Suchergebnisse

Granted, critical, empirically-based research on highly politicized criminalized practices is difficult to carry out. And therefore citing the clandestine nature of illicit markets, or often legitimate concerns over personal safety, many scholars and policy makers have turned to study Mexico's security landscape from afar, in places completely inaccessible to those whose lives they so meticulously if un-empirically chronicle. Our collective goal through this special issue is to demonstrate that when examined from the field, these so-called criminal underworlds – fabricated in the safe confines of think tanks and academic institutions – are constituted, rather than by mafia-like criminals, by ordinary people doing the best they can to survive.

In what follows, I summarize some of the most salient points of migration policy and practice under Trump. I must emphasize this is not a comprehensive review of all the Trump measures that have aimed from the onset to restrict US-bound immigration and punish migrants. It is instead an effort to look back at some of these measures in light of the 2020 US presidential election – one that could mark the end of the (current) Trump era, or presage another four years of migration policy rooted in escalating racism and rightwing nationalism. It is also an attempt to express concern over what the return of the Democratic party into office could bring about, given it also lacks a solid plan to safeguard the rights of those arriving to the US-Mexico border or seeking to enter the US in search of protection. I say this not only as a scholar who follows US migration and border policy for a living, but as a migrant who has witnessed how US migration policy's alleged efforts to protect a nation and its people have systematically and historically relied on the depiction of migrants and their communities as threats – a trend that is unlikely to disappear under a new administration, regardless of party.

In Mexican child protection circles the term 'circuit children' has been used to designate people under the age of 18 who cross the US-Mexico border irregularly and cyclically for the purpose of smuggling drugs or irregular migrants. Young people of the border region have historically been involved in these markets. Yet their activities have become more visible in recent years in the context of increased border militarisation, and immigration and crime controls implemented by both the US and Mexican governments. Depicted in official and media discourses as forced recruits of local organised crime gangs, circuit children have increasingly been at the centre of initiatives that seek to identify and treat them as victims of trafficking. These efforts often rely on portrayals that frame them as gullible and defenceless, and their families and communities as inherently dysfunctional, dangerous and crime-prone. The structural and geopolitical conditions related to the children's participation in smuggling, however, remain unchallenged. Most troublingly, trafficking discourses tend to silence the perspectives of circuit children themselves. This paper, based on interviews and participant observation, shows how circuit children, rather than seeing themselves as victims, articulate legitimate, important claims concerning their engagement in illicit markets, reflective of the ways they navigate the complex economic, socio-political and migratory contexts of the US-Mexico border.

In Mexican child protection circles the term 'circuit children' has been used to designate people under the age of 18 who cross the US-Mexico border irregularly and cyclically for the purpose of smuggling drugs or irregular migrants. Young people of the border region have historically been involved in these markets. Yet their activities have become more visible in recent years in the context of increased border militarisation, and immigration and crime controls implemented by both the US and Mexican governments. Depicted in official and media discourses as forced recruits of local organised crime gangs, circuit children have increasingly been at the centre of initiatives that seek to identify and treat them as victims of trafficking. These efforts often rely on portrayals that frame them as gullible and defenceless, and their families and communities as inherently dysfunctional, dangerous and crime-prone. The structural and geopolitical conditions related to the children's participation in smuggling, however, remain unchallenged. Most troublingly, trafficking discourses tend to silence the perspectives of circuit children themselves. This paper, based on interviews and participant observation, shows how circuit children, rather than seeing themselves as victims, articulate legitimate, important claims concerning their engagement in illicit markets, reflective of the ways they navigate the complex economic, socio-political and migratory contexts of the US-Mexico border.

Published : October 2018 ; This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). Under the CC-BY license, the public is free to share, adapt, and make commercial use of the work. ; In Mexican child protection circles the term 'circuit children' has been used to designate people under the age of 18 who cross the US-Mexico border irregularly and cyclically for the purpose of smuggling drugs or irregular migrants. Young people of the border region have historically been involved in these markets. Yet their activities have become more visible in recent years in the context of increased border militarisation, and immigration and crime controls implemented by both the US and Mexican governments. Depicted in official and media discourses as forced recruits of local organised crime gangs, circuit children have increasingly been at the centre of initiatives that seek to identify and treat them as victims of trafficking These efforts often rely on portrayals that frame them as gullible and defenceless, and their families and communities as inherently dysfunctional, dangerous and crime-prone. The structural and geopolitical conditions related to the children's participation in smuggling, however, remain unchallenged. Most troublingly, trafficking discourses tend to silence the perspectives of circuit children themselves. This paper, based on interviews and participant observation, shows how circuit children, rather than seeing themselves as victims, articulate legitimate, important claims concerning their engagement in illicit markets, reflective of the ways they navigate the complex economic, socio-political and migratory contexts of the US-Mexico border.

