Narrative Identities: The Employment of the Mexican on the U.S.-Mexican Border

On the U.S.-Mexican border, the label “Mexican” refers simultaneously to both nationality and ethnicity. Playing with the multiple meanings of the word, border actors construct narratives about themselves and Others to deal with a local hegemonic discourse that states that “poverty is Mexican.” Thus, while border identities are constructed within a culturally specific system of classification, people also develop a sense of themselves as subjects by imagining themselves as protagonists in stories. To know border narratives is important because people generally act according to how they understand their place in any number of social relations whose meaning is narratively constructed.