When
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Title: TBA
Abstract: The financial crisis of 2007-08 and the criminalization of immigration prompted a series of debates and discussions about return migration and the re-integration of returnees back into their countries of origin. Taking a historical-structural approach to migration-return in the Mexico-U.S. context, this paper traces the emergence, acceleration and containment of a transnational working class from Central Mexico. Escaping the creative destruction of rural economies produced by neoliberal policies, men and women inserted into the industrial and service economies on the U.S. East Coast as flexible, precarious and “illegal” labor. Financial crisis and restrictive immigration policies diminished the circular flow of undocumented migrants and increased return flows. Instead of a distinct phase of migration, return is one moment in a tumultuous process whereby workers are alternatively absorbed and expelled from labor markets restructured in the transition from Fordist to flexible regimes of accumulation. The selectivity of return migration reveals how class and gender shape the formation of these new working classes. Gendered subjectivities illuminate how migrants contend with the contradictory inclusion/exclusion of “illegality” in the context of declining opportunities to improve social and economic mobility through international migration. Tensions and conflicts traverse family and community relationships reflecting broader divisions and hierarchies within the Mexican migrant working class. These fractures discipline labor and shore up accumulation.