Citizenship in the Global South: Policing Irregular Migrants and Eroding Citizenship Rights in Mexico

Abstract

Research on the consequences of being an undocumented migrant has focused mostly on the experiences of migrants in the Global North. Examination of experiences in Mexico reveals the export by the United States of a transnational regime of illegality that has transformed the citizenship rights of Mexican migrants in their own territory.

La investigación sobre las consecuencias de ser un migrante indocumentado se ha centrado principalmente en las experiencias de los migrantes en el Norte Global. El examen de las experiencias en México revela la exportación por los Estados Unidos de un régimen transnacional de ilegalidad que ha transformado los derechos de ciudadanía de los migrantes mexicanos en su propio territorio.

Keywords

Illegality Citizenship Migration Transnationalization Mexico

Historically, the Mexican government has advocated for the rights of Mexican migrants in the United States. In a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, President Enrique Peña Nieto applauded an executive order intended to shield millions of migrants from deportation, calling it “an act of justice” (Shear and Archibold, 2015).¹ This interest in the fate of migrants is shaped in part by the fact that approximately 10 percent of Mexico’s population lives in the United States and 39 percent of Mexicans have friends or relatives there (Pew Research Center, 2009). Moreover, in 2012 Mexico received US$23 billion in remittances from Mexican residents of the United States (Cohn, Gonzalez-Barrera, and Cuddington, 2013), making it the fourth-largest recipient of remittances in the world (Ratha et al., 2013).

While Mexico values this migration and the sending of remittances, it has developed draconian ways of preventing Central and South American migrants, in particular, from traversing the nation to get to the United States. Today it detains more Central Americans than the United States (Stevenson and Arce, 2015). This trend is the result of the active collaboration of the Mexican and U.S. governments to “thicken” the U.S. border, with Mexico becoming the buffer zone (Andreas, 2003: 10). This process has been referred to as the “externalization of borders”—“extraterritorial activities in sending and in transit countries at the request of the (more powerful) receiving states (e.g., the United States or the European Union) for the purpose of controlling the movement of potential migrants” (Menjívar, 2014: 357).

In theory, Mexican citizens should have no problem traveling through their own country on their way north, yet Mexican migrants share with many migrants from Central and South America the prospect of violence, assault, and kidnapping within Mexico. For example, in 2012, during hearings of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, 2013: 78), the father of a young Mexican migrant said:

I am here representing the 21 missing migrants from San Luis de la Paz, Guanajuato, one of whom is my son. He left along with 20 other migrants, headed for the United States by way of Tamaulipas. They disappeared on March 21, [2011,] when the buses on which they were traveling were hijacked. We never heard from or about them again.

In this report Mexican citizens exposed the violence they had been subjected to as they traveled north within Mexico on their way to the U.S.-Mexico border.

This article will show how U.S. immigration law, which treats certain migrants as illegal, becomes transnationalized, shaping the treatment of Mexican migrants in their own country. The deterioration of formal citizenship rights for Mexicans within Mexican territory is a direct consequence of U.S. efforts to externalize its border policing and enforcement.

Unauthorized Migration, Illegality, and Citizenship in the Global South

U.S. immigration law has, as a result of the limits it has imposed on the legal admission and residence of some migrants (especially those from Mexico), produced a regime of illegality, a social system established and maintained by the U.S. state through the organization and management of migrants according to their legal status vis-à-vis the United States. This regime systematically produces a significant number of migrants outside the law (De Genova, 2004), with few (if any) means to adjust their status, and the constant pursuit and apprehension, imprisonment, and deportation of these migrants. In the United States in particular, immigration law and policies have “significantly restrictive features” that hinder the legal migration of Mexicans to the United States (De Genova, 2004: 160) and have therefore constructed undocumented Mexican workers in particular as “a caste, unambiguously situated outside the boundaries of formal membership and social legitimacy” (Ngai, 2005: 2). Under what some scholars have called the “deportation regime,” “immigration law enforcement has rendered even greater numbers and even more diverse categories of migrants subject to arrest, detention, and deportation” (Peutz and De Genova, 2010: 1). While their analysis focuses on the immigration laws and policies of the bounded nation-state, the deportation regime has consequences beyond the nation-state as deportations become key in the international policing of populations (Walters, 2002).

The enforcement of the regime of illegality has had serious consequences for the unauthorized population in the United States, ranging from fear and stigma (Abrego, 2011) and the creation of spaces of nonexistence (Coutin, 2003) to violence (Menjívar and Abrego, 2012) and even death (Coutin, 2005). It has effectively produced a distinction between citizen and noncitizen that places noncitizens, regardless of their legal status in the United States, at risk of deportation (Trinh, 2005). Scholars have begun to consider illegality as an international regime in that it has elicited “convergent norms and expectations” (Haggard and Simmons, 1987) and cooperation between countries (Hasenclever, Mayer, and Rittberger, 1997) with regard to unauthorized migration. Yet, most research remains nation-state-centric and focused on the countries of the Global North.

