| Summary: | The beginning of the twenty-first century is a time of far-reaching global changes;
these changes have tremendous implications for the meaning of citizenship. Increasing
connections of all kinds across borders and between cultures demand the reevaluation of
traditional understandings of the relationship of individuals to the state and to each other
in the public sphere. This thesis uses the testimony of Mexican immigrants to
Vancouver, Canada, (a largely unresearched group at the forefront of these global
changes) to query their experiences of the meaning of citizenship. Semistructured
interviews in English and Spanish were conducted with twenty-seven respondents. Three
dimensions of citizenship were found to be particularly important to this group. First,
these immigrants operate within the structure of neoliberal nation-building projects of
both the Mexican and the Canadian states. Two examples of such biopolitical
mobilization (the National Solidarity Program in Mexico, and the federal multicultural
policy in Canada) are examined in detail. Second, citizenship for Mexican immigrants is
transnational; it is characterized by multiple, simultaneous economic, social, and political
involvements in both Mexico and Canada. However, the actual extent of such
transnationalism was found to be rather more limited than much transnational literature
suggests. Third, belonging to a community is a central element of citizenship; these
immigrants were found not to form a single cohesive community, but rather multiple,
dispersed communities split along lines of class and other identity axes. This research
demonstrates the challenges and opportunities that increasingly common hybrid identities
present for the meaning and function of citizenship, particularly for an ethnic minority
immigrant group maintaining strong ties to their country of origin.
|
|---|
