Territories of migrancy and meaning: The emotional politics of borderscapes in the lives of deported Mexican men in Tijuana

Abstract

This article discusses how Mexican deportees find meaning and negotiate their agency in the borderscape and borderland of Tijuana, Mexico. Established through vice tourism, Tijuana has figured prominently as a site for expressions of migrancy. Within the expressions of migrancy, deported migrants find themselves in constant states of in-betweenness in systems of mediation. Through in-depth interviews with deported Mexican men living in temporary male-centric shelters, I identify and examine the issues of mobility ‘through the body’ of deported migrants, highlighting the politics of emotions, of being, and of seeing. Through analysis of the phenomenology of migration through Tijuana, I highlight the overreaching situated positions of permanent temporality mediating the lives of deported Mexican men. This perspective, therefore, sheds a necessary light on an often overlooked and marginalized condition of the migrant population.