The migration literature has been criticized for its focus on individual actors, often neglecting the role of the state in shaping migratory flows (Zolberg, 1999). Even research that considers the role of the state in shaping immigration policy and laws has tended to be nation-centric. Scholars of transnationalism have called this “methodological nationalism”—“the naturalization of the nation-state by the social sciences” (Wimmer and Schiller, 2003: 576). The literature on the externalization of borders (Menjívar, 2014) has focused on the way the United States and Europe rely on patrolling and enforcing their borders beyond their physical locations—suggesting increasing reliance on interstate relations in the shaping of migratory flows.

The efforts of the Global North to externalize border policing and enforcement include increasing participation in policing the migration flows of countries in the Global South. While countries in the South considered “transit countries” for serving as passages for migrants on their way to countries of destination are becoming key in shaping unauthorized migration flows, the literature on transit migration has been limited by the “attempt to group a heterogeneous array of migration processes, migrants, potential migrants and countries around a limited series of largely undefined commonalities involving illegality, high risk, lack of control and above all an assumed desire to reach European territory” (Collyer, Düvell, and De Haas, 2012: 5). This critique may also be applied to the literature on migrants attempting to reach the United States through Mexico, which is focused on the experiences of Central and South Americans (Alba and Castillo, 2012).

Recent work has begun to document the global consolidation of illegality in major immigrant-receiving countries. For example, studies have exposed the constructions of illegality of African immigrants in Italy and Spain (Calavita, 2005), unauthorized Latin American immigrants in Israel (Willen, 2007), and immigrants in Britain (Sigona, 2012). How constructions of illegality in one context (e.g., the United States) shape such constructions in another context (e.g., Mexico), however, remains understudied. While the externalizing of border controls has been the subject of study (for a review see Menjívar, 2014), the consequences of the extension of the U.S. legal system beyond its national territory (Raustiala, 2009: 5) continue to be unclear.

In examining Mexico’s role as a transit country for irregular migrants, it is important to look at the way its historical relationship to the United States has influenced its immigration stance. Its historically weaker position vis-à-vis the United States has shaped its nationality law, which it has used to attempt to protect itself from foreign intervention (Fitzgerald, 2005: 175). Mexico’s experiences with important nineteenth-century foreign interventions—from France (in 1836) and Spain and Britain (in 1862)—prompted it to restrict the rights of foreigners when it was a country of immigration, and by the twentieth century, when it had become a country of emigration, it sought to close its doors to future immigration flows (González-Murphy and Koslowski, 2011). In 1974 it effectively excluded immigrants through revisions of the General Law of Population of 1947 that, among other provisions, criminalized irregular migrants in Mexico. This law remained in place for the next 30 years.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, Mexico had to change its stance toward unauthorized migration within Mexico. In 2000, as President Vicente Fox attempted to negotiate immigration reform with his counterparts in the United States, critics argued that Mexico treated unauthorized migrants traveling through its territory far worse than the United States (Grayson, 2002). Pressured by this critique, Mexico undertook a series of reforms to its immigration laws. In 2008 it decriminalized irregular migrant presence in Mexico, recognizing that the issue of transit migration needed attention. In 2011 it finally accepted its “obligation to ensure humane conditions for migrants through Mexico” (Alba, 2013), partly in recognition of its contradictory stance as a promoter and defender of migration while simultaneously violating the rights of Central and South American migrants in transit. It defined migrants as “bearers of rights regardless of their migratory status” and stipulated that “under no circumstances is irregular migratory status itself a crime” (INM, 2012a).

In Mexico as in many parts of the world, citizenship is an ongoing project, often forged by social movements (Dagnino, 2017). The relationship between citizenship and illegality has been little explored. In part, the neglect has its roots in the notion that illegality in Mexico is limited to the irregular migration of Central Americans en route to the United States The experiences of Mexicans traveling north is “one of the most neglected and misunderstood aspects of Latin American migration”(Jácome, 2008: 2). In the past century Mexico has seen millions of its nationals pass through its territory on their way to the United States In this context, Mexico is a transit country for Mexicans. Because the right of Mexican citizens to travel within their own territory is taken for granted, little attention has been given to the way the regime of illegality shapes migrants in transit within their own country.

This article makes three important contributions to the literature on migrant illegality and citizenship. First, I show how the United States pressures Mexico into policing illegality in Mexico, effectively creating a transnational regime of illegality. Second, I describe the way citizenship and illegality are policed in Mexico. Finally, I discuss the consequences of this transnational regime of illegality.

