Migration movements and policy discourses on Twitter: a case study of the 2014 Central American Refugee Crisis in Mexican context

• In Event: Digital Diasporas

Abstract

Along with the Middle East migration crisis that flooded Europe in 2015, another migration crisis took place in the Western Hemisphere. While migrants from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan tried to reach Germany by the Balkan route, Central American migrants, particularly from the Northern Triangle (Triangulo del Norte) countries – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, tried to reach USA via Mexico. The peak of the migration crisis was in the summer of 2014 when the highest number of migrants that were apprehended at the Mexican-American border, so Mexico issued a new migration act Programa Frontera Sur (PFS). These developments could hardly take place without impacting public opinion in Mexico and we aim to examine a segment of public opinion visible on social networks. Thus, the paper examines content of Twitter messages of Mexican citizens about Mexico's immigration policy PFS and the treatment of migrants traversing the country en route to the United States. The thesis of the paper is that views about trans-migrants in Twitter posts of Mexican citizens largely reflects official position of Mexican authorities. Before proceeding to the answer this question and in order to contextualize the problem, we will provide a review on migration from the Northern Triangle countries and the actions through which the Government of Mexico attempted to resolve an influx of a large number of migrants who were transiting Mexico on their way to the United States in the 2014-2016 period.

Author

• Lidija Kos Stanisic, University of Zagreb