Neither here nor there: Mexican immigrant workers and the search for home

In this article, I explore how immigrant workers have understood the shift from seasonal migration between Mexico and California to permanent settlement in the U.S. South. I suggest not only that understandings, memories, and the physicality of places are produced in tension with one another but also that the ongoing experience of migration is itself key for shaping how subjectivities and places are constituted through the contradictions embedded in them. I also argue that even as immigrant settlers become more invested in the United States, the idea and experience of a community rooted in Mexico but spanning multiple places retains its appeal in part because it plays such a powerful role in daily life in the United States.