Benedict Anderson’s deservedly famous thesis about the origins and nature
of modern nationalism turns around the central notion of an “imagined
community.” This category provides him with a matrix out of which one
can apprehend-theoretically and historically-the different variants of nationalist discourse formulated over the last two hundred years. We will refer,
in the brief comments that follow, to three basic dimensions structuring
the fabric of Anderson’s argument: 1) the presuppositions implicit in the
notion of an “imagined” community; 2) the kind of substitutability or solidarity which is required to be a member of such a community; 3) the kind
of relationship that is established between such a community-which is by
definition finite or limited-and its outside. Before that, however, let us
describe the main features of Anderson’s thesis.

On Imagined Communities

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307/3343529.pdf

Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work

In 2011, a record number of foreign-born individuals were detained and removed from the United States. This article looks at the impact enforcement policies have had on Mexican families more broadly and children specifically. Drawing on interviews with 91 parents and 110 children in 80 households, the author suggests that, similar to the injury pyramid used by public health professionals, a deportation pyramid best depicts the burden of deportation on children. At the top of the pyramid are instances that have had the most severe consequences on children's daily lives: families in which a deportation has led to permanent family dissolution. But enforcement policies have had the greatest impact on children at the bottom of the pyramid. Regardless of legal status or their family members' involvement with immigration authorities, children in Mexican immigrant households describe fear about their family stability and confusion over the impact legality has on their lives.

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The Burden of Deportation on Children in Mexican Immigrant Families

In this compelling study of machismo in Mexico City, Matthew Gutmann overturns many stereotypes of male culture in Mexico and offers a sensitive and often surprising look at how Mexican men see themselves, parent their children, relate to women, and talk about sex. This tenth anniversary edition features a new preface that updates the stories of the book's key protagonists.

The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City.

This article reviews how US deportations ballooned between 1997 and 2012, and underscores how these deportations disproportionately targeted Latino working class men. Building on Mae Ngai's (2004) concept of racial removal, we describe this recent mass deportation as a gendered racial removal program. Drawing from secondary sources, surveys conducted in Mexico, the U.S. Department of Home- land Security published statistics, and interviews with deportees conducted by the first author in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Brazil and Jamaica, we argue that: (1) deportations have taken on a new course in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the wake of the global economic crisis - involving a shift towards interior enforcement; (2) deportation has become a gendered and racial removal project of the state; and (3) deportations will have lasting consequences with gendered and raced effects here in the United States. We begin by examining the mechanisms of the new deportation regime, showing how it functions, and then examine the legislation and administrative decisions that make it possible. Next, we show the concentration of deportations by nation and gender. Finally, we discuss the causes of this gendered racial removal program, which include the male joblessness crisis since the Great Recession, the War on Terror, and the con- tinued criminalization of Black and Latino men by police authorities. Latino Studies (2013) 11, 271-292. doi:10.1057/lst.2013.14

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Latino immigrant men and the deportation crisis: A gendered racial removal program

Recently, scholars have described the emotional consequences of transnational motherhood on families. Research, however, has neglected to address the lives of migrant fathers and how they compare to those of migrant mothers. This article fills the gap by analyzing the experiences of Mexican transnational mothers and fathers residing in New Jersey. Ethnographic data and interviews show that parents behave in similar ways when internationally separated from children. However, their migration patterns and emotional responses to separation differ. I show that these differences are tied to Mexican gender ideology in which women’s maternal roles are sacralized, whereas fathers’ roles are tied to financial provision. Although the contemporary Mexican transnational family structure challenges gender norms, the analysis of how parents understand their family roles when separated from their children proves gender ideals to be highly durable in the transnational context.

