Between the Border and Mandated Hard Places

Identity negotiations of a Mexican transnational in the Rio Grande Valley: Crossing the border daily

“…Yet, there also exists a disjunctive educational experience for these individuals, as the Mexican and US educational systems do not share much overlap. In Tessman's (2016) work, she identified students who live in Mexico and traverse the border for school regularly as transfronterizos. Often with both parents residing in Mexico, these transfronterizos tend to experience two cultural and linguistic realities: one in their English-speaking White context of their formal schooling and the other after school in line with their Latino heritage, including conversing in the Spanish language.…”

“…Alejandra's cultural positioning and always-evolving identity contributes to current literature by providing new layers of analysis to research about transfronterizo (i.e., Tessman, 2016;de la Piedra & Araujo, 2012) or transnationality (Kasun, 2015;Skerret, 2020). In fact, based on her narrative, it was difficult for us to find clear boundaries between these two concepts.…”

“…We had asked this Mexican American young woman if she felt more Mexican or more American, because for the past semester, we had been conducting interviews pertaining to her cultural and linguistic identification. This study seeks to showcase the dialogic relationship and lived complexities, both cultural, linguistic, and political, of what Tessman (2016) refers to as transfronterizo individuals who fluidly move between and across the US-Mexico boundary with cultural positionings in both locales. This case study provides a first-hand perspective of the lived realities of such an existence, giving this theoretical identity breath and lived existence.…”