From June 2009 to August 2010 I conducted participant observation at the Juntos en el Camino migrant help center in Mexicali, which aids thousands of migrants every year. The services include providing food, coffee, water, or an aspirin, free phone calls, free bus tickets to their hometowns, and referrals to shelters in the city. The center is part of a network of Catholic Church centers throughout Mexico known as the Dimension Pastoral de la Movilidad Humana (Pastoral Dimension of Human Mobility) (Olayo-Méndez, Haymes, and Vidal de Haymes, 2014). The data used in this article come from the daily field notes I wrote while conducting some 1,500 hours of participant observation there, mainly from conversations I had with migrants while they waited to use the center’s services. Since the center was located just across the U.S.-Mexico border, I met only Mexican migrants who were either attempting to cross into the United States or had been deported from there.

Historically, California had been the most popular crossing point for unauthorized migrants, but this changed in the 1990s with the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. By 2000 most migrants were being apprehended in Arizona (Orrenius, 2004). During my time at the help center, the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP, 2009) reported having apprehended 613,161 migrants (Mexicans and others) in the El Centro sector, in which Mexicali is located, about 6.7 percent of the migrants apprehended on the border during this period. During this same period, Mexico’s Department of State reported 658,430 deportations of Mexican nationals to Mexico, and about 10 percent (66,301) of these migrants were deported to Mexicali (INM, 2009). The migrant help center reported observing 17,834 of these deportations and serving a total of 6,602 migrants, some of whom had been apprehended in other sectors of the border. In addition to participant observation, I had access to the stories that some migrants wrote down and left at the center to be forwarded to the local human rights chapter in Mexicali. I also looked at newspaper articles, government reports, and the reports of nonprofit organizations and human rights organizations in Mexico.

“Thickening” the U.S.-Mexico Border

The United States has constructed unauthorized migrants as illegal (De Genova, 2004) and exported this construction globally, where it shapes the ways poor and working-class migrants are treated outside of U.S. territory. The Merida Initiative marks a point of departure in terms of the unprecedented level of U.S. cooperation, funding, and involvement in Mexico. The initiative, a partnership between the United States and Mexico “to fight organized crime and associated violence while furthering respect for human rights and the rule of law,” has funneled US$2.3 billion into Mexico since 2008 (U.S. Department of State, 2014). At the same time, it has produced unprecedented negotiation, cooperation, and tension between the U.S. and Mexican governments (Boyce, Banister, and Slack, 2015). While the focus is on “organized crime,” an important component is “creating a twenty-first-century border.”

The twenty-first-century border has been envisioned as one that is open to capital and people with permits to travel across state lines and closed to unauthorized flows. In order to accomplish this, the United States has sought to provide “professionalization programs” and “non-intrusive technologies” (U.S. Embassy, 2015) to the Mexican state. To date, U.S. assistance at the southern border has included capacity-building courses for Mexican law enforcement, air mobility for the Mexican police, and scanners, X-ray machines, and other nonintrusive inspection equipment (U.S. Department of State, 2014). While at the discursive level the focus has been on organized crime, in reality the United States is also very keen on pressuring Mexico to slow down the migratory flows from Central and South America. In fact, in 2014 Ambassador Thomas A. Shannon stated that one of the strategies used to “stem the flows of migrants” was “improving the ability of Mexico and Guatemala to interdict migrants before they cross into Mexico and enter the established smuggling routes that move the migrants to our border” (Shannon, 2014).

These pressures effectively “thicken” the U.S. border, and funding from the Merida Initiative includes funding for this (Andreas, 2003). Under the umbrella of the initiative, U.S. immigration officers have trained Mexican immigration officers. For example, “in March 2010, ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] conducted a defensive tactics and officer safety training course for Mexican immigration (INAMI) officers” (ONDCP, 2010: 27). Moreover, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “is assisting Mexican Customs in developing investigator training programs and the State Department has provided over 300 canines to assist with the inspections” (Seelke and Finklea, 2014: 20). With ample funding and support from the United States, the Mexican government has implemented its own Southern Border Plan, initially presented as an attempt to protect the rights of Central American migrants and unaccompanied minors crossing into Mexico by preventing them from boarding the train known as the Beast. Reports indicate that this plan also involves three security cordons that stretch more than 100 miles north of the Mexico-Guatemala and Mexico-Belize borders. The U.S. State Department has already provided US$10.1 million for these efforts (Seelke and Finklea, 2014). The plan has been widely criticized because migrants unable to board the Beast continue to travel, looking for new paths to avoid the state (Mandujano, 2015).

