Consumer Behaviour

Atravesando Fronteras/Border Crossings: A Critical Ethnographic Exploration of the Consumer Acculturation of Mexican Immigrants
LISA PENALOZA '
This article critically examines the consumption experiences ot Mexican immigrants in the United States, An empirical model of Mexican immigrant consumer acculturation is derived that consists of movement, translation, and adaptation processes leading to outcomes of assimilation, maintenance, resistance, and segregation. By drawing attention to the ways in which international movements of people, companies, and products intersect within existing subcultural relations, this research provides a more satisfactory account of the complex dynamic processes through which Mexican immigrants adapt to the consumer environment in the United States.

The most potent political force shaping the civilization of the future may well be one that has no place in any ideology: the sheer movement of people from one place to another. It is changing the face of the world, rendering old boundaries and policies obsolete, and laying the foundation fora "new world order" quite unlike anything foreseen by any political leader or theorist—a boundary-less world in which people live where they choose. [WALTER TRUETT ANDERSON 1992]

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n the United States of America, a nation born of colonial expansion and mass migration, immigrants have played a key role in the formulation of the national culture and character. The assimilation, or melting pot model, in which people of many different nationalities, colors, and creeds would unite and form one nation, has been the hallmark of this country. In the social sciences, the degree to which immigrants have integrated into U.S. society has been of central concern for over

*Lisa Penaloza is assistant professor. Department of Advertising. College of Communications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 1 19 Gregory Hall, 810 S. Wright St., Urbana. IL 61820. Support from the Consortium on

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