Forms of social inclusion in an adverse milieu: Undocumented Mexicans in New Haven, Connecticut

“Forms of Social Inclusion in an adverse milieu: Undocumented Mexicans in New Haven, Connecticut”

The aim of this paper is to present different strategies exercised by several social and political actors in a place where there is a relatively big amount of Latino population from almost all nations in Latin America. However in this paper my attention has been focused on a group of Mexican migrants from Tlaxcala, Mexico who live or have been living in New Haven, Connecticut. Based on field work practices in New haven and in Tlaxcala, a good number of interviews were accomplished among migrants with the purpose of getting knowledge about the circumstances they have faced as documented as well as undocumented foreigners while in the United States. These interviews lead us to a number of social and political actors in the two countries who for different reasons have had some interest in the migrants’ situation.

In this paper my intentions are: 1) to give an account of what may differentiate a “precarious status” from a non precarious one in the case of the migrants; 2) what have been the main social and political actors who have become involved with the migrants situation in the two countries; 3) why and how different actors in the two countries have been involved with them; 4) what have been some of the strategies followed by the different actors including the migrants themselves.

 I believe that these kind of issues should be explored much more since they become an interesting window not only to look at the limitations which are imposed upon the migrants but also because they tell us about some of the different resources that exist in our societies to confront some harsh situations.