Movidas Rascuaches

In the field of Chicana/o arts and letters, rasquachismo refers to the celebration of the sensibility of los de abajo (the underdogs), whose resourcefulness and ingenuity permit them to overcome adversity by stitching together the tools needed to survive from whatever materials they have at hand. In this article, I apply the concept of rasquachismo to interpreting the clandestine border-crossing strategies that Mexican migrants pursue as a way of resisting intensive efforts by the U.S. government to police their movements. More specifically, I describe the types of movidas rascuaches (rascuache maneuvers) practiced by migrants whom I encountered as I conducted ethnographic fieldwork along the South Texas–Northeast Mexico border in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Drawing upon the theoretical reflections of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, I argue that the rasquache sensibility forms an integral part of the habitus of Mexican migrants that inspires the compendium of border-crossing movidas in which they engage.