CHILDREN OF SÁNCHEZ 50 YEARS LATER: AGENCY OF TRANSNATIONAL CHILDREN

After decades of overlooking children’s perspective, migratory and transnational studies start including children and focus on their subjectivity. The goal of this article is to expound the agency of transnational children and verify what circumscribes it. The authoress is interested in a particular situation of second-generation children who were born in the U.S. and come to Mexico, i.e. their parent’s place of origin. She also analyses cases of so-called 1.75 generation, i.e. children who (e)migrated to the U.S. in early childhood. Intergenerational decision-making over whether to depart from the U.S. and go to Mexico is a social situation in which children’s agency becomes apparent. The authoress argues that their mobility should often be called placements instead of migrations, due to the fact that adults decide about it. Although the authoress emphasizes the role of age and gender, she argues that migratory status is the most important determinant of transnational children’s agency. Hitherto nation-states have presented minors as “undeportable” and social researchers have mainly elaborated on the influence of their parents’ deportability. Precisely, the inclusion of the migratory status makes this work an important contribution to transnational studies.