Cover not available
Article published In:
Language, Culture and Society
Vol. 4:1 (2022) ► pp.68–91

“I think I belong over there”

Spatial, social, and linguistic (un)bordering by US citizens in Mexico

| Leiden University
| Leiden University

Experiences of belonging and unbelonging are constructed in multiple ways. Two young women share their stories of moving from north to south and their experiences of (un)belonging in the United States and Mexico. Analysis of the semi-structured interviews through interdisciplinary lenses highlights the contested nature of borders and the breaking down of pre-established categories. Beyond territorial borders, the experiences of these two US citizens of Mexican heritage reveal an ongoing negotiation of spatial, social and linguistic border spaces, blurring the distinctions between the two nationalities, multiple social groups, and the linguistic traditions to which they (choose to) belong. Different layers of identity and grounds for belonging intersect in the stories they tell. While family priorities and financial realities condition their choices and their mobility, the stories reveal agency and active (un)bordering on multiple scales, also exemplifying the potential of (un)bordering across academic disciplines.

Keywords: borders, belonging, identity, intersectionality, life stories, return migration
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The broader context: Mexican-US border making and border crossing
  • 3.Conceptual framing: (In)definite borders and belonging across nations, social groups, and languages
    • 3.1Territorial borders
    • 3.2Social borders
    • 3.3Linguistic borders
  • 4.The interviews: Positionalities and methods
    • 4.1The researchers: Two migrant women in the Netherlands
    • 4.2The interviewees: Two migrant women in Mexico
    • 4.3The data and analysis
  • 5.Findings
    • 5.1Territorial (un)bordering
    • 5.2Social (un)bordering
    • 5.3Linguistic (un)bordering
    • 5.4(Un)bordering in the family
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 July 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.21006.gro
References
Alim, S., Rickford, J. & Ball, A.
(Eds.) (2016) Raciolinguistics. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anzaldúa, G.
(1999) Borderlands / La Frontera. The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books (2nd Edition).Google Scholar
Bauböck, R.
(2002) “How migration transforms citizenship: international, multinational and transnational perspectives.” IWE Working Paper Series. Available at: [URL]
Benhabib, S.
(2005) Borders, Boundaries and Citizenship. Political Science and Politics, 38(4): 673–677. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blommaert, J.
(2006) Language policy and national identity. In Ricento, T. (Ed.). An introduction to language policy: Theory and method, pp. 238–254.Google Scholar
Briggs, C.
(1986) Learning how to ask: A sociolinguistic appraisal of the role of the interview in social science research. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, W.
(2014) Walled States, Waning Sovereignty. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, M.
(2011) White kids. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, E. R., Feinauer Whiting, E., Jensen, B., Savage, V., Baker, A., & Holdaway, E.
(2020) “Estamos aquí pero no soy de aqui”: American Mexican youth, belonging and schooling in rural, Central Mexico. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 51 (2), 123–145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Christensen, A. D.
(2009) Belonging and unbelonging from an intersectional perspective. Gender, Technology and Development, 13(1), 21–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cruz-Manjarrez, A. & Baquedano-López, P.
(2020) The new returnees of yucatec Maya migration in the United states. Estudios Fronterizos, 211.Google Scholar
Davis, K., & Nencel, L.
(2011) Border skirmishes and the question of belonging: An authoethnographic account of everyday exclusion in multicultural society. Ethnicities, 11 (4), 467–488. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
del Castillo, R. G.
(1985) Review: Tejanos and California Chicanos: Regional Variations in Mexican American History. Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 1(1): 134–139.Google Scholar
Eder, K.
(2006) Europe’s Borders: The Narrative Construction of the Boundaries of Europe. European Journal of Social Theory, 9 (2): 255–271. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Erickson, F.
(2004) Talk and social theory: Ecologies of speaking and listening in everyday life. Polity.Google Scholar
Fenster, T.
(2004) Belonging, memory and the politics of planning in Israel. Social & Cultural Geography, 5 (3): 403–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fine, S. & Ypi, L.
(2019) Migration in Political Theory. The Ethics of Movement and Membership. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gal, S., & Irvine, J.
(1995) The Boundaries of Languages and Disciplines: How Ideologies Construct Difference. Social Research, 62 (4), 967–1001.Google Scholar
Gallucci, S.
(2014) Negotiating second-language identities in and through border crossing. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 44 (6), 916–937. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, A. J.
(2001) Transnationalism and borderlands: Concepts of space on the US-Mexico border and beyond. Estudios fronterizos, 2 (4), 49–91. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Groff, C.
