Adolescents de facto deported in Oaxaca, Mexico: mental and emotional health impacts

Journal Pre-proof Adolescents de facto deported in oaxaca, Mexico: Mental and emotional health impacts Marta Rodríguez-Cruz PII: S0277-9536(23)00304-0 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115947 Reference: SSM 115947 To appear in: Social Science & Medicine Received Date: 6 March 2023 Revised Date: 25 April 2023 Accepted Date: 1 May 2023 Please cite this article as: Rodríguez-Cruz, M., Adolescents de facto deported in oaxaca, Mexico: Mental and emotional health impacts, Social Science & Medicine (2023), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.socscimed.2023.115947. This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. © 2023 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Manuscript Number: SSM-D-23-00985 Manuscript title: Adolescents de facto deported in Oaxaca, Mexico: Mental and Emotional Health Impacts Author’s name: Marta Rodríguez-Cruz Affiliation: Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, UNAM, Ciudad de México, México Complete address: Marta Rodríguez-Cruz; [email protected]. C/ Heriberto Frías, 116, Dpto 301, 03020. Delegación Benito Juárez, Narvarte-Poniente, Ciudad de México, México. Journal Pre-proof 1 Adolescents de facto deported in Oaxaca, Mexico: Mental and Emotional Health Impacts Abstract This paper examines the experiences of adolescents from mixed migratory status families affected by deportation. We analyze the impacts on their mental and emotional health when they are separated from one parent in the United States, forcibly displaced with another to Oaxaca, and experience the consequences of their deportation in Mexico. We use a qualitative and ethnographic methodology. This paper focuses on data from semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 15 parents who had been deported from the United States and 53 adolescents who moved with them to Mexico. The data was collected between 2018 and 2020. The main findings show the existence of emotions that are sustained in the transnational flow and acquire new nuances upon return. They also show the emergence of new conditions related to family separation, all of which have an impact on the adolescents’ well-being and on important areas of their lives, such as education. The research contributes to knowledge in two main ways: 1) it addresses the impacts of parental deportation on the well-being of adolescents in mixed-status families, which have typically focused on children; 2) it studies how parental deportation affects the mental and emotional health of adolescents de facto deported to Mexico, a field still little studied. Keywords: Deportation, mixed immigration status families, adolescents, de facto deportation, return, mental and emotional health, United States, Mexico Introduction Journal Pre-proof 2 In 1996, the Clinton administration (1993–2001) initiated a new phase in Mexico-U.S. immigration that placed special emphasis on the control of undocumented flows and which has been upheld by subsequent administrations. Stricter immigration enforcement has resulted in deportation becoming the favored tool for expelling undocumented migrants, leading to a historic number of Mexican migrants forcibly returned to Mexico (Denier and Masferrer 2020; Masferrer and Roberts 2012). Mexican nationals constitute the largest number of undocumented migrants in the U.S.; as the largest number of persons identified as “deportable” (De Genova 2016) by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS 2021), they also experience the highest deportation rates (DHS 2021). About 1.5 million Mexicans were deported during the Bush administration, and 2 million more during the Obama administration (DHS 2021). The fluctuation between open and mostly closed immigration policies in the U.S. has led to an increase in the number of families with mixed immigration status: those with at least one member in an irregular situation according to immigration law (Gubernskaya and Dreby 2017). Recent estimates note that 16.7 million people in the U.S. have at least one undocumented member in their household (American Immigration Council 2021), and that nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants are parents of at least one U.S. citizen minor child (DHS 2021). One element that stands out in the return flow to Mexico is the growing presence of children and adolescents within families with mixed migratory status. They represent an important component of return migration, because when a parent is deported, many parents decide to take their children with them to Mexico (Kline 2016). Recent estimates indicate the presence in Mexico of more than Journal Pre-proof 3 500,000 forcibly returned or immigrated children and adolescents, both U.S.