Dirty Work, Dangerous Others

Abstract

While Mexico has been openly critical of US immigration enforcement policies, it has also served as a strategic partner in US efforts to externalize its immigration enforcement strategy. In 2016, Mexico returned twice as many Central Americans as did the United States, calling many to criticize Mexico for doing the United States’ “dirty work.” Based on ethnographic research and discourse analysis, this article unpacks and complicates the idea that Mexico is simply doing the “dirty work” of the United States. It examines how, through the construction of “dirty others”—as vectors of disease, criminals, smugglers, and workers—Central Americans come to embody “matter out of place,” thus threatening order, security, and the nation itself. Dirt and dirtiness, in both symbolic and material forms, emerge as crucial organizing factors in the politics of Central American transit migration, providing an important case study in the dynamics between transit and destination states.

La era del atrapamiento migratorio: la migración africana hacia la frontera norte de México

“…El atrapamiento se produce tanto por las políticas estadounidenses, que van desde el endurecimiento de los controles fronterizos hasta los frecuentes cambios en las leyes y procedimientos que rigen las solicitudes de asilo, como por los crecientes esfuerzos del gobierno mexicano para dificultar que los potenciales solicitantes de asilo en Estados Unidos viajen a través de México (Campos-Delgado, 2021). Ambos conjuntos de políticas están en concierto con una creciente tendencia global hacia la externalización de las fronteras (Agier, 2008;Rodier, 2008;FitzGerald, 2019;Vogt, 2020), que prevalecen junto con condiciones estructurales de violencia y pobreza.…”

Prácticas administrativas y cooperación multilateral en los municipios fronterizos de Chiapas

“…El trasfondo de esa política de control remite a la idea de concebir a las personas migrantes como un ente potencialmente peligroso y amenazante para el orden nacional. Desde luego, esta postura del gobierno nacional tiene que ver con la política migratoria de Estados Unidos (International Crisis Group, 2018;Meyer e Isacson, 2019;Vogt, 2020). De tal forma que a partir de 2019 se materializó, entre otras medidas, la instalación del cuerpo de la Guardia Nacional, la contención de las personas en la frontera a cargo de las fuerzas armadas y la revisión estricta de parte del Instituto Nacional de la Migración (INM) en los puntos estratégicos situados en ciudades transfronterizas y en carreteras federales.…”

Fantasies of Flows and Containment: The Technopolitics of Security Infrastructures in the Americas

“…Security infrastructures impose barriers on bodies (that walk, jump a train, or take large detours) and thus shape migrant journeys (see Pallister-Wilkins 2019;Ybarra 2019). In response, men, women, and children have sometimes formed "caravans", for instance in 2019 and 2021, to be safer in the face of deportation, extortion, and violence from state and nonstate actors (Vogt 2020). Like the Biden-L opez Obrador statement cited above, official discourses frequently invoke the necessity of making the MP secure.…”

“…However, the relation between actual, built security and trade infrastructures remains largely unexplored. This article builds on work both on logistics and infrastructures as technopolitics of differentiation and exclusion (Bosworth and Chua 2023;Cowen 2014;Lesutis 2022) and on the articulation between racism and the securitisation of migration (Keck and Cl ua-Losada 2021;Vogt 2020;Ybarra 2019). Thinking about the material elements of borders with critical logistics studies (see also Manchanda and Plonski 2020) not only exposes the effects of security infrastructures, but shows how trade infrastructures perform as security infrastructures.…”