(2018) Language policy and language ideology: Ecological perspectives on language in the Himalayan foothills. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 49 (1): 3–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Groff, C., Pilote, A., & Vieux-Fort, K.
(2016) ‘I am not a francophone’: Identity choices and discourses of youth associating with a powerful minority. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 15 (2), 83–99. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, J. J. & Hymes, D.
(Eds.) (1972) Directions in sociolinguistics. Holt: New York.Google Scholar
Hall, K.
(2002) Lives in translation: Sikh youth as British citizens. University of Pennsylvania Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hazán, M.
(2017) Understanding return migration to Mexico: Towards a comprehensive policy for the reintegration of returning migrants. Center for Comparative Immigration Studies. Available at: [URL]
Hill Collins, P. & Bilge, P.
(2016) Intersectionality. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Hill, J. H.
(2009) The everyday language of white racism. John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Hymes, D.
(1967) Why the linguist needs the sociologist. Social Research 34 (4), 632–647.Google Scholar
Hymes, D. H.
(1974) Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Luiselli, V.
(2017) Tell me how it ends. An essay in forty questions. London: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Macias, P. G. G., & Cueto-Calderon, J. S.
(Eds.) (2020) Movilidad humana en Latinoamérica: nuevos patrones, nuevos retos. Transnational Press London.Google Scholar
Makoni, S., & Pennycook, A.
(Eds.) (2007) Disinventing and reconstituting languages. Clevedon: Multilingual MattersGoogle Scholar
Mar-Molinero, C.
(2018, March). Dreamers, borders and walls: Lessons from Mexican transnational migration. Paper presented at Language and Borders: Rethinking Mobility, Migration and Space, Bristol, UK.
Martí, F., et al.
(2005) Words and worlds: World languages review (Vol. 521). Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Mostov, J.
(2008) Soft borders: Rethinking sovereignty and democracy. Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nail, T.
(2015) The Figure of the Migrant. Stanford: Stanford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Otheguy, R., García, O., & Reid, W.
(2015) “Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics”. Applied Linguistics Review, 6 (3), 281–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Passel, J., Cohn, D. & González Barrera, A.
(2012) “Net Migration from México Falls to Zero–and Perhaps Less”. Washington D.C.: Pew Hispanic Center. Available online: [URL]
Pennycook, A.
(2004) Language policy and the ecological turn. Language Policy, 3(3), 213–239. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Popescu, G.
(2012) Bordering and ordering the twenty-first century: Understanding borders. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Relaño Pastor, A. M.
(2014) Shame and pride in narrative: Mexican women’s language experiences at the US-Mexico border. Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ricento, T. & Hornberger, N. H.
(1996) Unpeeling the Onion: Language Planning and Policy and the ELT Professional. TESOL Quarterly 30 (3): 401–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rodríguez-Cruz, M.
(2021) Introducción: Migración, retorno e infancia. Retos y necesidades para el estudio de la movilidad. Revista del Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, UNAM, 55(1): 7–19.Google Scholar
Rosa, J., & Flores, N.
(2017) Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in society, 46(5), 621–647. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Santa Ana, O.
(2002) Brown tide rising: Metaphors of Latinos in contemporary American public discourse. University of Texas Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sassen, S.
(2013) When territory desborders territoriality. Territory, Politics, Governance, 1 (1), 21–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sennett, R.
(2011) The Foreigner. Two Essays on Exile. London: Notting Hill Editions.Google Scholar
Thissen, L. C. S.
(2018) Talking in and out of place: Ethnographic reflections on language, place, and (un) belonging in Limburg, the Netherlands. Doctoral thesis, Maastricht University. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Urciuoli, B.
(1995) Language and borders. Annual Review of Anthropology, 241, 525–546. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Urry, J.
(2007) Mobilities. Cambriedge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Vicherat Mattar, D.
(2020) Europe, the familiar stranger. In J. de Jong, M. Neuman, S. Neuman Stanivukovic and M. van der Waal (Eds.) European Studies and Europe: Twenty years of Euroculure (pp. 17–34). Universitatsverlag Gottingen.Google Scholar
Houtum, H. van & van Naerssen, T.
(2002) “Bordering, ordering and othering”. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 93 (2), 125–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yuval-Davis, N.
(2011) The Politics of Belonging. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Yuval-Davis, N., Wemyss, G. & Cassidy, K.
(2019) Bordering. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Zúñiga, V. & Hamann, E. T.
(2021) Children’s voices about ‘return’ migration from the United States to Mexico: The 0.5 generation. Children’s Geographies, 19 (1), 88–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar