Historically Rooted Transnationalism: Slightedness and the Experience of Racism in Mexican Families

Abstract

An interest in engaging with what emotions do, rather than what emotions are, and in the pervasiveness of everyday racism, guides this exploration of Mexican family life. Drawing on women's life story interviews, and in particular on their discussions of childhood, I analyse notions of resemblance, slightedness and care within family life to develop the notion of “racist logics”. Attention is paid to historically rooted transnational dimensions of family life as “ways of belonging” to both family and nation. Resulting in private experiences of racism and the neglect of familial and public responsibilities, the discourses of belonging have been influenced by long-term effects of colonialism and migration from Spain.