Mexican migration, transnationalism, and the re-scaling of citizenship in North America

This article contributes to recent scholarship on the relationship between globalization, human mobility and citizenship rights. The article focuses empirically on the Mexican state's efforts at revamping, promoting and gaining recognition within the United States for a high security consular identification card in the period since 11 September 2001. These efforts are situated within the context of Mexico's broader extra-territorial nation-building project, which encourages migrants' continuing presence abroad and their simultaneous incorporation in social, political and economic institutions in both the US and Mexico. The successes of the efforts are attributed to the skilful political strategizing and lobbying undertaken by consular officials and the role of migrant remittances in the neoliberal project of North American economic integration.