The twenty-first-century border and the Southern Border Plan justify state contact with all people in their travels through Mexico, especially those who travel by land (who are more likely to be of limited means). Yet even those who travel by air must encounter the transnational reach of the regime of illegality. For example, the Merida Initiative provides funding for enhanced security at airports in Mexico City and throughout the country (ONDCP, 2009): “ICE worked closely with CBP and Mexican Customs to re-invigorate Operation Firewall at the Mexico City International Airport” (ONDCP, 2010: 26). Thus, all Mexicans encounter the regime of illegality as they leave their country. However, because those with visas are exposed to this kind of “border check point” only once, during their inspection at the point of entry/exit, their experiences of the thickening of the U.S.-Mexico border are vastly different. Poor and working-class Mexicans who travel by land must continually experience the thickening of the border throughout their journey north.

Policing Citizenship in Mexico

As the United States has expanded the territorial reach of illegality by thickening the U.S. border, Mexico has filtered irregular migration from Central and South America and the Caribbean. It requires travelers from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti—eight of the countries with the greatest number of undocumented immigrants arrested in the United States—to obtain permits or visas (INM, 2012b). As a consequence of this requirement, Mexico deported more than 86,000 foreigners in 2012, 93.6 percent to Central America (SEGOB, 2013). Because they are explicit targets of immigration control, Central American migrants face significant abuse in Mexico. The consequences for Mexican citizens have received less attention.

Immigration laws in Mexico as in the United States (Gilboy, 1991; Heyman, 2009) are enforced by “street-level bureaucrats”(Lipsky, 2010) who determine how they are applied. The Mexican state also adopts the ideology of illegality, often treating Mexican migrants as illegal even in Mexico. The Instituto Nacional de Migración (Mexican Immigration Institute—INM), policing nationals within Mexican territory, often takes a stance of hypervigilance to ensure that Mexican migrants are really from Mexico. Migrants suspected of not being Mexican often have to prove to the United States that they are Mexican, and when they are deported to Mexico the INM also asks them to do so. Evaluations of who looks Mexican or suspicious are often made when a migrant is dark-skinned. For example, one migrant delivered to the INM to be deported was first asked where he was from, and when he answered “Veracruz” the INM officer continued: “What is a famous place in Veracruz?” and then “Name a famous river” and “Who is the governor of Veracruz?” Only when the migrant had responded correctly to some of these questions did the INM officer open the door for him to walk back into Mexico. In addition to his lack of identification, it may have been his dark complexion or his accented Spanish that rendered him suspect. Because the questions are based on local geographical and political knowledge that poor or working-class Mexicans may not have, they tend to discriminate against migrants in this position. Not being able to prove one’s citizenship with an identification card from the Federal Institute of Elections can have terrible consequences—from a fine to jail time to deportation. Rosa, 20 year-old woman from Chiapas, recounts her story:

I left Chiapas at 1:20 p.m., and arriving in Mexico City, the officers from Immigration detained me because they claimed that I was from Guatemala and that I had fake documents. They asked if I had any money, and I told them that I did. They told me that I had to give them the money or they were going to send me to prison for eight years. Like that, they took me to a little hall and a woman searched me discreetly and took the money, 1,750 pesos [about US$150], but they let me go. But arriving in Tijuana, I was detained again and they told me the same thing: that I was from Guatemala. They detained me for a long time, too, at the airport, and then they took me to where they imprison you. I was imprisoned for four days. They let me go because my aunt called them and threatened them that if they did not let me go, she was going to come and file a complaint [against them]. So they let me go within half an hour. They let me go, but without any money. I was lost in Tijuana until a man from a brothel found me at an Oxxo [store] and took me to his house with his wife. They helped me.

Rosa was charged with being Guatemalan because she looked indigenous. Thus the intense focus on Central Americans for deportation has consequences not only for Central Americans traveling through Mexico but also for Mexicans traveling north.

Ultimately, Mexican citizenship is determined by local immigration officers using U.S. notions of illegality—positing migrants as outside of the law—to distinguish Mexicans from others. For Mexican migrants returning through deportation, the “Repatriation” program offers information and orientation, water and food, connections with the Mexican Consulate, and phone calls to communicate with family members (INM, 2007), but only after the legitimacy of their citizenship claims has been determined. The identification cards that are key to proving one’s citizenship are often left behind or lost. In many ways, this situation violates Mexicans’ citizenship rights under the constitution.

When Mexican migrants are deported from the United States, the stigma of being illegal aliens does not completely disappear once they are back in Mexico, where they are entitled to the full protection of the law. It may shape how migrants behave even once they have returned to their native country. Illegality is, after all, not only a sociopolitical status but also a “mode of being” (Willen, 2007). It shapes migrants from the moment they leave their hometowns: the way they travel (since they cannot travel by plane), what they carry (since they cannot bring documents that could be used against them by the U.S. or Mexican authorities or by criminals), and the way others see them (as migrants attempting to cross illegally). The ideology of illegality is so prevalent along the border that even at the help centers migrants are sometimes treated poorly. For example, Reynaldo and Tobias had been deported together and become good friends. At the migrant shelter where they spent the night after being returned, they were sweeping the eating area, taking turns with the single broom, when the man in charge of the shelter said to Tobias, “If you’re not going to do anything, what do I want you here for?” Feeling insulted, Tobias left the shelter without breakfast.

