, and the children who travel back “home.” Sisk discovers that the loss of Mexicans to the United States through emigration has had an effect on Mexico similar to the impact of the perceived Mexican invasion of the United States.

Spanning the social sciences and the humanities, Mexico, Nation in Transit poses a new transnational alternative to the postnational view that geopolitical borders are being erased by the forces of migration and globalization, and the nationalist view that borders must be strictly enforced. It shows that borders, like identities, are not easy to locate precisely.
"This book contains valuable insights regarding the complex nature of migration, transnational processes, and diverse forms of cultural citizenship and identity. Sisk's analysis helps us not only to distinguish clearly between transborder crossing and migration but also to conceptualize the importance of the transnational as an alternative way to understand social realities simply characterized as post-national by other critics." —Ignacio Corona, co-editor of Gender Violence at the U.S.—Mexico Border: Media Representation and Public Response
Mexico, Nation in Transit
248 Pages 6 x 9 x 0.9
Published: September 2013Paperback ISBN: 9780816530656
Published: November 2011Ebook ISBN: 9780816545070

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