Honor and Virtue Mexican Parenting in the Transnational Context

Preface: Ordinary Families, Extraordinary Families Acknowledgments/Agradecimientos 1. Sacrifice 2. Ofelia and German Cruz: Migrant Time versus Child Time 3. Gender and Parenting from Afar 4. Armando Lopez on Fatherhood 5. Children and Power during Separation 6. Middlewomen 7. Cindy Rodriguez between Two Worlds 8. Divided by Borders Appendix A: Research Design Appendix B: Family Descriptions Notes References Index

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Divided by Borders: Mexican Migrants and Their Children

Today, many families find that they are unable to fulfill the goal of maintaining a household by living together under the same roof. Some members migrate internationally. This article addresses the consequences of a transnational lifestyle for children who are left behind by migrant parents. Using ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with a total of 141 members of Mexican transnational families, I explore how children who are left behind react to parents' migrations. I focus on how Mexican children manifest the competing pressures they feel surrounding parents' migrations and consequently shape family migration patterns. The article shows that children may experience power, albeit in different ways at different ages, while simultaneously being disadvantaged as dependents and in terms of their families' socioeconomic status. Key Words: children, family, Mexico, parent-child relations, transnationalism. Today, many families find that they are not able to fulfill the common goal of maintaining a household by living together under the same roof. By diversifying the residence of family members, families are able to take advantage of the disparities in the world economy. Able-bodied sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, mothers, and fathers move to areas where they can earn more for their human labor, whereas other family members remain in areas where the cost of living is low. Families move transnationally (Bryceson & Vuorela, 2002; Schmalzbauer, 2004). Although the international separation of families is not a new phenomenon (Foner, 2000; Nakano Glenn, 1983; Thomas & Znaniecki, 1927), one type of transnational family, mat in which mothers leave their children behind to work abroad, is increasingly common causing a plethora of new research focusing on the fives of these transnational families (Dreby, 2006; Hirsch, 2003; Hondagneu-Sotelo & Avila, 1997; Salazar Parrenas, 2005). This article addresses some of the consequences of the transnational lifestyle for children who are left behind by migrant parents. Using ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with a total of 141 members of Mexican transnational families, I explore how children who are left behind react to their parents' migrations. The overall study is based on interviews with migrant mothers and fathers residing in Central New Jersey, and children and their caregivers, most often grandparents, residing in the Mixtec region of south central Mexico. It analyzes the ways that members of transnational families accommodate changes in each other's lives over time. Here, I focus on how children who are left behind manifest the competing pressures they feel surrounding their parents' migrations and consequently shape families' migration patterns. Background Over the past 20 years, an emerging area of research on childhood has focused on understanding children as autonomous actors creating their own social worlds as distinct from and in dynamic relationship to those of the adults in their lives (Corsaro, 1997; Wrigley & Dreby, 2005). According to Qvortrup (1999), the new sociology of childhood has been relatively divorced from traditional, structural approaches to understanding children's fives, which emphasize the economic and political inequalities children experience in different societies. Primarily, ethnographic studies of children's social worlds have not been successful in describing how children's power, or lack of power, in their families and in other institutions relates to their families' relative position in the society in which they live (Wrigley & Dreby). In this article, I consider the power of children left behind in transnational families in relation to their families' social position as transnational migrants. I explore how children in Mexican transnational families are, on the one hand, the least powerful actors within their families, but on the other hand, very influential, both as intended recipients of the benefits their families gamer via international migration and as independent agents with divergent needs that are intensified by the separation from parents. …

Children and Power in Mexican Transnational Families

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the nature of intergenerational relationships in immigrant families, especially between immigrant parents and their children, many of whom were born and largely raised in the United States. This review begins with an analysis of the causes of tension and conflict as well as accommodation and cooperation between parents and children in immigrant families in the contemporary United States. We then examine what happens when parents and children are separated in transnational families—why this pattern occurs today and how it affects family relationships. We provide a historical-comparative perspective, discussing what is new about parent-child relations in immigrant families today in contrast to a century ago in the last great wave of immigration to the United States. Finally, a cross-national view reveals the different emphases in the social science literature on intergenerational relations in immigrant families in the United States and western Europe.

Joanna Dreby

Papers

The Burden of Deportation on Children in Mexican Immigrant Families

Honor and Virtue Mexican Parenting in the Transnational Context

Divided by Borders: Mexican Migrants and Their Children

Children and Power in Mexican Transnational Families

Relations Between the Generations in Immigrant Families