Guillermo Candiz

Del tránsito a la espera: el rol de las casas del migrante en México en las trayectorias de los migrantes centroamericanos

RESUMEN Cada año, entre 150.000 y 400.000 migrantes centroamericanos, principalmente de Honduras, El Salvador y Guatemala, se desplazan a través de México con la intención de llegar a los Estados Unidos. A fin de paliar la inseguridad y la precariedad que estos migrantes enfrentan en México, han surgido diferentes organizaciones de la sociedad civil que los asisten, brindándoles diversos servicios: hospedaje, comida, sanitarios, atención médica, etc. Dentro de este tipo de organizaciones, destacamos las “casas del migrante”, verdaderos “territorios de la espera” que permiten a los migrantes hacer un alto en su camino “pa’el norte”. Basado en 66 entrevistas con migrantes centroamericanos y con 31 miembros de distintas organizaciones de ayuda a migrantes entre 2013 y 2015, nuestro estudio muestra cómo las casas participan en la gestión de los flujos migratorios a través de la regulación de la “espera” y cómo los servicios que son ofrecidos durante la misma, favorecen la movilidad e influyen y dan forma a las trayectorias de los migrantes.

Towards Dignity and Security

This chapter summarizes the book’s main arguments. It also discusses the unaccompanied minors’ ‘crisis’ that erupted at the United States-Mexico border in the summer of 2014 and the political responses it triggered in the United States and Mexico. In its approach to Central American migration, the United States remains committed to a closed-door policy devoid of compassion, while Mexico oscillates between the rhetoric of humanitarianism, on the one hand, and surveillance and control practices, on the other. Within this context, migrants continue to experience extreme forms of precarity that produce emotional scars, mutilated bodies, and death. This chapter recognizes that in today’s world mobility will continue to be constrained. At the same time, it outlines a few alternatives that may make it possible to liberate Central American migrants’ mobility from extreme forms of precarity.

The Context of Precarity: Actors and Spaces

This chapter outlines the political structures and processes that shape Central American migrants’ precarity in the transnational space that comprises migrants’ homes in the countries of the Northern Triangle, Mexico, and the United States. It suggests that both poverty and the violence perpetrated by criminal organizations and individuals in the migrants’ countries of origin propel out-migration. This chapter further argues that the precarity of migrants’ journeys is related to the United States biopolitics of citizenship, comprising techniques that include the tightening of migration control in both the United States and Mexico. Despite a degree of humanitarianism extended to Central American migrants by the Mexican state, the dominant framework continues to be couched in the discourses of national security and migration control. Finally, the chapter also illustrates that the rise in the migration industry, a spin-off of the United States biopolitics of citizenship, shapes migrants’ precarity in specific, and, at times, contradictory ways.

Trajectories of Precarity and Mobility: Places and Actors

This chapter examines the lived experiences of precarity in the transnational space comprising the three Central American countries of the Northern Triangle, Mexico, and the United States. On the basis of migrants’ narratives, this chapter illustrates how migrants experience precarity in specific places, such as home communities, international borders, the so-called vertical borders, and on United States soil. It suggests that, while humanitarian places may reduce migrants’ precarity to a certain degree, they may also increase it. As the chapter illustrates, precarity experienced in different places of the transnational space may render migrants immobile. Furthermore, the impact of humanitarian places on migrants’ mobility is at times contradictory. On the one hand, humanitarian assistance facilitates migrants’ mobility. On the other hand, as exemplified in this chapter, it makes it possible for migrants who choose to discontinue their journeys to remain in Mexico.

From Transit to Mobility: Characteristics and Concepts

This chapter argues that the concept of ‘transit migration’, frequently employed to characterize the flow of Central American migrants through Mexico, obscures the instability, circularity, and unpredictability of this so-called transitory movement. The chapter advances a model that explains migrants’ mobility and immobility by the precarity they experience. It suggests that migrants’ precarity is shaped in the context of the biopolitics of citizenship and the corresponding migration control techniques, both of which give rise to activities within the so-called migration industry composed of actors who: (1) facilitate the movement; (2) prey on migrants; and/or (3) provide humanitarian aid. In addition, migrants develop certain ‘techniques of the self’ to counteract the immobilizing effects of precarity. According to the conceptual model advanced in this chapter, mobility and immobility are shaped by a combination of experiences of precarity, humanitarian support, and techniques of the self.

Techniques of the Self in the Face of Precarity

Drawing on Foucault’s notion of the ‘techniques of the self,’ this chapter illustrates various techniques migrants employ to overcome the paralysing effect of precarity, shaped in the context of the United States biopolitics of citizenship, on their mobility. On the basis of migrants’ narratives, the chapter discusses such techniques of the self as spirituality, self-concealment, ‘passing as Mexicans’, outmanoeuvring the enemy, the art of self-preservation, and the art of vigilance. It illustrates that migrants acquire knowledge of these techniques from their own experiences or from those of other migrants. Migrants train themselves to become resilient and resourceful. Yet, as the chapter maintains, these techniques cannot guarantee that migrants’ mobility will not be disrupted. Migrants’ journeys consist of intersecting and interchangeable patterns of mobility and immobility, and the two may co-exist: migrants continue to plan and prepare for their journeys while remaining (at least temporarily) immobilized.