Crossing borders and transforming identities : encountering diasporic Mexicanness in Australia

National borders and identities are interrelated in complex, dynamic and dialogic ways. When one moves to live in a new country, there is a tendency to believe that by crossing different borders (whether concrete and symbolic, spatial, linguistic or cultural), the original cultural identity is at risk of disappearing because of the need to be accepted by the recipient country and the pressures to follow mainstream ways to become a member of the new society. From a self reflective perspective in this article I show that the dynamics of social and cultural interaction create multiple paradoxes that transform the ways identities are developed, created and even invented in the process of migration and settlement. From my own experience as a recent ‘ethnic’ migrant in Australia, I will focus on some strategies developed by diasporic communities to define themselves by making borders and identities fuzzier, and ‘playing’ representations to manipulate ideologies. Through my personal gaze I will question rigid representations of Mexicanness and Mexican culture and emphasise the paradoxical outcome that, instead of borders defining identities, identities simultaneously create new borders and break others.