Empire, Neoliberalism, and the Migration Crisis in Central America and the United States

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

In summer 2014, mainstream media lit up over the ill-defined "crisis" of Central American migration to the United States. For many, the crisis—while framed in humanitarian terms—resided in the presumed negative impacts of said influx for U.S. citizens. Lacking in much of the media analysis was a recognition of the U.S. role in expelling Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans from their home countries, endangering them on their journey through Mexico, and egregiously violating migrants' human rights after they cross the border. This panel examines the roles and impacts of U.S.-imposed neoliberal policy in the lives of migrants.
Tania Guerrero
In June of 2014, the unaccompanied child "crisis" became headline news. In the mainstream media, the flight of children from the Northern Triangle of Central America was primarily framed as stemming from a gang crisis, a parenting crisis, and a crisis of misinformation about U.S. migration policy. The structural roots of the crisis of violence in Central America and in the borderlands—as opposed to the xenophobically-defined demographic crisis—include the long-term U.S. military occupation of Central America, the Drug War, the imposition of violent neoliberal policies, and the 2009 coup in Honduras. These (not gangs, parents, or ignorance) are the primary factors in in the migration surge. In this paper, I draw upon my experience as an immigration attorney in Washington, DC, representing clients fleeing violence in the Northern Triangle—much of it originating in the city where I practice law. I explore how the recurrent themes in my clients’ stories of violence and trauma are tied to larger structures of violence. Those larger structures render migrants vulnerable to bodily violence not only in their home countries but also on their journey to the United States, at the militarized U.S. border, and beyond. I argue that by failing to deploy the concept of trauma and its devastating personal consequences on asylees, in conjunction with a failure to understand its relationship to these roots causes, the legal field and those working with migrants, in their different capacities, run the risk of becoming complicit in compounding U.S.-led violence against Central Americans.

Sub Track

• Migration, Borders and Diasporas

Chair

• Adrienne Pine, American University

Individual Presentations

• Central American Asylum Seekers: Survivors of violence fleeing neoliberal US policies - Tania Guerrero

• Violence against unaccompanied and separated children in Immigration detention. - Maricelly Malave, Universidad Para la Paz, Costa Rica

• Prolongando el imperialismo: Plan de la Alianza para la Prosperidad del Triángulo Norte - Francesca Emanuele