The Tangled Web: Violence and Central American Migration

• In Event: New Research in Latino Politics: Here and Abroad

Abstract

For Central American migrants, violence can be a seemingly inescapable reality. The violence in their home countries, the violence embedded in the process of migration and the violence involved in rebuilding life in the U.S., specifically in terms of the positions migrants come to occupy in the U.S. labor force, all lead to the cumulative suffering embedded in the migrant experience. This study traces the injurious effects of such violence in three stages of the Central American migrant experience: the experience in the home country that motivates migration, the transit experience, and the labor experience of undocumented migrants who work in the U.S. food industry. The goal is to understand the cyclical process of violence that is maintained by neoliberalism and ultimately serves to trap migrants in varying states of suffering and terrorization. This project relies on qualitative research from interviews with Central Americans migrants in Mexico as well as in the U.S. in order to capture the entirety of the cycle of the migrant experience within the system described above. It focuses on migrants working in the U.S. food industry, since one, these industries have in recent times come to heavily rely on the labor of undocumented Central American migrants- many times these industries have incentivized the dislodging and migration of entire Central American communities to the U.S., two, the invisibility of workers in these industries, and the violence embedded in the work that they do, clearly exemplify the persistent and normalized systems of violence in which migrants exist in the U.S., and lastly, since the migrant journey is often perceived as complete upon migrant incorporation into life in the U.S., it is important for me to explore the persistence of violence in a space that is considered “better” and ultimately “safer” than the spaces which migrants have previously occupied.

Author

• Linda Alvarez, California State University, Northridge