Mexican Trans-Migrants and Their Experience on Both Sides of the Border: Intimacy and Distance Through Use of Deictic Referents

ABSTRACT

Immigration produces change, not only in sending areas and receiving areas, but most importantly, within the individual lives of men and women who migrate. For those who perform farm labor, these transformations are affected by travel and employment in agricultural work in multiple areas over time. The anchor for identity represents the life of one's past, wherever one might wish to place an emphasis in self-narrative. For the cases presented in this article, the past reflects time spent on both sides of the border between Mexico and the United States. Each side of the border becomes a place of “distant space” as well as “intimate space,” dependent on one's life experiences. At times, memories are still in the process of formation among those who are recent arrivals. For others with bi-national continuity, the intimate spaces of childhood become extensions into adulthood, and for some, the memories of one side might be erased all together and intimate spaces are those experienced in the new environment. When immigrants gain the experience of bi-locality within the new environment, the bi-focal model of this side / that side becomes extended to express nostalgia and preference for places experienced as intimate space.

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