- and Mexican-born (Carrillo and Román 2021). Forced migration of children and adolescents implies a modification of the family structure, the welfare and health consequences of which must be studied. Deportation, “deportability” (De Genova 2016), and family separation are known to cause severe psychological disorders (Nyberg and Vammen 2016; Rojas-Flores et al. 2017). Based on observation of a variety of settlement patterns (Masferrer and Roberts 2012), this research focuses on the flow of forced migrants back to their communities of origin. In particular, the study deals with deported migrants who, after a long stay in the U.S., return to the state of Oaxaca with their children, where they have family and social networks to facilitate reinsertion. Oaxaca has a significant percentage of children and adolescents who have immigrated or returned forcibly (Aguilar and Jacobo 2019: 182). These adolescents, some born in Mexico and others in the U.S., are the subject of this study. They have spent all or most of their lives in the U.S. and have been educated in U.S. school and social systems. These adolescents arrived in Oaxaca with a parent who was deported during the Trump administration, which, although it must be interpreted in a broader historical context, constituted “a moment of intense anti-immigrant backlash” (Álvarez 2017: 162). Oaxaca state recorded high rates of forced return during the Trump administration, with 69,835 Oaxacans deported (Migration Policy Unit 2017-2021), many of whom arrived accompanied by their minor children. According to the Oaxacan Institute for Migrant Assistance (OIMA), in 2018 and 2019, nearly 2,000 children and adolescents of Mexican origin entered Oaxaca from the U.S. (Personal communication, OIMA, December 8, 2021). As members of families with mixed migratory status separated by deportation, these adolescents face imposed changes in socio-familial structures that impact their mental and emotional health. Journal Pre-proof 4 The objective of this study is to analyze the emotions generated upon return due to parental deportation and family separation, and their consequences for adolescents’ well-being. For this purpose, we will focus on three fundamental elements: reconfiguring the code of silence; the appearance of ambiguous loss; and the impact of these elements on school performance, as school is the main means of insertion of this population in migratory contexts. Overall, this study contributes to knowledge about family dynamics in contexts of mixed migratory status affected by deportation, the forced migration experience in adolescents, and the qualitative dimension of the phenomenon of forced return (Sandoval and Zúñiga 2016; Zayas et al. 2017). In particular, the study provides insight into the transnational impacts of immigration enforcement in the U.S. when adolescents, separated from one parent and forcibly displaced with another, experience the consequences of deportation. Scholars show that although emotions are constituted as subjective experiences that are lived internally, they are the result of intersubjective interactions, situations, and social relations (Ariza 2016; Le Breton 2012), so it is not possible to understand transnational families without considering the emotional bonds arising from the migratory experience of their members (Hirai 2014). In this sense, the study sheds light on the emotions that move through transnational flows (fear, sadness, frustration, stress, anxiety) and other emerging elements (depression, ambiguous loss, and emotions associated with the forced nature of migration for adolescents, such as impotence, aggressiveness, and rage). All of these have an impact on the well-being of adolescents and on important areas of their lives, such as education. By focusing on adolescents –persons between twelve and eighteen years old (Cámara de Diputados 2014)–, the research also contributes to studies on the impacts of deportation on the well-being of adolescents Journal Pre-proof 5 in mixed-status families, which have typically focused on children (Lovato et al. 2018; Rojas- Flores et al. 2017; Villa-Torres et al. 2017). Deportability, Deportation and Family Separation: Mental and Emotional Health Consequences in Children of Migrants Regardless of whether children move with their deported parents, parental deportation has a significant impact on children’s mental health in the short and long terms, with considerable effects on their behavior (Lovato et al. 2018; Zayas et al. 2017). These include internalizing symptoms— anxiety, depression, withdrawal—and externalizing ones—irritability, anger, aggressiveness (Lovato et al. 2018; Zayas et al. 2017). Although some of these symptoms diminish over time, withdrawal, anger, and aggression can persist (Brabeck, Lykes and Hunter 2014); when a child or adolescent is forcibly separated from their parents, there are long-term negative effects on their mental and emotional well-being that can linger even if there is eventual family reunification (Gubernskaya and Dreby 2017); and trauma in childhood and adolescence can have unfavorable effects on mental health during adulthood (Zayas et al. 2017). Not only does deportation impact the mental health of migrant families, but