Abstract
In 2018 and 2019, the Central American “migrant caravans” making their way through Mexico towards the United States attracted vast political and media attention. Although not a new phenomenon, and only making up a fraction of the approximately 400,000 people that annually attempt to cross the Mexico-US border, they gained increased attention in 2018 partly due to Trump's antagonistic response (Gandini, Fernández de la Reguera, and Narváez Gutiérrez 2020, 81–88). In this context, scholarship on the caravans and on US-Mexican migration politics in general has flourished both in English and in Spanish (see Menjívar 2014; Abrego 2019; Frank-Vitale and Núñez Chaim 2020; Varela and McLean 2021). The three Spanish-language books reviewed here provide a deep dive into and analysis of the caravans, including migrants’ motivations, strategies, and experiences, as well as the response by state and non-state actors.
The books make an important contribution to migration studies, both on displacement trends in Central and North America as well as on national and global refugee law and policy more generally. Although the regional Cartagena Declaration with its expanded refugee definition places the region in a unique position (Reed-Hurtado 2013, 5, 28), there are many similarities between Central America and other regions such as Australia-Pacific and the Mediterranean in terms of the militarization, outsourcing of border control, and safe third country agreements (see Cantor et al. 2022). Furthermore, considering the overrepresentation of authors based in the main academic centers in the Global North—away from where most refugees live—(Hampton et al. 2020), as well as the side-lining of non-English language perspectives (Ammann 2022), these books provide crucial insights into the rich research produced in Mexico.
The three books explore the phenomenon of “migrant caravans” from different, yet complementary empirical and methodological perspectives. Torre as well as Contreras, París, and Velasco base their work on interviews with caravan members, while Ortega's book offers a historical and theoretical account of refugee law in Mexico. Contreras, París, and Velasco's edited volume is a case study of the Central American caravans as they reached the three towns of Tijuana, Piedras Negras, and Ciudad Juárez near the US-Mexico border in late 2018 and early 2019. Through short essays, the book describes the trajectories, strategies, and socio-economic composition of the caravans as well as the conflicting responses by government, religious, and civil society actors in each border town and along the route (Contreras, París, and Velasco 2021, 27). Covering similar themes, Torre offers a broader account of migration and refugee policies and trends in the region, including previous movements similar to the caravans, placing these movements in historical context and analyzing their political implications (34). Although Ortega only briefly discusses the caravans, she provides the broader legal context in a historical perspective which illuminates the politics surrounding the caravans and the context in which they developed. By focusing her analysis on how race and class shaped Mexican refugee law and policy during the past two centuries, and situating this within international refugee law, she offers a crucial understanding of both recent and previous migratory trends in the region, complementing the more specific accounts by the two other books.
Employing a critical lens, Ortega provides a genealogy of Mexican refugee law and policy from the early 19th century until the present, arguing that race and class have served as political devices to exclude unwanted foreigners. Three themes are especially salient in her book: the (re)configuration of a specific type of nation along racial and class lines through refugee and migration laws; the outsourcing of US border control to Mexico; and refugee law's prioritization of management and control at the expense of protection (19). Ortega details how Mexico in the 19th and 20th century cherry-picked migrants to achieve “blanqueamiento” [whitening] of the population as well as economic development, which after the Mexican revolution of 1910 shifted slightly towards a “mestizo” ideal. Although Mexico was considered to have a welcoming asylum system on paper, she argues that it was rather restrictive in practice, similar to that of traditional refugee hosting states like the United States (257).
Ortega further explains how Mexico has served as a gatekeeper on behalf of the United States for at least the past three decades, assuming this role in exchange for trade and economic benefits (and under US pressure). This has led to what she calls an empty right of asylum, an argument echoed in Torre as well as Contreras, París, and Velasco. Under the guise of protecting human rights, while portraying undesirable migrants as a security threat, Mexico has adopted a security and military approach to migration. Central Americans are disproportionately affected as they are framed as a social, political, cultural, and economic threat. Analyzing the most recent Migration Protection Protocols, implemented in the wake of the 2018 fall caravans and which in practice function as a safe third country agreement, Ortega argues that Mexico is an unsafe third country, allowing refugees few opportunities for accessing international protection (258). This is ironic, she notes, considering Mexico's own history of emigration. Ultimately, Ortega argues, asylum needs to be revisited by focusing on saving the lives of those persecuted in the contemporary context, rather than its present prioritization of powerful states’ interests that contain refugees in the Global South (261–62).
It is in this complex legal and political context that the caravans appeared as a phenomenon, a process that Torre as well as Contreras, París, and Velasco extensively describe. Despite various reasons for fleeing, such as poverty and violence, both books note that—paradoxically—it was the obstacles orchestrated by Mexico and the United States that provided the most important incentives for migrants to organize in caravans. Due to their collective movement and visibility, travelling in caravans provides an enhanced sense of security, making them less vulnerable to organized crime such as kidnapping and trafficking, the proliferation of which partly originates from securitized borders and migration policies (Contreras, París, and Velasco 2021, 16, 356–57).
