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Cervantes Macías, María

University of British Columbia

This dissertation examines the journeys of Mexican professionals to the United States and Canada, with a specific focus on the cities of Seattle and Vancouver. Drawing from 45 interviews with highly skilled Mexicans and their families conducted during 2021-2022, it explores how participants create projects of international mobility throughout their lifetimes, and how these projects influence their aspirations, understandings of citizenship, and transnational identities. It also investigates the strategies employed by these migrants to establish themselves in multiple locations simultaneously and navigating shifts in both upward and downward mobility in a transnational context. With an interdisciplinary approach building on geography, sociology and migration and mobility studies, this research uses a mixed-methods approach to explore the daily lives of professional Mexican migrants. It combines comparative immigration policy analysis, census data analysis, and life history interviews. The research highlights the importance of education as an intangible investment, which, in turn, facilitates highly skilled migration during individuals’ productive years. By analyzing the role of North American migration infrastructures this research shows how skilled migration policies facilitate the transnational transfer of social capital. Lastly, this dissertation yields insights into the challenges faced by professional migrants highlighting in particular the influential role of social class in facilitating what I call “credentialized mobility” in the North American context.

Text

2024-12-16

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89881

Geography

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/