so does the very possibility of deportation itself (Zayas et al. 2017). This is what De Genova (2016) calls “deportability,” which subjects migrants and their families to constant fear “by imposing a condition of […] prolonged uncertainty, even if it is never activated in the form of actual detention” (De Genova 2016: 7). Among children and adolescents, the threat of their parents’ deportation Journal Pre-proof 6 arouses fear of separation from family members and generates anxiety and stress (Gulbas and Zayas 2017). Experiences of separation, loss and trauma related to deportability can generate coping strategies among families that are detrimental to the well-being of their children (Zayas et al. 2017: 417). One such strategy is the code of silence (Gulbas and Zayas 2017), which arises in the context of U.S. immigration policy enforcement and is activated when migrants’ undocumented status may end in detention and deportation and lead to family separation. The code of silence is a “shared script among family members that prohibits discussion of legal status both inside and outside the home” and constitutes an additional risk factor “unique to the experience of mixed-status families” (Gulbas and Zayas 2017: 59-67). Scholars have extensively documented that deportation affects not only individual deportees but all family members with different immigration statuses in the U.S., including citizenship; deportation separates families, transforms family relationships, and restructures kinship (Castañeda 2019; Dreby 2012; Heidbrink 2019; López 2019). When deportation occurs, migrants are forced to reconfigure their family structures, which may result in the forced constitution of transnational families: those composed of members who have lost co-residence as the main element of the family unit and who, although living in different social and geographical spaces, maintain ties based on kinship (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002; Durand 2017). The forced constitution of a transnational family has implications on both sides of the border and immediate consequences for the children. Among the most important are the formation of single-parent households and the exercise of transnational parenthood (Nyberg and Vammen 2016). Journal Pre-proof 7 Parents develop different transnational parenting practices to mitigate the changes caused by their absence. Although it is common to maintain family ties by sending clothing and technology, communication through electronic devices (messages and calls) is what allows copresence to continue, so as to maintain a daily bond with children (Oliveira 2018). However, these practices may be insufficient to meet the children’s emotional and affective needs (Carranza 2021). As Boehm's (2016) work demonstrated, when deported parents take their children back to their country of origin, their children suffer de facto deportations, that is, unregistered and undocumented deportations. For those born in the U.S., de facto deportation means losing access to health, educational, and other benefits afforded to them as citizens. Children born in Mexico and immigrated to the U.S. do not have U.S. citizenship, but they are de facto citizens, as they grew up and were educated in the socio-educational system of the U.S., and therefore, they can also be de facto deportees. Forced family separation induced by deportation results in the sudden absence of a parent that children confront as an ambiguous loss (Boss 2007; Falicov 2002): an incomplete, uncertain loss without closure due to the ambivalence between the psychological presence of a departed family member and their strong physical absence. This is an indeterminate, uncertain loss, with no possibility of closure or mourning, nor of accompanying symbolic rituals due to the lack of social legitimacy, which leads to conflicting and ambivalent emotions (Boss 2007). Among transnational families, this type of ambiguous loss is related to what some authors call migratory mourning, resulting from the separation of a person from some member(es) of his/ her Journal Pre-proof 14 separation and fear of stigma, these issues are rarely discussed at home beyond parental warnings to their children not to disclose their circumstances openly. Outside the home, adolescents do not have spaces such as school to normalize their status as children of deported parents or their own family's situation; nor does the home provide a place where they can express the pain they feel about family separation or the concerns they have for their parents in the U.S. The absence of these spaces causes impotence, frustration and a contained emotional pain that needs to be released so that it does not transmute into bigger problems. In fact, we recorded several cases of adolescents who had developed depression related to family separation and had not received treatment, either at school, where there are few mental health specialists, or in other institutions where they might have been available. One such case