Beyond Cooperation: The Role of Origin Countries in Deportation Efforts, Evidence from Mexico (1942 to 1964)

This paper explains very convincingly, drawing on a wide variety of sources, how the Mexican government became an actor in facilitating the deportation of its own citizens from the 1940s to the 1960s. It highlights the means used by the Mexican state to facilitate the deportation of its citizens: the government chartered ships and airplanes to take part in the deportation of its own citizens expelled from the United States.

In a broader sense, this episode, well analyzed by the author, allows us to reconsider the role of the origin countries of the deportees, which even today actively support these procedures by participating in the return of deportees to their borders and by using violence against them.

This reviewers considers a few weaknesses that should be addressed in a revised version of the article:
1. the methodology should be shortened and not presented as part of the argument, but rather instrumental to the demonstration
2. the initial section lacks historical contextualisation
3. the second section requires clarification on the nature of sources (archives) and their treatment - quantitative qualitative (this can go in the introduction)
4. emphasise and detail the contradiction in Mexican policies
5. offer a segmented periodisation of the historical sequence analysed to identify turning points, continuities and various changes in observed dynamics

From the point of view of the organization of the plan of the article, as presented in the introduction, it is somewhat surprising that the author devotes a central part of the argument to the methodology, which should be explained right from the introduction and applied throughout the development of the article.

After the introduction, the first part of the article begins with an examination of the relationship between countries of origin and host countries, showing that today it can be characterized by the reluctance of countries of origin to readmit their nationals. Nevertheless, it may be useful to first provide some context for the historical period under study before moving on to the present.

In the second section dealing with methodology, the nature of the archival research carried out for this study needs to be clarified: obviously, the author was not able to consult all the federal archives relating to Mexican deportees from the US during that time period, and it would have been interesting to know how the author selected the documents, letters, reports and articles mentioned at the end of p. 9.

Similarly, the fact that the author consulted a great many archival documents (see p. 10 "I examined over six hundred pieces of archival data") does not guarantee that she carried out quantitative research guided by the investigative methods of quantitative history. The many documents mentioned remain quite vague. With regard to the sources that the author uses here, one could wonder about the archives left by the deportees themselves, or about the advisability of conducting oral interviews with some of those who experienced these harsh conditions of repatriation to Mexico.

The heart of the article's argument is found on page 16 and following: the author shows the economic dimension of Mexico's "proactiveness" in reclaiming its citizens who had crossed illegally into the United States. In December 1943, the Mexican Embassy in Washington D.C. reported that these illegal departures were causing the country an economic loss. This explanation of Mexico's proactive policy, which is developed later on in the article (p. 26, discussing the lack of Mexican labourers for the 1945 cotton harvest), should perhaps be considered at the outset. Nevertheless, this same proactive policy of repatriating illegal Mexicans had a cost (assessed on p. 19), and it would therefore be interesting to examine the contradictions of the Mexican policy, aimed at recovering the nation's vital forces, but costly in other respects.

Finally, I wonder about the period covered, which is relatively long (two decades): apart from the changes in the means of transportation, which are well analyzed, it would have been interesting to take better account of the changes observed during this rather long period. Was Mexican policy always so proactive throughout the whole period? Were there fluctuations due to economic and political conditions or diplomatic relations? Perhaps the paper, which is already very convincing, could pay more attention to these variations over time.

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This is a terrific paper. I truly enjoyed it. I would recommend the author to read page 109 of Acosta the National versus the foreigner (2018, CUP) where the author argues that "Latin Americans strategically banded together to oppose any possible restrictions that the USA may have suggested against their own nationals" in the early 20th century. This is also analysed by Fitzgerald and Cook Martin in their 2014 book culling the masses, around p. 76. I wonder whether the author would be able to explain a bit further in one or two paragraphs how Mexico, and to what extent, changed a previous position opposing discrimination of their own nationals in the US. I think the author clearly explains the motivations and concerns about the bracero program and also how businesses in Mexico needed workers, but again it would be interesting to see a bit more, even if very briefly, about how this changed a previous political position in the past or not.
As a lawyer, I find it interesting that Mexico supported the Universal Declaration of Human Rights where, one of the rights enshrined is the right to leave your own country. This might be outside the scope of the paper but was there any discussion at legal level about how not allowing nationals to leave the Mexican territory breached this fundamental right?
Is there anything to say in the conclusion about how the past shows us lessons, if any, for the current situation, notably now that we have two new presidents in both countries and, possibly, a difficult future relationship regarding expulsions?

Please see above.

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