Transnational Students Facing Multiple Crises: Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Oaxaca, Mexico

Abstract

This article analyzes the impact of multiple crises — economic, educational, and health — generated by the COVID-19 pandemic among transnational students in Oaxaca, Mexico. The article explores the period between April 2020 and March 2021, the most critical moment of the pandemic in the United States and Mexico. Due to the impact of the pandemic on traditional fieldwork, we developed a qualitative, ethnographic, and virtual methodology. Specifically, we used semi-structured interviews conducted via Meet and telephone and virtual participant observations in online teaching platforms and WhatsApp groups. The main findings of the study reveal that students from transnational families faced three major intertwined crises — economic, educational, and health — from numerous places of differential vulnerability related to forced transnationalism, as generated by the illegality of undocumented Mexican migrants in the United States and their subsequent deportation.