Contreras, París, and Velasco, and to some degree Torre, discuss the strategies employed by the caravans to reach the US border, ranging from the decision on routes, modes of transportation, and border crossings, whether to accept options provided by the Mexican government, as well as information-sharing about previous migration experiences. They show how people joined the caravans as a strategy to reduce costs of crossing Mexico. Torre includes statistical findings suggesting that Hondurans, compared to Salvadorans and Guatemalans, made less use of smugglers, commercial accommodation, and transportation, and relied more on shelters and employment opportunities along the route, due to lower financial capacity. Although not explicitly stated, this could explain why the caravans have been predominantly a Honduran phenomenon (106–11). Both studies also detail the caravans’ gendered dimensions, as they are increasingly composed of families, especially women with children. The safety offered by the collective movement is crucial here, but also the expectation of—real or imagined—increased success of remaining in the United States when entering with minors (Contreras, París, and Velasco, 354; Torre, 241–45).
Contreras, París, and Velasco dive deeper into the multiple factors leading caravans to arrive to different border towns at various moments, as well as into the shifting strategies by local governments and other actors vis-à-vis the successive arrivals of caravans. They outline how the US pressure on Mexico to contain migrants before reaching the US border, combined with massive detention and deportation in Mexico, resulted in unusual involvement by the state and the proliferation of civil society organizations, which built upon the extensive infrastructure from decades of hosting migrants in transit. The book retraces the fragmentation of the caravans resulting from the provision of visas, transportation, and the creation of government-run shelters, strategies that served to avoid a humanitarian crisis while simultaneously appeasing Trump as the caravaneros would reconsider the option to remain in Mexico (359). In each border context, systems of control played out differently depending on factors such as previous experiences with migrants and the order of caravan arrivals. The caravan in Piedras Negras was actually transported there by government authorities located along the route, who were hoping to get rid of the responsibility of hosting them in their own regions (357). As consecutive groups of caravans arrived at the border, local governments learned from previous experiences of others which resulted in different levels of control and limits to mobility (Contreras, París, and Velasco 2021, 358). In line with Ortega's argument about the racialized and class-selective nature of migration policies, Contreras, París, and Velasco illustrate the unbalanced interventions by the Mexican government in the border towns, whereby attention was mostly directed at controlling Central American migrants in contrast to the Cuban population in Ciudad Juárez which received less attention (23, 365).
Both Contreras, París, and Velasco and Torre show how the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration—signed just after the 2018 fall caravans—was instrumentalized by Mexico to promote control rather than protection (Contreras, París, and Velasco, 361; Torre, 249). Torre critiques national governments and international institutions’ assumption that migration can be governed in a “regular,” “safe,” and “orderly” manner through mechanisms of control and in favor of national interests, a system according to which some individuals are confined to economically deprived regions while others cross international borders at ease (33–34).
In line with the historical account by Ortega and the discussion of previous regional migration trends in the two other books, Contreras, París, and Velasco explain that the migrant caravans are not an isolated phenomenon, but rather an expected result of closed borders, and exclusionary migration policies, combined with the continued need for international protection. Thus, they argue that even though migration barriers can have a temporary effect, people will continue to look for ways to access protection (11, 350). It is thus unsurprising that all three books place emphasis on how the caravans serve as an example of migrant agency, resistance, and protest. Breaking with stereotypes of the passive and clandestine migrant, they cross international borders, refuse to remain in places where their lives are in danger, and reject oppression in countries of origin and in transit (Ortega Velázquez 2022, 261–62; Torre 2021, 31; Contreras, París, and Velasco 2021, 14–15).
Together, these books provide a crucial analysis of recent events in Central America and North America. Not only do they contribute a detailed account of the caravans as a regional phenomenon, but they also provide a specific example that echoes displacement trends and related laws and policies on a global level, as they relate to containment in the Global South, the outsourcing of border control to third countries, as well as increased militarization, detention, and deportation at the expense of protection (see Hathaway and Gammeltoft-Hansen 2014; Cantor et al. 2022). Similar to other accounts of migrant protest in regions such as Africa (Lecadet 2017) and Europe (Amaya-Castro 2015), the books also evidence the massive resistance exerted by those who flee in their pursuit of overcoming barriers to movement, and the sophisticated legal “technologies” implemented in response, and which ultimately have led to further exclusion.
All three books deal with the pressure that the United States places on Mexico and other states to stop migrants from reaching its borders, and the role law plays in shaping the actions of both the caravans and the actors responding to them. Yet, they only briefly discuss why people leave their country of origin, other than listing issues such as poverty, violence, and environmental degradation. The books include little about the actions that the United States itself has taken during the past centuries that directly or indirectly have contributed to such factors, and the role of international law in that regard. Without such an account, the reluctance by the United States and Mexico to provide adequate protection may appear like a dearth of “goodwill” to implement international commitments, rather than a deeper issue within international law that disconnects international refugee and human rights law from systems of exploitation and inequality, which, if not addressed, allows the status quo to continue unabated (see Thomas 2016; Abrego 2019). Such an analysis would add another layer to the otherwise rich and essential accounts of the caravans and the legal developments in Mexico in a historical and contemporary perspective.