The Production of Credentialized Aspirations: Familial Strategies in Mexican Upper‐Middle‐Class International Mobility
2025-11-02
This paper examines how Mexico's upper‐middle classes construct credentialized aspirations —intergenerational, place‐based strategies of class reproduction centered on the pursuit of globally recognized educational and professional credentials. Drawing on 45 life‐history interviews with Mexican professionals in Vancouver and Seattle and their parents in Monterrey, the study situates these strategies within the broader context of North American economic integration since NAFTA. Rather than engaging in family migration projects, upper‐middle‐class families invest in elite international education to cultivate cosmopolitan dispositions and transnational networks from an early age, enabling their children to navigate ‘highly skilled’ migration regimes in the United States and Canada. I develop the concept of credentialized aspirations to describe how the iterative accumulation of credentials—degrees, language proficiency, and professional experience—functions as a mechanism for sustaining social mobility under conditions of neoliberal uncertainty. This analysis reveals how regional integration, private education infrastructures, and meritocratic migration policies intersect to shape the geographies of privilege and mobility in North America. By foregrounding the Mexican case, the paper advances population geography scholarship on aspirations and mobility, demonstrating how elite reproduction operates through localized practices that are deeply entwined with transnational imaginaries of success.