Mapping Conditions of (In)security for ‘Dreamer Parents’ at the Mexico-US Border

Abstract

This chapter investigates the everyday (in)securities of Mexican deportees who have experienced family separation as a result of being deported from the United States to Tijuana, Mexico. Our data consists of three interviews conducted during ethnographic fieldwork in Tijuana and 35 stories from the digital archive Humanizando la Deportación (Humanizing Deportation). The data highlights the experiences of deported parents who stayed in Tijuana after being deported, though originally from other parts of Mexico. The decision to stay in Tijuana is often related to being able to keep in direct contact with one’s family and the possibility of crossing the border again in the future. Our analysis reveals gendered everyday conditions of (in)security that are intertwined with deportees’ family situations. In particular, men who were unable to see their families faced addiction and extreme precarity, while women found it extremely hard to continue on with their everyday lives while separated from their children. However, we found that the everyday life of deportees contained not only aspects of precarity and liminality, but also the possibility for building a new life.