Beyond the stigma of being illegal, the everyday reality of these migrants is fraught with violence, in part because as “bodies out of place” they are the prime targets of abuse (Slack, 2016: 1) at the hands of police officers, members of organized crime groups, smugglers, robbers, private businesses, and even nonprofit organizations. Migrants are particularly vulnerable in Mexico because of police corruption. In fact, a national poll has revealed that, along with the political parties, the police are viewed as the most corrupt institutions in Mexico (Transparency, 2010). For example, a man from Sinaloa came to the center with the following complaint:

I am reporting that I was beaten yesterday by the police at 4 p.m. [Three police officers detained me.] They did not take me to the police headquarters. They took me about four blocks to the front of a pharmacy and told me that I had to pay a fine of 1,200 pesos. and that is when they took the 6,000 pesos and then let me go. They took my shoes, my socks, and 6,000 pesos [about US$500] and handcuffed me. So I am asking them to return the money.

Almost all of the Mexican security apparatus is involved in the harassment and abuse of migrants, from local police officers to immigration officers (Moreno-Mena and Arriaga-Martinez, 2009).

Not having identification can create other problems for migrants, such as not being able to receive money from relatives. They must rely on others with proper identification to get them the money they have been wired from other parts of Mexico or from the United States, and sometimes these helpers rob them. Zacarías, for example, had been deported to Tijuana and had no identification. Someone on the street had offered to help him get his money and had gone off with the required code and never come back.

Kidnapping is frequent and may be transnational, with criminals kidnapping people in Mexico but asking for ransom in the United States. For example, four men were kidnapped in Tijuana, including Ramiro, a 32-year-old man from Michoacán had lived in the United States for 22 years, and Rogelio, a 43-year-old from Guerrero who had lived in the United States for 21 years. Ramiro tells their story:

I was looking for someone to cross me over to the United States, and then I found someone in downtown Tijuana who offered to cross me through the line in San Ysidro. It was a couple that took me to a hotel, and they were treating me really nice. But then later they took me to a neighborhood called Florido and they put us [four men] in a minivan, and when they started driving they took out guns and told us that we were fucked. They told us not to look anywhere, and they took us to an empty house and then covered our faces so we couldn’t see it. When we were finally inside, they beat us up. On Monday, February 22, 2010, the kidnappers told us to call our family members on the other side [the United States] to ask [them] for money. They told us to pretend that we had already crossed, as if we were already in San Ysidro, and with a gun to my head, I called. They let us go when they got the money (US$3,000). They drove us, again with our eyes covered, and gave us money to buy bus tickets to Mexicali and threatened that if we ever came back to Tijuana they were going to kill us. They also told us that they had the police paid [off].

Poor and working-class migrants who cross unauthorized are placed in a precarious situation, as organized crime profits from kidnapping migrants. Kidnappers and smugglers were often hard to tell apart, and migrants seeking to enter the United States unauthorized were often prey to people pretending to be smugglers, promising them to cross them but kidnapping them instead.

In summary, both state actors such as police and immigration officers and nonstate actors such as kidnappers mistreat Mexican nationals on their way to the United States. The illegalization of their travel through Mexico on the basis of U.S. constructions of illegality has become extraterritorialized, creating the opportunity for abuse and thus adding to the “multiple layers that make up the continuum of violence” (Slack and Whiteford, 2011: 13).

Extending the Boundaries of Illegality Transnationally

Slack et al. (2016) have argued that this violence is a component (not just a consequence) of the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. In addition, these migrants are also targeted by organized crime, robbers, and other unscrupulous people taking advantage of their vulnerability. Although Mexico changed its laws in 2008 and 2011 to extend more rights to irregular migrants and maintains its pro-migration discourse, through its collaboration with the U.S. government it has effectively turned Mexican territory into hostile ground for the economically disenfranchised migrants who must travel it. Because of the collaboration of the two governments, it is important to explore in depth the effects of the U.S. immigration system extraterritorially. In addition, taking into account the intensification of the deportation regime (Peutz and De Genova, 2010; Golash-Boza and Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2013), Mexico must also address the issue transnationally—that is, it must take into account the fact that illegality in the United States shapes the experience of the deported in their homeland.

The U.S.-Mexico border as a “geographic, legal, institutional, and sociocultural structure and process” works as a classificatory system (Heyman, 2001), with important legal, social, and political consequences for those treated as outsiders. Heyman (2001) showed how immigration officers in the United States draw upon stereotypes about “moral worth, national stereotypes, and apparent social class” (132) to apply immigration policies in the United States. This article further shows the way this classificatory system becomes transnationalized as Mexican immigration officers draw on class, ethnic/racial, and citizenship cues to apply immigration policies. Ultimately, this reveals how the ideology of illegality becomes transnationalized not only in immigration policies hostile to the poor and to those racialized as outsiders but also as dehumanizing practices by state officials and even by migrant advocates and civil society in general (Sarabia, 2014). In fact, the field of influence of the U.S.-Mexico border extends to those who do not cross it (Ortiz and Contreras, 2011).

