“Uncle Sam's Illegitimate Children”. the Mexican 1.5 Generation Returnee Migrants Case

Over the past few years, an increasing number of Mexican migrants from the United States have gone back to Mexico. Among these returnees we individualized a group composed by members of what the migration academics call the 1.5-generation: the children of the first generation migrants who were not born in the U.S. In the US-Mexican immigration context, it also often implies that these children are, as their parents, illegal migrants. It is estimated that today in the U.S. more than two millions individuals face such situation.

The case of these return migration trajectories is worth attention at least for two different issues: first, it does not correspond to the conventional return migration to Mexico which in its great majority is composed by males adults who migrated to the United States in a traditional worker migration pattern. Secondly, more than deportees – an increasing phenomenon that implies more and more long stay Mexican and Central American migrants – we identified a considerable group of young voluntary return migrants.

The motives of their return to Mexico, a country that most of them barely know, as they grew up most of their lives in the U.S., are plural. Among these decisional factors, the impossibility of social and economic ascension – Glass Ceiling – due to their illegal status and the reverse family reunification processes in Mexico, play a crucial role.

In this paper, based on thirty interviews with 1.5-generation returnee migrants working in English-speaking call centers in Mexico City and Monterrey, we analyze these new return migration trajectories which interrogate, on the background of the Dream Act debate, the social and economic obstacles that 1.5-generation are confronted with and the role the latter play in decision making process to return to their parents’ homeland.