Migration Management & Transit Zones: Resistance through Collective Migration

• In Event: Graduate Student Research Lightning Round: Social Movements, Conflict, Coalitions

Abstract

In October 2018, thousands of transnational migrants demanded entry into Mexico after marching from the Northern part of Central America to the Mexico-Guatemala land border, with the goal of transiting through Mexico to reach the U.S. border and claim asylum. The media labelled this movement as a Migrant Caravan. In fact, one only needs to type in #MigrantCaravan on Twitter or Instagram to see images and videos of the diverse bodies that comprised this movement – i.e., groups of men, women, children, youth, and families (Varela Huerta, 2020) migrating mainly from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. While the phenomenon of transnational “collective migration” finds its origins in the late 20th century (Torre & Mariscal, 2020; Marchand, 2021), the magnitude, power, and grass-roots configuration of the contemporary Migrant Caravan has led scholars to classify it as a “transnational social movement” or “refugee camp on the move” (Rizzo Lara, 2021; Ramos, 2018, as cited in Varela Huerta, 2020). While regional commitments, like the 2017 Comprehensive Regional Protection and Solutions Framework (MIRPS), were established to encourage “regional cooperation among countries of origin, transit and destination for a greater responsibility sharing in matters of prevention, protection and durable solutions” (“MIRPS”, 2022), Migrant Caravans have continued, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 6,000 people transiting through southern Mexico in June 2022 (Lopez & Cegarra, 2022). These factors make migration in the region a matter of crisis, warranting further investigation.

My paper seeks to respond to the questions (1) how do regional migration management regimes reflect contemporary manifestations of colonialism? And (2) how is transnational collective migration vital to agency, survival, and resistance? My paper has 3 central objectives: to analyze regional migration management commitments and its application in transit countries in the global South, specifically in Latin America (Rizzo Lara, 2022); to illuminate how these region propagates and maintains colonial mechanisms of control (Estévez Lopez, 2014; Marchand, 2021); and, most importantly, to bring migrant and refugee agency to the forefront by highlighting how transnational collective migration are vital to agency and survival and resistance within transit countries (Varela Huerta, 2020). This paper’s dual focus on the global-local impacts of the global migration management regime on transit countries in the global South, exemplified by transit countries in Latin America, and the experiences of those within transnational collective migration groups, like Migrant Caravans, can bring greater awareness to improve regional and international policies by balancing agency and collective security.

By focusing on Latin America as a region in the global South, and more specifically, by looking at the transit corridor between Mexico and Guatemala, this paper seeks to combine an analysis of colonialism and migration to unpack how border externalization and migration management policies within transit countries in the global South are contemporary manifestations of colonialism (Menjívar, 2014; Mayblin & Turner, 2021; Bauder, 2022). Border externalization processes can be defined as “a series of extraterritorial activities in sending and in transit countries at the request of the (more powerful) receiving states (e.g., the United States or the European Union) for the purpose of controlling the movement of potential migrants” (Menjívar, 2014). This process is necessary to explore because “the efforts of the Global North to externalize border policing and enforcement include increasing participation in policing the migration flows of countries in the Global South” (Menjívar, 2014) leading to further insecurity of the migrant. Transit countries are also important because they “play a fundamental role for the receiving countries in implementing management strategies to control migratory flows from the Global South” (Adepoju et al., 2010; as cited in Menjívar, 2014). Therefore, putting colonialism in conversation with migration reveals a politics of exclusion such that there is “[a] return of the colonial time in our age in various forms and its spectral presence makes migration a matter of crisis” (Samaddar, 2020). Secondly, this paper seeks to build on the work of global South feminist scholar Dr. Varela Huerta, by advancing the claim that Migrant Caravans can be understood as “a strategy of migrant self-defense, of collective self-care (Glockner, 2019), as a new type of migrant struggle” (Varela Huerta, 2020) that responds to deficiencies associated with the global migration management regime (Ghosh, 2000) by transforming physical and figurative boundaries of belonging (Nyers, 2019; Rizzo Lara, 2021).

Author

• Natasha Sofia Martinez, York University