In conclusion, the ideology of illegality, constructed in the United States, has become extraterritorialized, with consequences for people on both sides of the border (Heyman, 1999) and also for Mexicans throughout the entire Mexican territory. This ideology of illegality has had serious consequences; more than 5,000 migrants have perished trying to cross a highly militarized border (Dunn, 1996). Even in Mexico, between 2010 and 2014, 38 people were killed by Border Patrol agents along the border, and between 2008 and 2013 the Border Patrol shot into Mexican territory at least 10 times, killing 6 people (Frey, 2013). In Mexico as in the United States, the regime of illegality results in vulnerability and stigmatization of irregular migrants, lack of legal protection, and lack of accountability for the government officials who deal with these migrants. Violence and stigmatizing notions of illegality have become extraterritorialized without mechanisms to hold institutions accountable in either Mexico or the United States.

Footnotes

Notes

Heidy Sarabia is an assistant professor of sociology at California State University, Sacramento. Her research focuses on globalization processes such as stratification, borders and borderlands, border violence, transnational social change, and immigrant adaptation and incorporation.

References

Abrego

Leisy J.

2011 “Legal consciousness of undocumented Latinos: fear and stigma as barriers to claims-making for first- and 1.5-generation immigrants.” Law and Society Review 45: 337–370.

Alba

Francisco

2013 “Mexico : the new migration narrative.” http://www.migrationpolicy.org/print/4209#.VJL4fF4DoA (accessed December 18, 2014).

Alba

Francisco

Manuel Angel

Castillo

2012 New Approaches to Migration Management in Mexico and Central America. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars.

Andreas

Peter

2003 “A tale of two borders: The U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada lines after 9-11.” Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego, Working Paper 77. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6d09j0n2 (accessed June 18, 2018).

Boyce

Geoffrey A.

Jeffrey M.

Banister

Jeremy

Slack

2015 “You and what army? Violence, the state, and Mexico’s war on drugs.” Territory, Politics, Governance 3: 446–468.

Calavita

Kitty

2005 Immigrants at the Margin: Law, Race, and Exclusion in Southern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Cohn

D’Vera

Ana

Gonzalez-Barrera

Danielle

Cuddington

2013 “Remittances to Latin America recover—but not to Mexico.” http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/11/15/remittances-to-latin-america-recover-but-not-to-mexico/ (accessed January 12, 2015).

Collyer

Michael

Franck

Düvell

Hein

De Haas

2012 “Critical approaches to transit migration.” Population, Space and Place 18: 407–414. doi:10.1002/psp.630.

Coutin

Susan B.

2003 “Illegality, borderlands, and the space of nonexistence,” pp. 171–202 in Perry

Richard Warren

Maurer

Bill

(eds.), Globalization under Construction: Governmentality, Law, and Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

10.

Coutin

Susan B.

2005 “Being en route.” American Anthropologist 107 (2): 195–206.

11.

Dagnino

Evelina

2017 “Citizenship in Latin America: an introduction.” Latin American Perspectives 30 (2): 3–17. doi:10.1177/0094582X02250624.

12.

De Genova

Nicholas

2004 “The legal production of Mexican/migrant ‘illegality.’” Latino Studies 2: 160–185.

13.

Dunn

Timothy J.

1996 The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978–1992: Low-Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home. Austin: CMAS Books/University of Texas at Austin.

14.

Fitzgerald

David

2005 “Nationality and migration in modern Mexico.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31 (1): 171–191.

15.

Frey

John Carlos

2013 “Why are U.S. Border Patrol agents shooting into Mexico and killing innocent civilians?” Washington Monthly, May-June. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/may_june_2013/features/over_the_line044512.php?page=all (accessed March 20, 2015).

16.

Gilboy

Janet A.

1991 “Deciding who gets in: decisionmaking by immigration inspectors.” Law and Society Review 25: 571–600.

17.

Golash-Boza

Tanya

Pierrette

Hondagneu-Sotelo

2013 “Latino immigrant men and the deportation crisis: a gendered racial removal program.” Latino Studies 11 (3): 271–292. doi:10.1057/lst.2013.14.

18.

González-Murphy

Laura V.

Rey

Koslowski

2011 “Understanding Mexico’s changing immigration laws.” Mexico Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/GONZALEZ%2526KOSLOWSKI.pdf (accessed December 18, 2014).

19.

Grayson

George W.

