Political management of migrants suffering. New practices by the Mexican State(s) with their emigrants
Résumé
Since the 1990s, the Mexican federal and state governments have been implementing policies offering financial and administrative aid to Mexican migrants in the United States, and their families, with the procedures involved in daily transnational life. The article argues that a significant portion of this aid forms a structured system of federal and state assistance that the author qualifies as “the political management of migrants suffering”. This system of assistance has specific functions, in particular that of maintaining migrants in the body politic of their home country, as well as effects on social life and on the concept of the nation, mainly because it offers a position for migrants as beneficiaries of public policies (and so as citizens), and simultaneously creates “privileges” by allocating specific forms of aid to them.