Mixtec Transnational Migration - Migrant Life

Migrant Life

Indigenous migrant and immigrant workers often try to remain invisible in the larger world to avoid detention and deportation by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. According to Stephen (2007) migrants are also objects of surveillance and invisibility on the U.S.-Mexico border, the agricultural fields and in produce processing plants. Racialized readings of Mexican indigenous immigrants and migrants as illegal, undocumented or not, result in surveillance from many people in the United States, from border guards to factory supervisors. Being object of surveillance in the United States for your legal status is a contradictory framework because of the encouragement of undocumented immigration through U.S. immigration policy, as Stephen explains “U.S. immigration policy in relation to Mexico and other countries has served primarily as labor policy, inviting workers in when they are needed and then showing them the door when it became politically expedient to “defend” the border.”

While U.S. immigration policy has consistently maintained the theater of defending the border from what are called illegal aliens, deeper historical analysis of particular policies directed toward Mexico; for example, the bracero program of 1942-64, the IRCA, and the SAW program of 1986 and a close examination of the accelerated integration of the U.S. and Mexican economies under economic neoliberalism and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) suggests that U.S. immigration policy toward Mexico has in fact encouraged and facilitated increased immigration

Undocumented people have played the game of U.S. politics of fear and food: the importance of undocumented people in food production and processing is a major cheap asset for the American economy. According to the Department of Labor, about 53 percent of farmworkers in the United States are undocumented. In California, estimates are as high as 90 percent. While no hard figures are available, it is often estimated that from 50 to 80 percent of those who labor in Oregon’s fields are undocumented as well.

The media has created an anti-immigrant message in the United States that portrays Mexicans as illegal aliens who are invading this country and taking away many sources of employment. Especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the immigrant population has been target of racism as Stephen (2007)asserts that what initially was a legal and cultural label (undocumented/illegal Mexican immigrant) became racialized as images of supposed illegal aliens that depicts the loss of control, invasion, danger, and war. Indigenous workers who are continuously read as dark and illegal become subject to treatment that is justified by their appearance. Such treatment includes surveillance because of their presumed or potential illegal/criminal status. Indigenous migrant workers have a strong sense of continually being read as other and different in Oregon and California by non-Mexicans, who have begun to see Mexican immigrants to intensify in numbers

We need to be able to differentiate or distinguish between potential terrorists and those who come to this country to work and do crucial work of producing our food, provide services, and do the jobs many American citizens would not do. One of the most important developments among indigenous migrants was the formation, in 1991, of the Bi-National Mixtec-Zapotec Front, which has sought the support of the Mexican Government and international donor agencies to improve the respect for human and labor rights The Frente Indigena de Organizaciones Binacionales (FIOB) has expanded the dialogue on indigenous issues beyond national borders between Mexico and the United States, as well as among Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. According to Stephen (2007) the FIOB publicly constructs its identity by linking local, regional, national, and transborder or binational dimensions of indigenous identity with a multi-sited understanding of location .

Remittances are an important source of income in developing countries. According to the International Forum on Remittances “remittances are part of the centuries-old pattern of migration from rural to urban areas. Nowadays, remittances represent the human face of globalization, in which millions of people migrate in search of a better life and in order to provide for their loved ones back home. These flows of human and financial capital have profound implications for the economies and societies of the sending and the receiving countries.” Mixtec migrants send money back to their country of origin in a variety of ways. Where available, they may use formal channels such as banks and money transfer services. Digital border crossing is often an important dimension of transborder communities, outside of electronic money transfers and the use of ATMs little attention has been paid to how digital communication is entering the lives of transborder migrants in maintaining their family relationships, in cross-border political organizing, solidarity, human rights defense, and in the construction of ethnic identities

Immigrant uses of digital technologies across borders have been described as “virtual diasporas” by Laguerre A virtual diaspora is the cyber expansion of real diaspora. No virtual diaspora can be sustained without real life diasporas and in this sense it is not a separate entity, but rather a pole of a continuum The virtual transborder organizing of the FIOB has matched this profile, first, through email and fax campaigns and second, through its website and print and web-based newsletter, El Tequio. According to Stephen (2007) through their digital productions invoking both the rootedness of place and place based histories and transborder and transhistorical presences, the indigenous activist in FIOB have constituted their own identities of contemporary indigenous Mexican identity