2002 “Mexico’s forgotten southern border: does Mexico practice at home what it preaches abroad?” Center for Immigration Studies. http://www.cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2002/back702.pdf (accessed December 19, 2014).

20.

Haggard

Stephan

Beth A.

Simmons

1987 “Theories of international regimes.” International Organizations 41: 491–517.

21.

Hasenclever

Andreas

Peter

Mayer

Volker

Rittberger

1997 Theories of International Regimes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

22.

Heyman

Josiah McC

. 1999 “United States surveillance over Mexican lives at the border: snapshots of an emerging regime.” Human Organization 58: 430–438.

23.

Heyman

Josiah McC

. 2001 “Class and classification at the U.S.-Mexico border.” Human Organization 60 (2): 128–140.

24.

Heyman

Josiah McC

. 2009 “Trust, privilege, and discretion in the governance of the US borderlands with Mexico.” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 24: 367–390.

25.

IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) 2013 Human Rights of Migrants and Other Persons in the Context of Human Mobility in Mexico. IACHR. http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/migrants/docs/pdf/report-migrants-mexico-2013.pdf (accessed January 14, 2015).

26.

INM (Instituto Nacional de Migraación) 2007 “Repatriacion: México está contigo.” INM. http://www.inm.gob.mx/static/pdf/Infograma_REPATRIACION.pdf (accessed January 14, 2015).

27.

INM (Instituto Nacional de Migraación) 2009 “5.1 Eventos de repatriación de Mexicanos desde Estados Unidos, según entidad federativa y punto de recepción. 2009.” http://www.politicamigratoria.gob.mx/ed_mx/SEGOB/Boletin_Estadistico_2009 (accessed December 9, 2014).

28.

INM (Instituto Nacional de Migraación) 2012a “Ley de Migración y su Reglamento.” Mexico City. http://www.inm.gob.mx/static/marco_juridico/pdf/Ley_de_Migracion_y_Reglamento.pdf (accessed December 14, 2014).

29.

INM (Instituto Nacional de Migraación) 2012b “Paises y regiones que requieren visa para viajar a México. Mexico City. https://www.inm.gob.mx/gobmx/word/index.php?paises-requieren-visa-para-mexico/ (accessed June 29, 2018).

30.

Jácome

Felipe

2008 Trans-Mexican Migration: A Case of Structural Violence. Georgetown University Center for Latin American Studies Working Paper Series 2.

31.

Lipsky

Michael

2010 Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

32.

Mandujano

Isain

2015 “Obispos repudian el Plan Frontera Sur.” Proceso, January. http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=394608 (accessed April 8, 2015).

33.

Menjívar

Cecilia

2014 “Immigration law beyond borders: externalizing and internalizing border controls in an era of securitization.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 10: 353–369. doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110413-030842.

34.

Menjívar

Cecilia

Leisy J.

Abrego

2012 “Legal violence: immigration law and the lives of Central American immigrants.” American Journal of Sociology 117: 1380–1421.

35.

Moreno-Mena

José A.

Rafael

Arriaga-Martinez

2009 “Control migratorio en Estados Unidos y derechos humanos en Baja California y Sonora,” pp. 147–181 in Grijalva

Aide

Sanchez

Agustin

Niño Contreras

Lya M.

(eds.), Estudios fronterizos: Migracion, sociedad y género. Mexicali: Cuerpo Académico de Estudios Sociales, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California.

36.

Ngai

Mae M.

2005 Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

37.

Olayo-Méndez

Alejandro

Stephen Nathan

Haymes

Maria

Vidal de Haymes

2014 “Mexican migration-corridor hospitality.” Peace Review 26 (2): 209–217. doi:10.1080/10402659.2014.906887.

38.

ONDCP (Office of National Drug Control Policy) 2009 “National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy.” ONDCP. https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=36293 (accessed April 8, 2015).

39.

ONDCP (Office of National Drug Control Policy) 2010 “National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy Implementation Update.” ONDCP. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/ondcp/policy-and-research/swb_implementation10_0.pdf (accessed April 8, 2015).

40.

Orrenius

Pia M

2004 “The effect of U.S. border enforcement on the crossing behaviors of Mexican migrants,” pp. 281–298 in Durand

Massey

D. S.

(eds.), Crossing the Border: Research from the Mexican Migration Project. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

41.

Ortiz

Laura Velasco

Contreras

Oscar F.

2011 Mexican Voices of the Border Region. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

42.

Peutz

Natalie

De Genova

Nicholas

2010 “Introduction,” pp. 160–185 in De Genova

Nicholas

Peutz

Natalie

(eds.), The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

43.

Pew Research Center 2009 “Troubled by crime, the economy, drugs, and corruption: most Mexicans see better life in U.S.—one-in-three would migrate.” Washington, DC. http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/pdf/266.pdf (accessed December 9, 2014).

44.

