Challenges and Possibilities of Emigrante Epistemology: Mexican Immigrants Caught in the Crossfire of Neo-liberalism within Post 9/11 United States

The current political, economic, and social conditions facing Mexican immigrant families within post 9/11 United States have a direct effect on their daily lives. The current climate of anti-immigrant, xenophobic, and racist discourse is perpetuated through mainstream media, political agendas, and even ordinary U.S. citizens and has a direct influence on state and federal policies. This qualitative case-study used a Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework and methodology to examine how Mexican immigrants make sense of the neo-liberal social, economic, and political policies through their lived and educational experiences. This study took place in a metropolitan urban center in the southwestern region of the United States. The use of qualitative methods through in-depth interviews were conducted with each participant in order to gain their testimonios on how they made sense of the economic, social, and political policies through their daily lived experiences. In addition, this study attempted to look at how such lived and educational experiences were connected to transnational labor and migration within the context of neo-liberal ideology. Finally, the formation of an emigrante epistemology was devised from Mexican immigrants testimonios and counter-stories in order to validate and privilege their experiences. Emigrante epistemology derives from Mexican immigrants transnational, bilingual, and bi-cultural identities having lived in a “third world” country near the U.S./Mexico border but is also influenced by the political, social, and economic conditions of the U.S. southwest. In this sense, emigrante epistemology is a form of counter-knowledge that is based on the acknowledgement that Mexican immigrants as a raced people employ multiple ways of seeing, reading, interpreting, and deconstructing the political, social, and economic policies through their daily lived experiences within post 9/11 United States.Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural StudiesDoctoralUniversity of New Mexico. Division of Language, Literacy and Sociocultural StudiesMartinez, GlenabahBlum Martínez, RebeccaCeledón-Pattichis, SylviaOrtiz, LeroyUrrieta, Luis, Jr