Abstract
Against a backdrop of increasingly vitriolic migration policy and practice, The Migrant Passage reminds us with empirical grace that those fleeing Central America and Mexico may be squeezed by the state in different ways, but they will rarely be deterred. Brigden plumbs the ethnographic depths of the transit route from the perspective of the many who have experienced and enacted this sometimes-treacherous geography. Composed of nearly 300 interviews with migrants, clergy, human-rights activists, community members, government officials, and family members, the author’s method of performing ethnography seeks to mirror migration practice. Like the migrants themselves, Brigden uses improvisation to encounter strangers and rugged terrain ranging from Salvadoran sending communities to the Mexican transit corridor. The research comes to life visually through map-making workshops, which yield powerful pictorial depictions of the route.
The Migrant Passage uses a theatrical metaphor to evince the tragedy of clandestine journeys and somewhat expectedly is divided into three acts: Exposition, Rising Action, and Climax. In spite of this choice, the survival plays are both heart-wrenching and moving and they provide new insights into some of international migration’s more overlooked dimensions. Foremost among the contributions is the importance of improvisation. Migration studies, so long focused on migrant destinations and sending communities, has spent less time on the micro-politics of the in-between: those encounters along the dangerous and uncertain passage.
Unpacking the scholarship beyond conventional points on a map allows for multiple nuanced observations. There is, for example, an acknowledgment of the importance of “the long-reaching shadow of the border for people who may never set foot in the US” (p. 7). Borders, and el norte more generally, figure prominently in Mexican and Central American imaginations, both colloquially and through the mediascape. We hear that longing tinged with hopefulness across nearly every story. Trekking north involves significant hardship and danger, a point adeptly incorporated by including the stories of people who may never reach their destinations. The focus on the intricacies of long-distance migration opens up the study of transit political economies. In these little-studied sites, entire communities spring up to take advantage of and exploit the possibilities of renewed commerce opportunities. As one migrant puts it, “without [im]migration, Mexico would die” (p. 155).
The book begins with a 20-year-old Salvadoran woman named Karla describing her carefully drawn mental map to the author. Karla details the risks and uncertainties associated with going north, while recalling the journey her brothers, helped along by coyotes (smugglers), took before her. The ethnographies, an instance of “underground globalization in action” (8), are riveting. Each story emerges to illustrate an incisive point about transit migration and its political effects. The first three chapters track the journey from imagination to actualization, introducing the characters and their relationship along the route. Embedded within Chapter 3 is a description of the gauntlet of organized crime that migrants encounter. Additionally, there is a useful historical overview of the different waves of migration, reflecting a paradigmatic shift that occurred in the early 1990s. About this time, Mexico and the United States intensified immigration and border enforcement.
Chapter Four focuses on how migrant performances can potentially destabilize fixed identities through the use of improvisational tactics. The tenuous relationship between bodies and territory is illustrated by a playful Central American boy who entertains onlookers by first mimicking a Mexican identity and then an American one. Chapter 5 merges a critical cartography with ethnography to show how migrants employ material resources to cope with the challenges they face. For example, a migrant might visit the now-defunct train yards (the Mexican government suspended passenger service in the 1990s) in Tapachula, Chiapas, hoping for information about new trails north. The final chapter highlights the multiple ambiguities of the transnational social process heard through the voices of those who embark on clandestine journeys. Brigden shines a light on the growing underclass of transnational homeless men, along with the illusive boundaries of transit. For many, the journey’s beginning and end are out of reach; if they don’t succeed, they might try again or reside in an unintended destination, waiting for another opportunity or resource.
The conclusion provocatively points to how the migrant transit corridor makes a mockery of the so-called liberal state that organizes itself around binaries such as free/unfree, open/closed, and citizen/foreigner. Efforts at control inside and beyond political boundaries transform the state into an enforcer of injustice. Ultimately, the book works both as a powerful ethnography and as a sustained study in paradox. Brigden interrogates the contradictory uses of information as resource and weapon; of borders as immutable for people, but open for capital; and of identity as fixed by the state, but fluid in practice. For the more policy-minded reader, the book might serve as a testament to the futility of deterrence.
There are two minor points over which to quibble. The first is the misstep of calling for route studies, a discussion that seems to overlook the interdisciplinary field of mobility studies. Second, while the book notes that targeted research trips were conducted after Programa Frontera Sur (Mexico’s southern border fortification strategy that mirrors processes on the U.S.–Mexico border), the implications for transit migration are not treated deeply. Nonetheless, the book is an important and beautifully rendered ethnographic work. Its accessible style, free of unnecessary jargon, makes it amenable to many audiences including students and scholars in international relations, anthropology, politics, geography, and migration studies.