is that of Anaís, an Oregon-born girl who arrived in Tlacolula de Matamoros at age 15 with her deported father; when we interviewed her, she was already 16 and had been separated from her mother for a year. This situation led her to develop depression, for which she turned to the National System for Integral Family Development (DIF, for its acronym in Spanish) for psychological assistance, since the school did not offer it. Although Anaís had been diagnosed with depression by the DIF more than 4 months before, and despite studies pointing out that it is "as important to treat a case of pain [...] in some part of the body as it is to treat a case of […] depression" (López 2007, 47), Anaís was still not being treated by a specialist: "I'm very sad because I don't see my mom," she said. Another case is that of Alissa, a 16-year-old Tennessee-born girl who lived in Tlaxiaco with her deported father, Javier. DIF had also diagnosed Alissa with depression for which she was not Journal Pre-proof 15 receiving treatment, and this was related to the forced separation from her mother and her own de facto deportation. After arriving in Mexico, Javier noticed that Alissa was changing and felt bad, "she started to get sad, she cries and has become very aggressive, she yells at me," said her father worried. For adolescents, moving from the U.S. to Mexico is not a voluntary decision, which also causes emotional problems such as frustration, anger, and aggression. Alissa felt angry with her father, whom she blamed for the family separation and her de facto deportation: "Sometimes she angrily tells me ‘Dad, I'm a citizen, I'm going back to my mom’s'. But her mother is undocumented and we could lose custody, she doesn't understand," her father explained. Javier preferred not to talk about the family separation following his deportation with Alissa to avoid arguments. In addition, he acknowledged that he too was affected by the chaos that deportation had generated in their lives, and that he did not know how to handle his own pain: "I need help too. I need to get well to help Alissa". Ambiguous Loss An emerging element in forced transnational mobility and direct consequence of family separation is the ambiguous loss of the parents who remain in the U.S. All children experience an ambiguous loss when their parents emigrate. When parents decide to undertake labor migrations from their countries of origin to provide greater economic well-being for the family and the children are left behind, the emotional impacts on children may be less, since these are usually thoughtful and meditated migrations that allow family members to mentally prepare for the separation (Barros 2019). Nevertheless, these family separations have some emotional impacts on the children when they are "left behind", among which is the ambiguous loss (Asakura 2016; Carranza 2021). Journal Pre-proof 16 However, the separation of families due to the deportation implies a sudden and abrupt fracture with devastating consequences for the emotional health of its members, especially the children (Barros 2017, 2019). In the cases studied, although the parents have thought of an economic contingency plan and a strategy to avoid the loss of guardianship of their citizen children in case of deportation, they do not know if this deportation will take place or when, they live in a permanent situation of uncertainty (De Génova 2016). When the deportation happens, it does so unexpectedly and the family separation occurs violently and suddenly, without time to plan it or to mentally and emotionally prepare its members. This implies a more acute experience of ambiguous loss between the children, due to the surprising and violent nature of the separation. The fundamental difference between both types of family separation is that while in the first the separation is produced by the voluntary decision of the parents to develop an economic migration project, among families of mixed legal status in the U.S. affected by deportation, separation is involuntary, since these families "are being fractured by immigration policies" (Barros 2019: 202). Daily contact with parents in the U.S. through telephone calls revives both the memory and the experience of separation and keeps the emotional wound open. This is fueled by the ambiguity between the psychological presence of the parents, on the one hand, and their physical absence, on the other. For example, Alissa was very close to her mother. Before Javier's deportation, “they were together all the time," her father said. Alissa talked to her mother every day on the phone to tell her things. "She's waiting for the phone to ring, but every time she talks to her mother, she ends up crying. Because, at the end of the day, her mother is not here," Javier explained. Journal Pre-proof 17 In their discourses, adolescents express the inexistence of clear temporal limits on the ambiguous loss of their parents. "I don't know when I'll see my mom again," Alissa said. The speeches also reveal the