This dissertation will fill a gap in the migration and nationalism literatures by analyzing the relationship between emigration and nation-state building. A comparison of two Mexican migrant-sending communities in the 1920-1930s and today will use interviews, ethnography, archival texts, and descriptive statistics to explain how and why political actors manage emigration's challenges to nation-state building through everyday, local practices. A relational and interactive approach will show how migrants' experiences as subjects and agents of nation-state building in the United States affect similar processes in Mexico.