Discourses of migration control through Mexico to the United States. A (socio)linguistic ethnography perspective in a migrant shelter in Mexico. — The Association Specialists
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  2. SESSION 7: Discourse analysis
  3. Discourses of migration control through Mexico to the United States. A (socio)linguistic ethnography perspective in a migrant shelter in Mexico.

Discourses of migration control through Mexico to the United States. A (socio)linguistic ethnography perspective in a migrant shelter in Mexico. (20324)

F. Daniel Morales Hernández 1
  1. El Colegio de Michoacán, Zamora, MICHOACáN, Mexico

Migration to the United States through Mexico presents many undocumented migrants from Central America with dangers, which have motivated them to move in groups such as migrant caravans to protect and support themselves. However, they face changing-migration policies and translocal strategies that constrain their mobility.

In this context, this paper focuses on the discourses of undocumented migrants from Central America staying in a migrant shelter in Central Mexico. Their discourses illustrate experiences of detention at checkpoints and fear of deportation even whey they are applying and waiting for their visa for humanitarian reasons to be approved.  

By drawing on (socio)linguistic ethnography (Patiño-Santos, 2016; Copland and Creese, 2015), this study sheds light on how migration flows from Central America through Mexico face surveillance and detention through “arterial borders” (Vogt, 2019). An arterial border refers to Mexico’s immigration enforcement strategy in that state agents are stationed at checkpoints along the road (ibid.). Furthermore, an arterial border exhibits an interaction with a US-influenced transnational migration policy to stop migrants in transit countries before they reach the US-Mexico border (Contreras-Delgado et al., 2021).  The data collected through ethnographic fieldwork and life story interviews contribute to research on discourses of migration and mobility regimes (Glick-Schiller and Salazar, 2013).

 

References

Contreras-Delgado, París Pombo, M.D., Velasco Ortiz, L. (2021). Caravanas migrantes y desplazamientos colectivos en la frontera México-Estados Unidos.  El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

Copland, F. and Creese, A. (2015). Linguistic ethnography. Collecting, Analysing and presenting data. Sage.

Glick Schiller, N., Salazar, N. (2013). Regimes of mobility across the globe. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 39(2), 183-200.

Patiño-Santos, A. (2016). Etnografía y Sociolingüística, in Gutierrez-Rexach, J. (Ed.), Enciclopedia de Lingüística Hispánica, 53-63. Routledge.

Vogt, W. A. (2019). The Arterial Border', Lives in Transit: Violence and Intimacy on the Migrant Journey. University of California Press.