fear that adolescents feel for the future of the family and their own relationship with the parents they were separated from. Alissa was afraid that her family would never be together again and that the forced separation would affect her relationship with her mother. "We talk every day on the phone, but it's not the same. I'm afraid our relationship will break up," she explained. At school, discrimination associated with the deportation-criminality stigma also fuels loss. In a physical education class attended by Anaís, the teacher instructed the students to form two teams to play a soccer game. Anaís tried to join one of these teams, but classmates told her that they had seen her father at school when he went to pick her up and had noticed that he had tattoos, from which they deduced that he murdered someone in the U.S. and so he was deported. Convinced that this was the cause of her father's deportation, these classmates explained to Anaís that they did not trust her because she could also be dangerous, and finally did not accept her on the team. The discriminatory act activated in Anaís the memory of why she was stigmatized. “They don't want to be with me because they deported my dad. I know that's why,” she explained. And this brought it’s the most painful consequence of her dad’s deportation: the separation from her mother, who remained in the U.S. "If they hadn't deported him, everything would be different because I wouldn't be here and I wouldn't be separated from my mom. Then the memory comes back to me again and I get sad," she concluded. When parents are in a situation of deportability in the U.S., there is greater ambiguity and liminality. For example, Scarlett, a 12-year-old girl born in California, lived in Tlacolula with her Journal Pre-proof 18 deported mother. Scarlett's father, Luis, remained in California as an undocumented immigrant. Luis worked in construction Mondays to Saturdays, and in a restaurant Saturday and Sunday nights to compensate for the loss of his wife's income, since, as several studies point out (Castañeda 2019; López 2019), family finances often deteriorate further after deportation. Although the remittances sent by Luis were the main source of income for the family in Mexico, his deportability led Scarlett to debate between the hope of an eventual family reunification and the fear that this would imply a financial crisis for the family: "I'm afraid they'll deport him [my dad] because he doesn't have the papers, but I want us all to be together again. But I'm also afraid for our economy because we depend on that money to live", she said. This constant ambiguity between hope and fear led to frustration, helplessness, anger, and sadness at her family's uncertain future. Scarlett did not know if it was better for her father to be deported, or to stay in the U.S. "I feel trapped," she said, "and that makes me angry and then I get really sad because I can't do anything." Ambiguous loss is accentuated at important moments in adolescents' lives. When relevant social or educational events take place, they express longing for the absent mother or father. For example, Esbeydy was going to graduate from high school in Ixtlán and spoke every day with his father, José, who stayed in the U.S. Through phone calls, Esbeydy told her father how preparations for her graduation were progressing and how excited she was about finishing high school. José sent her clothes and a new cell phone as gifts to mark her academic achievement. However, the ambiguous loss Esbeydy felt was accentuated these days. "I talk to my dad every day and tell him about graduation. But he's not really here. Everyone's parents will be there, mine won't," she recounted. However, when major events occur in adolescents' intimate lives, many of them related to developmental stages, they express greater longing for the absent mother than the father. This Journal Pre-proof 19 may indicate that mothers take greater care of their children's emotional health and that forced separation also has consequences for this care work. Roberto, a 15-year-old returnee from New York to Tlacolula, where he lived with his deported father, was beginning his first romantic relationship when we interviewed him. For Roberto, sharing this experience with his mother, Rosa, was very important because it was the first time he had a girlfriend. He talked to Rosa on the phone every day: "I tell her how my girlfriend is, how I feel," he explained. However, telephone communication with Rosa did not meet Roberto's emotional needs at this stage of his life. As he himself said, "it is not the same, something is missing. It's not like sitting down and talking to my mother, getting her hug, her blessing. This is important to me and she's not here and that makes me sad." Roberto added that he always felt closer to his mother than his father when talking about such intimate matters: "I don't feel I can talk to my father, I always tell my mother about these things," he said. For girls, the ambiguous loss of the mother is accentuated not only during their first romantic relationships, but also when experiencing changes to their bodies -breast development, first menstruation, etc.