Abstract

CORDOBA RAMIREZ, Diana Irina. Migrant citizenships: clientelism and corruption in the correspondence of temporary agricultural workers. Relac. Estud. hist. soc. [online]. 2023, vol.44, n.176, pp.136-160.  Epub Feb 19, 2024. ISSN 2448-7554.  https://doi.org/10.24901/rehs.v44i176.1011.

The investigation offered by these pages focuses on the correspondence produced by applicants for a contract as braceros to influence hiring. The qualitative analysis sheds light on the complex political and social controls of citizenship, but also on the opportunities linked to being a citizen in migration. On an alternative level to that of definitions, norms, and regulations, the way in which individuals appropriated the concept and the rights that accompany this category is of enormous interest for understanding the political order that prevailed during the Bracero Program. Hence, this work inclined towards the description, analysis, and understanding of narratives that interweave the notion of citizenship and patriotism by individuals in migration. The correspondence shows the dialogue of the applicants with the formal structures that were designed for the operation of the program, their negotiation with spaces of power that went beyond the binational agenda, the formation of a political culture that adopted the parameters of the nineteenth-century petition and the client relationship -already observed in the 19th century- was institutionalized for the popular classes by the politics of post-revolutionary modernity.

Keywords : Bracero; Citizenship; Clientelism; Corruption; Patriotism.

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