As Mexican Families Leave United States for Home, Film Focuses on the Children Liz Robbins - The New York Times
go to original March 17, 2016

“Una Vida, Dos Paises,” a film by Tatyana Kleyn and Ben Donnellon, sheds light on various problems people encounter after they return to Mexico. (Danny Ghitis/The New York Times)

A recent Pew Research Center report showed that from 2009 to 2014, more Mexican immigrants and their families, including their American-born children, returned to Mexico than migrated to the United States.

That journey has been captured in a new film by Tatyana Kleyn, a professor of bilingual education at the City College of New York, called “Una Vida, Dos Paises” — “One Life, Two Countries” — which explores the alienation and disruption that results when children who have spent all or most of their lives in the United States move with their families to Oaxaca, Mexico.

In Ms. Kleyn’s research, many families who returned to Oaxaca did so because they could not make it economically in the United States or could no longer bear being separated from family in Mexico. The Pew study, citing a Mexican government survey, showed that 61 percent of the migrants returned for family reunification.

Trailer for ‘Una Vida, Dos Paises’ (Ben Donnellon)

“I want us to think in the United States about migration not just as linear but as cyclical,” Ms. Kleyn said.

The subtitle of the film is “Children and Youth (Back) in Mexico.” She made the film to promote discussion about a growing group of young people who have unique skills and understanding in classrooms in both countries.

Read the rest at The New York Times

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