Ratha

Dilip

Christian

Eigen-Zucchi

Sonia

Plaza

Hanspeter

Wyss

Soonhwa

2013 “Migration and remittance flows: recent trends and outlook, 2013–2016.” Migration and Development Brief 21. World Bank. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPROSPECTS/Resources/334934-1288990760745/MigrationandDevelopmentBrief21.pdf (accessed January 12, 2015).

45.

Raustiala

Kal

2009 Does the Constitution Follow the Flag? The Evolution of Extraterritoriality in American Law. UCLA School of Law Research Paper no. 08-34.

46.

Sarabia

Heidy

2014 “Global South cosmopolitans : the opening and closing of the USA–Mexico border for Mexican tourists.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38 (2): 227–242.

47.

Seelke

Clare Ribando

Kristin

Finklea

2014 “U.S.-Mexican security cooperation: The Mérida Initiative and beyond.” Congressional Research Service. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41349.pdf (accessed April 8, 2015).

48.

SEGOB (Secretaria de Gobernación) 2013 “Boletín Mensual de Estadísticas Migratorias.” Mexico City. http://www.politicamigratoria.gob.mx/es_mx/SEGOB/Boletin_Estadistico_2013 (accessed April 8, 2015).

49.

Shannon

Thomas A.

2014 “Counselor of the Department of State Ambassador Thomas A. Shannon Testimony to Senate Appropriations Committee, July 10, 2014.” U.S. Senate. https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/hearings/Shannon%20Testimony%207%2010%2014.pdf (accessed December 19, 2014).

50.

Shear

Michael D.

Randal C.

Archibold

2015 “Mexico’s leader, Peña Nieto, praises Obama on immigration.” New York Times, January 6. http://nyti.ms/1BFmG9z (accessed January 13, 2015).

51.

Sigona

Nando

2012 “‘I have too much baggage’: the impact of legal status on the social worlds of irregular migrants.” Social Anthropology/Antropologie Social 20 (1): 50–65.

52.

Slack

Jeremy

2016 “Captive bodies: migrant kidnapping and deportation in Mexico.” Area 48 (3): 271–277. doi:10.1111/area.12151.

53.

Slack

Jeremy

Martinez

Daniel

Lee

Alison

Whiteford

Scott

2016 “The geography of border militarization: violence, death, and health in Mexico and the United States.” Journal of Latin American Geography 15 (1): 7–32. doi:10.1353/lag.2016.0009.

54.

Slack

Jeremy

Whiteford

Scott

2011 “Violence and migration on the Arizona-Sonora Border.” Human Organization 70 (1): 11–21. doi:10.17730/humo.70.1.k34n00130470113w.

55.

Stevenson

Mark

Arce

Alberto

2015 “Mexico takes lead to stem migrant wave, deports more Central Americans than the United States.” U.S. News and World Report, June. http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2015/06/18/mexico-deports-more-central-americans-than-the-united-states (accessed July 17, 2015).

56.

Transparency 2010 “Corruption by country/territory: Mexico.” Transparency. http://www.transparency.org/country#MEX_PublicOpinion (accessed January 14, 2015).

57.

Trinh

Yen H.

2005 “The impact of new policies adopted after September 11 on lawful permanent residents facing deportation under the AEDPA and IIRIRA and the hope of relief under the Family Reunification Act.” Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law 33: 543–572.

58.

U.S. Department of State 2014 “Merida Initiative.” Washington, DC. http://www.state.gov/j/inl/merida/ (accessed December 19, 2014).

59.

U.S. Embassy 2015 “Fact sheet: The Four Pillars of Merida.” Mexico City. https://www2.gwu.edu/~clai/recent_events/2010/Mexico_Security_Conference/Mex_Sec_The_Four_Pillars_of_Cooperation.pdf (accessed December 9, 2014).

60.

USBP (United States Border Patrol) 2009 “Total illegal alien apprehensions by month—FY 2009–2010.” United States Border Patrol. https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2017-Dec/BP%20Total%20Monthly%20Apps%20by%20Sector%20and%20Area%2C%20FY2000-FY2017.pdf (accessed September 19, 2017).

61.

Walters

William

2002 “Deportation, expulsion, and the international police of aliens.” Citizenship Studies 6 (3): 265–292. doi:10.1080/1362102022000011612.

62.

Willen

Sarah S.

2007 “Toward a critical phenomenology of ‘illegality’: state power, criminalization, and abjectivity among undocumented migrant workers in Tel Aviv, Israel.” International Migration 45 (3): 8–38.

63.

Wimmer

Andreas

Schiller

Nina Glick

2003 “An essay in historical epistemology.” International Migration Review 37: 576–610.

64.

Zolberg

Aristide

1999 “Matters of state: theorizing immigration policy,” pp. 71–93 in Hirschman

Kaisnitz

(eds.), The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.