Sheltering as a destabilising and perpetuating practice in the migration management architecture in Mexico

Abstract

This paper discusses shelters in relation to the migration industry that shapes irregular migration from Central America to Mexico. Whereas the migration industry literature often separates migration facilitation from migration control, we instead position shelters at the intersection of the two domains. We use an assemblage approach to better understand how different institutions, policies, responsibilities, actors and discourses meet, clash and intertwine at shelters. Based on our ethnographic material, we distinguish three significant processes that characterise sheltering practices (attraction, multiple performativities, (dis) location) and analyse how these processes display different, sometimes contradictory, discourses and power relations. With these insights, we conclude that sheltering practices reinforce as well as destabilise migration management architecture in Mexico. They undermine the presupposed 'rigidity' of migration management, but they simultaneously attract violence and control, and incorporate state-like practices of administration and discipline. In particular, the notions of 'humanitarian aid' and 'mobility control' are floating signifiers in these practices in the sense that they are constantly open to different ascriptions of meaning. Following this observation, we consider the migration management architecture as a form of plasticity. Its shape and function might appear to be rigid, but it is able to bend, bow and change in forms rather easily.

Criminal Victimization of Central American Migrants in Transit Through Mexico

“…Migrants who used assistance networks had 50 percent higher odds of victimization relative to migrants who did not. Corroborating what several works indicate (Candiz and Bélanger 2018;Merlín-Escorza, Davids, and Schapendonk 2021), this result indicates that going to migrant shelters has a cost in terms of "being visible" to criminals but does not mean that migrants should (or can) avoid using assistance networks, which could expose them to even greater risks, but rather that this reality requires migrants to take extreme precautions in certain spaces (e.g., in the vicinity of shelters). Mexican authorities should ensure migrants' safety when entering and exiting shelters, rather than devoting themselves to detaining migrants at these transit points.…”

“…The importance of these characteristics lies in the fact that migrants carry out their journeys adopting certain travel patterns that are frequently repeated over the span of days, months, and years and that generate criminal opportunities. For years, criminal groups have examined the way in which migrants cross Mexico, have been drawn to the places where the volume of vulnerable migrants and their visibility are higher and have sought and deployed different criminal activities to take advantage of migrants (ITAM 2014;Casillas 2015;Merlín-Escorza, Davids, and Schapendonk 2021). If the conditions that force migrants to leave or flee from their countries are maintained, the flow of potential victims will continue.…”

Narratives of experiences of violence of Venezuelan migrant women sheltered at the northwestern Brazilian border

“…Living at the UN shelters offered migrant women the opportunity to have a transitory place to stay, resolved their basic needs in this vulnerable situation and facilitated the process of documentation and the possibilities of resettlement to other regions of Brazil. However, it also posed a time of discontinuation in their life projects and a new organization in their everyday life [39]. In addition, the migrant women were living in a community of people, some with different life habits and social behaviors; were subject to rules; and had scarce privacy.…”

“…In addition, the migrant women were living in a community of people, some with different life habits and social behaviors; were subject to rules; and had scarce privacy. The administration and discipline organized by community shelters are not always understood and accepted by all migrants, and conflicts may arise between them [39].…”

Sheltering difference: (un)doing the migrant/volunteer divide through sheltering practices in Mexico and the Netherlands

“…This study aims to delve further into the issue of how these social boundaries are made and unmade through practices of sheltering. This is particularly important since we have noticed that sheltering practices may in fact perpetuate migration management logics (Merlín-Escorza et al, 2021 ). This study builds on discussions around the humanitarian dimension of shelters and positions the question of sheltering within the so-called reflexive turn in migration studies.…”