-. Born in Illinois, Monica was 12 years old when we interviewed her in Tlaxiaco, where she lived with her deported father. Monica had recently had her first menstruation and was noticing how her body was changing. During their daily phone calls, Monica told her mother, Citlali, that she had her first menstruation. Although Citlali talked to Monica for a long time, reassured her and explained that menstruation was part of growing up, Monica insisted that "it's not the same as if she were here.” In the absence of the mother, girls try to turn to other female family figures, but they are unable to fill the void. Advised by Citlali, Monica tried to tell her aunt about her first menstruation and seek her support, but "I am not able to, I am ashamed. I don't tell Journal Pre-proof 20 my father either, I'm ashamed, I need my mother to be with me," she said. This situation caused her sadness, because for Monica this was an important and difficult moment in her life and she needed to be with her mother. "My mom is on the phone, but she's not really here with me, I can't touch her," she related. Repercussions at School In school, adolescents face a difficult insertion due to bureaucratic (Jacobo and Cárdenas 2020), linguistic (Kleyn and Porter 2022) and pedagogical (Hamann and Zúñiga 2021) obstacles derived from the ruptures that occur when they transition from the U.S. to the Mexican educational system (Kleyn and Porter 2022; Zúñiga, Hamann and Sánchez 2008). In addition, both U.S. citizen and immigrant adolescents may experience a form of exile when they are de facto deported to Mexico, as they arrive in a place they have never been or do not remember because they left so young; even if their idea of Mexico was generated and passed down by their parents, this is only an imagined place for them (Boehm 2016). When they arrive in Mexico, English is their first language and they have difficulty adapting to a new place and a new life, and this becomes more palpable at school, where they come into direct contact with an unfamiliar sociocultural world (Zúñiga, Hamann and Sánchez 2008). Along these ruptures, the consequences of family separation and parental deportation can lead to lack of concentration, apathy, poor academic performance, and social integration problems among adolescents. Concern and fear for the safety and well-being of parents in the U.S., regardless of their immigration status, is one of the elements that causes lack of concentration in the subjects. Journal Pre-proof 21 For example, Elissa, a 13-year-old girl born in California, lived in Ixtlán with her deported mother; her father, a U.S. citizen, remained in the U.S. working for a construction company. Elissa was aware that her father could not be deported, but she was afraid that he might have an accident at work. Worrying about her father's well-being caused her anxiety, and this had direct repercussions on her concentration at school. "It makes me very nervous to think that my dad might fall from a great high, or that something might drop on him. Sometimes I can't concentrate on homework thinking that something might happen to him," Elissa explained. When the parent in the U.S. is undocumented, the possibility of deportation increases adolescents' levels of fear, stress, and anxiety, as they are affected by the parent's own vulnerability (Suárez- Orozco et al. 2011). Their concerns revolve around two main elements: the conditions under which an eventual detention and deportation of their parents may occur; and the loss of remittances if this happened. Since remittances often is the sole or main source of economic sustenance for transnational families (Herrera and Nyberg 2017), children may also develop stress due to the family's economic situation (Brabeck, Lykes and Hunter 2014). These elements and the impact of family separation can generate insomnia (Brabeck, Lykes and Hunter 2014; Rojas-Flores et al. 2017), as was the case with Roberto. Roberto's mother, Rosa, worked in a hotel in New York, where she remained undocumented after her husband's deportation. The possibility that Rosa would be deported caused such fear and stress in Roberto, that it had repercussions on the quality of his sleep. "I'm afraid that they will really deport my mom one day, we support ourselves with the money she sends us. Sometimes I can't sleep thinking that it might happen," he said. This insomnia ended up affecting Roberto's concentration and performance at school, where he would Journal Pre-proof 22 arrive tired, as he himself explained: "I wake up worrying and I can no longer sleep at night, so I get sleepy during the day and I can't do things well". In Mexico, such fears remain and adopt a new dimension that is no longer related to family separation. "I am no longer afraid that they will separate us, they already separated us," Alissa