Forced Migration Across Mexico

This book analyses the different ways in which forced migration comes together with organized violence in the Americas, focusing specifically on the migration corridor from Central America, through Mexico and on to the USA. No matter their starting point, most South American migrants to the United States must eventually traverse Mexico, and often many other borders beforehand, to reach their destination. As border controls tighten, for many migrants turning back is not a possibility, or something they desire. And so, when faced with hardening policies, migrants are often forced into situations of increased violence and precarity, without a shift in their ultimate objective. This book analyzes the complex social situations of everyday violence, and increasingly aggressive border controls, which face migrants in Mexico, as well as their exposure to a different kind of violence during their migration trajectory through the criminal actors such as gangs, cartels, and corrupt law enforcements that seek to make a profit from them. The book takes a critical approach on migration policies and on the externalization of borders by analyzing their effects on the trajectories and experiences of migrants themselves. It shows that the more migrants' opportunities and rights during transit are hindered, the more they are at risk of exposure to these actors. Foregrounding the voices of migrants, this book offers fresh insights into debates surrounding migration, politics, international relations, and sociology in the Americas.

An exploration of the deportation of Mexican military recruits and vagrants to the Philippines between 1765 and 1811.

This book analyzes the different ways in which forced migration comes together with organized violence in the Americas, focusing specifically on the migration corridor from Central America, through Mexico and on to the United States. No matter their starting point, most South and Central American migrants to the United States must eventually traverse Mexico, and often many other borders beforehand, to reach their destination. As border controls tighten, for many migrants turning back is not a possibility, or something they desire. And so, when faced with hardening policies, migrants are often forced into situations of increased violence and precarity, without a shift in their ultimate objective. This book analyzes the complex social situations of everyday violence, and increasingly aggressive border controls, which face migrants in Mexico, as well as their exposure to a different kind of violence during their migration trajectory through the criminal actors such as gangs, cartels, and corrupt law enforcements that seek to make a profit from them. The book takes a critical approach on migration policies and on the externalization of borders by analyzing their effects on the trajectories and experiences of migrants themselves. It shows that the more migrants’ opportunities and rights during transit are hindered, the more they are at risk of exposure to these actors. Foregrounding the voices of migrants, this book offers fresh insights into debates surrounding migration, politics, international relations, and anthropology in the Americas.

This book marks a critical contribution to the intercultural dialogue about immigration. Each year, thousands of Central Americans leave their countries and walk across Mexico, seeking to reach the United States. The author explores the dispossession process that drives these migrants from their homes and argues that they are caught in a kind of trap: forced to emigrate, but impeded to immigrate. This trap is discussed empirically through the analysis of immigration policies implemented by the United States government and ethnographic fieldwork carried out in some of “albergues” (shelters).

Human Rights, Hegemony and Utopia in Latin America explores the evolving relationship between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic visions of human rights, within the context of cases in contemporary Mexico and Colombia, and their broader implications.

As increasing global economic disparities, violence, and climate change provoke a rising tide of forced migration, many countries and local communities are responding by building walls - literal and metaphorical - between citizens and newcomers. Up Against the Wall: Re-imagining the U.S.-Mexico Border examines the temptation to construct such walls through a penetrating analysis of the U.S. wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as investigating the walling out of Mexicans in local communities. Calling into question the building of a wall against a friendly neighboring nation, Up Against the Wall offers an analysis of the differences between borders and boundaries. This analysis opens the way to envisioning alternatives to the stark and policed divisions that are imposed by walls of all kinds. Tracing the consequences of imperialism and colonization as citizens grapple with new migrant neighbors, the book paints compelling examples from key locales affected by the wall - Nogales, Arizona vs. Nogales, Sonora; Tijuana/San Diego; and the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. An extended case study of Santa Barbara describes the creation of an internal colony in the aftermath of the U.S. conquest of Mexican land, a history that is relevant to many U.S. cities and towns. Ranging from human rights issues in the wake of massive global migration to the role of national restorative shame in the United States for the treatment of Mexicans since 1848, the authors delve into the broad repercussions of the unjust and often tragic consequences of excluding others through walled structures along with the withholding of citizenship and full societal inclusion. Through the lens of a detailed examination of forced migration from Mexico to the United States, this transdisciplinary text, drawing on philosophy, psychology, and political theory, opens up multiple insights into how nations and communities can coexist with more justice and more compassion. As increasing global economic disparities, violence, and climate change provoke a rising tide of forced migration, many countries and local communities are responding by building walls-literal and metaphorical-between citizens and newcomers. Up Against the Wall: Re-imagining the U.S.-Mexico Border examines the temptation to construct such walls through a penetrating analysis of the U.S. wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as investigating the walling out of Mexicans in local communities.Calling into question the building of a wall against a friendly neighboring nation, Up Against the Wall offers an analysis of the differences between borders and boundaries. This analysis opens the way to envisioning alternatives to the stark and policed divisions that are imposed by walls of all kinds. Tracing the consequences of imperialism and colonization as citizens grapple with new migrant neighbors, the book paints compelling examples from key locales affected by the wall-Nogales, Arizona vs. Nogales, Sonora; Tijuana/San Diego; and the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. An extended case study of Santa Barbara describes the creation of an internal colony in the aftermath of the U.S. conquest of Mexican land, a history that is relevant to many U.S. cities and towns.Ranging from human rights issues in the wake of massive global migration to the role of national restorative shame in the United States for the treatment of Mexicans since 1848, the authors delve into the broad repercussions of the unjust and often tragic consequences of excluding others through walled structures along with the withholding of citizenship and full societal inclusion.Through the lens of a detailed examination of forced migration from Mexico to the United States, this transdisciplinary text, drawing on philosophy, psychology, and political theory, opens up multiple insights into how nations and communities can coexist with more justice and more compassion.

Using examples from the United States—Mexico border, Central America, and South America, this book argues that forced migration is not a spontaneous phenomenon, but rather a product of necropolitical strategies designed to depopulate resource rich countries or regions. Estevez merges necropolitical analysis with postcolonial migration and offers a new framework to study the set of policies, laws, institutions, and political discourses producing a profit in a legal context in which habitat devastation is legal, but mobility is a crime. Violence, deprivation of food or water, environmental contamination, and rights exclusion are some of the tactics used in extractivist capitalism. Private and state actors alike, use necropower, both its first and third world versions, to make people, living and dead, a commodity.

An exploration of the deportation of Mexican military recruits and vagrants to the Philippines between 1765 and 1811.