POLITICS AT HOME ABROAD: THE ENGAGEMENT OF MEXICAN MIGRANTS IN THEIR HOME TOWNS

This dissertation examines the impact that migration has on the political dynamics of sending municipalities. The project shows that at the local level, migrants engage socially and politically in their communities of origin and at times powerfully impact political dynamics there: both from abroad and upon their return. Instead of conducting a traditional comparison of nation-states, the focus is on subnational political change in communities that are dramatically shaped by the economic fluctuations and political idiosyncrasies of places across an increasingly fortified border. Thus, the project engages with some of the most enduring questions of comparative politics from a more bottom-up and transnational perspective. The dissertation shows that migrant hometown political engagement results in a range of different political outcomes in migrant sending municipalities. To identify and explain this variation, the dissertation combines the ethnographic study of a dozen municipalities across Mexico with the statistical analysis of an original survey of municipal governments in Oaxaca and a Mexico-wide database measuring the geographic distribution of migrant collective remittance flows. Cases for qualitative analysis were selected in a diversity of cultural and political contexts within Mexico, including autonomous indigenous communities governed by customary law, as well as in states governed by each of the three major political parties in the country. The findings challenge the arguments of those who claim that through contact with the US political system and culture, migrants develop more democratic attitudes and behaviors such that when they engage politically back home, they bring democracy with them--not only do they remit dollars, they remit democracy. While migration experience does shape the identities and behaviors of migrant political actors, this experience is by no means monolithic. The economic and social importance of migration does often help migrant political actors to gain influence back home, and it can serve as a pathway to power for historically excluded social groups. However, it has proven much more difficult for this influence to translate into fundamental changes in the way that politics are done.