International Migrant Returnees as Strategists: Mexican Parents Moving with Their Children from the United States to Mexico

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Abstract
This article offers a critical perspective to studies often found in the literature on return migration, especially in the way in which the experiences of returned migrants are narrated and explained. In these studies, migrants appear as defenseless victims, by-products of macrostructural processes, or discarded by systemic forces that no one can oppose. In contrast, in this article, I provide an analysis of twenty-four stories of Mexican migrants who, after residing for extended periods in the United States, returned to Mexico accompanied by their children. The analysis based on the empirical material of these stories provides an antidote to the view that returnees are puppets of the economy, anti-immigrant laws, and restrictive political forces.

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