said. Fear is now linked to other concerns about safety, health, and household income, which have consequences on adolescents' well-being and school performance. "Now I'm afraid that something will happen to my mom. When I think about this, I get very nervous and can't concentrate on anything," recounted Alissa. Along with fear, ambiguous loss can also cause lack of concentration in adolescents, as well as apathy. Alissa emphasized how the ambiguity of her loss affected her ability to concentrate and interest in school activities. This ambiguity was present throughout her daily life, leading her to imagine the reunion with her mother while indifferently attending her classes. "I talk to my mother and I calm down, but then I get sad because she is not really here”, she said, “in class I look out the window, imagine my mom is here and I hug her and I don't hear her [the teacher] anymore. I don't feel like doing anything." Another important element in their socio-educational insertion has to do with the implications of being the child of a deported parent and their condition becoming public knowledge. For example, Esbeydy explained that in the Ethics course students had to form work groups to carry out a school activity. The students organized themselves into groups of four, as the teacher had instructed, and none of them made room for Esbeydy. The teacher asked one of the groups to incorporate her to carry out the activity. Although her classmates initially relented, they later told her that they preferred her to go with other students because they found out that her mother had been deported, Journal Pre-proof 23 “that she had done something wrong in the U.S. and that they did not want me in their group because I could steal from them,” Esbeydy recounted. The stereotype based on the belief that all deportees are criminals induces a stigma that generates fear and rejection towards adolescents, who by extension are also conceived as criminals. As a result, they are discriminated against and deprived of relationships that would favor their insertion into the social world of the school. This situation of discrimination generated sadness in Esbeydy: "because you feel alone, they exclude you and you haven't done anything wrong,". This is one of the reasons why adolescents also activate the code of silence at school: to avoid the social consequences of their stigmatization as children of deported parents. Discussion and conclusions Scholars have explored how deportation reconfigures family structures on return (Boehm 2016, Heidbrink 2020). However, despite the social consequences of being the child of a deported parent for adolescents, to date, no studies examine how the stigma of deportation acts on them, the code of silence that is imposed at home and in socio-educational settings, and the impact on mental and emotional health. The code of silence remains active and is reconfigured in the new context to protect parents from the consequences of being socially identified as deportees and their descendants as children of deported parents; the stigma of deportation is inherited intergenerationally upon return, as shown by the cases of Edwin and Esbeydy, among others. The lack of spaces such as home and school to naturalize the experience of separation and the adolescents' status as children of deported parents, as well as to release pent-up emotions, fuels Journal Pre-proof 30 Goffman Erving. 2006. Estigma. La identidad deteriorada. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu. 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Journal Pre-proof Table 1. List of educational institutions, levels, environment, and location Name Educational Level Environment (rural/urban) Location 1. Centro de Estudios Tecnológico 124 Baccalaureate Urban Tlacolula de Matamoros, Valles Centrales 2. Centro de Estudios Tecnológico 124 Baccalaureate Rural San Francisco Lachigoló, Valles Centrales 3. Secundaria Técnica 40 Secondary school Rural Ixtlán de Juárez, Sierra Norte 4. Secundaria Técnica 48 Secondary school Urban Tlacolula de Matamoros, Valles Centrales 5. Secundaria Federal Leyes de Reforma Secondary school Urban Tlaxiaco, Mixteca Alta Source: Author, based on data collected Journal Pre-proof Table 2. Family structure in forced transnationalism Source: Author, based on data collected Adolescents N=64 Migratory status Parent with whom the adolescents arrived in Mexico Adolescents with parents who are U.S. citizens, undocumented or have a work permit Immigrants= 39 Mothers = 28 Citizens= 13 Returnees= 25 Fathers= 36 Work permit= 12 Undocumented= 39 Journal Pre-proof De facto deportation has mental health consequences among adolescents The forced nature of de facto deportation produces helplessness, aggression and anger The code of silence associated with deportation generates fear, stress, anxiety Ambiguous loss is accentuated at important moments in academic and developmental life Family separation and de facto deportation affect school performance Journal Pre-proof