Dreaming for Life, Migrants’ navigations through the Mexican Transit Control Regime. Ethnographic study at the Home-Shelter La 72.

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2018-08-01
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en
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Abstract
Every day thousands of Central American migrants cross “irregularly” through the southern border with Guatemala and begin with a journey towards north, where high levels of violence are part of the quotidian experiences they live. Although the Migration Law in Mexico claims to guarantee the safety and protection of migrants’ human rights, in the reality they are victims of practices intended to profit from the control of their bodies and the administration of death. Since the priority of the State is the control of the migration flux through the securitization of the borders and the territory, in their efforts to detain, and expel irregular migrants, these are pushed to undertake more risky and clandestine journeys, becoming more vulnerable to other actors. The power exercised by the state agents gets combined with the power exercised by non-state agents like the organized crime through the use of necro-practices that control the lives of thousands. In Tenosique the Home-Shelter for migrant people, La 72, is an organization that provides humanitarian assistance and works in the protection of migrant’s human rights. At the shelter, men and women, mostly from Honduras, get informed about their chances of accessing to the regularization of their migrant status due to humanitarian reasons, through a temporary visit permit that the migration authority issues to the refuge seekers or to victims of a violent crime in Mexican territory. In this study, I analyze how the trajectories of migrant men that had been victims of a violent crime, changed after their stay at La 72 and their interactions with the stakeholders around it. I focus on the social navigations that helped my informants negotiate and try their chances to get through the adverse and violent context of the transit control regime, and how these navigations re-defined their trajectory, towards the fulfilment of their dream.
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen