Mexican Consular Protection Services across the United States: How Local Social,Economic,and Political Conditions Structure the Sociolegal Support of Emigrants

Abstract

Scholars have increasingly examined the policies that states adopt to forge relationships with, deliver services to, and protect the rights of emigrants living abroad. Much of this research has focused on explaining the emergence and scope of emigrant policies. This article contributes to existing research by analyzing variation in the outcome of one particular emigrant policy: the Mexican state’s delivery of sociolegal consultations and support through its consular network in the United States. Specifically, I assess how the Mexican state’s provision of consular protection services diverges in frequency and form over time and within local contexts of reception. To address my research questions, I conducted a longitudinal analysis of data representing all 50 Mexican consulate districts in the United States (2010 through 2015). My dataset merges information from a variety of sources, such as the American Community Survey, with an administrative database that documents the Mexican state’s provision of sociolegal services in matters related to human rights, penal, migratory, labor, civil, or administrative issues. I find that the frequency of services across these issues varies in conjunction with the social, political, and economic characteristics of the administrative districts within which Mexican consulates operate. Furthermore, I argue that local contexts of reception can structure the frequency of sociolegal consultations between Mexican migrants living in the United States and the Mexican government through three pathways related to migrant incorporation experiences and vulnerabilities in receiving societies. Overall, my findings reveal how local receiving-society contexts can shape the support sending states provide to emigrants.