Transnational Organization, Belonging, and Citizenship of Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States: The Case of Oaxaqueños in Los Angeles

Abstract

Transnational migration challenges the congruency of citizenship and state territory, because migrants are able to create a sense of belonging to country of residence as well as origin simultaneously, and are capable to practice citizenship across national borders. The subject of transnational belonging and citizenship is all the more important when migration involves members of indigenous groups who are politically excluded, economically marginalized and socially discriminated in countries of origin as well as in their adopted countries. At the same time, participation in a transnational civil society through migrant organizations could offer them a serious opportunity to negotiate citizenship - that is primarily based on rights and duties, belonging, and political participation - by themselves in cooperation with partners below and above national levels. Thus, the central question of this paper is whether indigenous migrants actually organize to improve their social and political situation in country of destination as well as origin, and therefore, are able to negotiate and practice their self-determined citizenship in a transnational context. Based on the data collected from my ethnographic research in Los Angeles, I argue that indigenous migrants from Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca negotiate and practice citizenship through a well institutionalized community based on a diverse network of hometown associations and broad civic migrant organizations which open wide transnational sociocultural, political, and economic spaces to reconstruct the boundaries of local membership and belonging - a process that is quite different compared to other indigenous and mestizo migrant groups in the United States. The basic initiative to build transnational community citizenship comes from the indigenous diaspora in Los Angeles itself instead from political counterparts in Mexico. Here, they collaborate with various political institutions, businesses, churches, and other organizations on different levels (local, state, and national) in the United States and in Mexico. The main object of this paper is to unravel this multisided process of transnational indigenous citizenship building.