Article: Negotiating Borders with Valores del Rancho. Latin American Perspectives, January 2008
Summary: Based on an ethnographic study of second generation Mexican immigrants in the U.S. and who have returned to Mexico, Mary A. Petron argues the immigration experience forces the participants to negotiate class status. Interviewees who returned to Mexico found they did not fit in with the lower class or the middle class. As children of the lower class, immigrants felt that they had learned the culture or values of that class such as hard work, saving money, and a commitment to family. Once they moved back to Mexico, with a middle-class lifestyle and speaking English, they felt disconnected from their poorer compatriots financially as well as disconnected from the middle class in terms of values. They therefore found a “third space” from which to mediate their new status.