Mexican New York

by Smith, Robert Courtney

• ISBN13: 9780520244139
• ISBN10: 0520244133
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-11-30
• Publisher: Ingram Pub Services

Summary

Drawing on more than fifteen years of research, "Mexican New York "offers an intimate view of globalization as it is lived by Mexican immigrants and their children in New York and in Mexico. Robert Courtney Smith's groundbreaking study sheds new light on transnationalism, vividly illustrating how immigrants move back and forth between New York and their home village in Puebla with considerable ease, borrowing from and contributing to both communities as they forge new gender roles; new strategies of social mobility, race, and even adolescence; and new brands of politics and egalitarianism. Smith's deeply informed narrative describes how first-generation men who have lived in New York for decades become important political leaders in their home villages in Mexico. Smith explains how relations between immigrant men and women and their U.S.-born children are renegotiated in the context of migration to New York and temporary return visits to Mexico. He illustrates how U.S.-born youth keep their attachments to Mexico, and how changes in migration and assimilation have combined to transnationalize both U.S.-born adolescents and Mexican gangs between New York and Puebla. "Mexican New York "profoundly deepens our knowledge of immigration as a social process, convincingly showing how some immigrants live and function in two worlds at the same time and how transnationalization and assimilation are not opposing, but related, phenomena.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Transnational Life in Ethnographic Perspective	1	(17)
Dual Contexts for Transnational Life	18	(35)
``Los Ausentes Siempre Presentes'': Making a Local-Level Transnational Political Community	53	(23)
The Defeat of Don Victorio: Transnationalization, Democratization, and Political Change	76	(18)
Gender Strategies, Settlement, and Transnational Life in the First Generation	94	(29)
``In Ticuani, he Goes Crazy'': The Second Generation Renegotiates Gender	123	(24)
``Padre Jesus, Protect Me'': Adolescence, Religion, and Social Location	147	(39)
``I'll Go Back Next Year'': Transnational Life Across the Life Course	186	(21)
Defending Your Name: The Roots and Transnationalization of Mexican Gangs	207	(35)
Returning to a Changed Ticuani	242	(35)
Conclusions and Recommendations	277	(16)
Coda: The Mexican Educational Foundation of New York	293	(4)
Notes	297	(20)
Bibliography	317	(34)
Methodological Appendix	351	(8)
Index	359