Current representations of large movements of migrants and asylum seekers have become part of the global consciousness. Media viewers are bombarded with images of people from the global south riding atop of trains, holding on to dinghies, arriving at refugee camps, crawling beneath wire fences or being rescued after being stranded in the ocean or the desert for days. Images of gruesome scenes of death in the Mediterranean or the Arizona or Sahara deserts reveal the inherent risks of irregular migration, as bodies are pulled out of the water or corpses are recovered, bagged, and disposed of, their identities remaining forever unknown. Together, these images communicate a powerful, unbearable feeling of despair and crisis. Around the world, many of these tragedies are attributed to the actions of migrant smugglers, who are almost monolithically depicted as men from the Global South organized in webs of organized criminals whose transnational reach allows them to prey on migrants and asylum seekers' vulnerabilities. Smugglers are described as callous, greedy, and violent. Reports on efforts to contain their influence and strength are also abundant in official narratives of border and migration control. The risks inherent to clandestine journeys and the violence people face during these transits must not be denied. Many smugglers do take advantage of the naivetέ and helplessness of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, stripping them of their valuables and abandoning them to their fate during their journeys. Yet, as those working directly with migrants and asylum seekers in transit can attest, the relationships that emerge between smugglers and those who rely on their services are much more complex, and quite often, significantly less heinous than what media and law enforcement suggest. The visibility of contemporary, large migration movements has driven much research on migrants' clandestine journeys and their human rights implications. However, the social contexts that shape said journeys and their facilitation have not been much explored by researchers (Achilli 2015). In other words, the efforts carried out by migrants, asylum seekers, and their families and friends to access safe passage have hardly been the target of scholarly analysis, and are often obscured by the more graphic narratives of victimization and crime. In short, knowledge on the ways migrants, asylum seekers, and their communities conceive, define, and mobilize mechanisms for irregular or clandestine migration is limited at best. The dichotomist script of smugglers as predators and migrants and asylum seekers as victims that dominates narratives of clandestine migration has often obscured the perspectives of those who rely on smugglers for their mobility. This has not only silenced migrants and asylum seekers' efforts to reach safety, but also the collective knowledge their communities use to secure their mobility amid increased border militarization and migration controls. This paper provides an overview of contemporary, empirical scholarship on clandestine migration facilitation. It then argues that the processes leading to clandestine or irregular migration are not merely the domain of criminal groups. Rather, they also involve a series of complex mechanisms of protection crafted within migrant and refugee communities as attempts to reduce the vulnerabilities known to be inherent to clandestine journeys. Both criminal and less nefarious efforts are shaped by and in response to enforcement measures worldwide on the part of nation-states to control migration flows. Devised within migrant and refugee communities, and mobilized formally and informally among their members, strategies to facilitate clandestine or irregular migration constitute a system of human security rooted in generations-long, historical notions of solidarity, tradition, reciprocity, and affect (Khosravi 2010). Yet amid concerns over national and border security, and the reemergence of nationalism, said strategies have become increasingly stigmatized, traveling clandestinely being perceived as an inherently — and uniquely — criminal activity. This contribution constitutes an attempt to critically rethink the framework present in everyday narratives of irregular migration facilitation. It is a call to incorporate into current protection dialogs the perceptions of those who rely on criminalized migration mechanisms to fulfill mobility goals, and in so doing, articulate and inform solutions towards promoting safe and dignifying journeys for all migrants and asylum seekers in transit.

This article is a qualitative reflection on a series of human trafficking awareness meetings held in a city on the US-Mexico border. It argues that along this border, representations of the human trafficking victim go beyond the stereotypical notions of the virginal female youth, target of sexual exploitation and violence. Rather, characterisations reflect a specific set of cultural and historical forms which further frame victims as inherently foreign, a proxy for Mexican, despite the ethnic similarities connecting communities on both sides of the US-Mexico divide. References to Mexican origin in this part of the United States have historically been used as part of an attempt to articulate social and ethnic difference, often despite sharing a common ethnic past. In the context of American anti-immigrant sentiments, Mexicans are described not only as inherently foreign, or as lacking government-sanctioned immigration status, but also as innately uncivilised, uneducated, hypersexual, criminal and pathological. On the US-Mexico border these characterisations become further complicated by the immediacy of Mexican border cities and their ongoing struggles amid the war on drugs.Collectively, the tropes of crime, violence and inherent pathos historically associated with Mexico and its people have seeped into the construction of the human trafficking rhetoric on the border, and have been quickly and effectively disseminated, despite the absence of empirically-informed indicators. Furthermore, while this practice is reflective of the efforts through which historically Mexican nationals have been othered along the US-Mexico border, in the current context of globalised fears over migrants and national security, human trafficking constructions become another tool of US border control and migration governance.

The article by Blanca Navarrete (DHIA, A.C.) and Gabriella Sanchez (Migration Policy Centre, European University Institute) in this special issue of MPP provides an empirical account of the day-to-day consequences of the pandemic in Ciudad Juárez, a city on the Mexican side of the United States–Mexico border and one of the main hubs for the processing of people seeking asylum at ports of entry along the United States. The article shows that the outbreak of COVID-19, and the Government's decision to suspend all non-essential business, have brought an end to many of the employment options and income sources available to migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. As a result, many have had to turn to shelters, most of which, however, have ceased welcoming new residents as a result of the risks of contagion. The inability to afford housing or to be admitted into a shelter has further exposed migrants and asylum seekers to scams, thefts, kidnappings, temporary abductions, and torture in the city.