Reversing Channels and Unsettling Binaries: Rethinking Migration and Agrarian Change under Expanded Border and Immigration Enforcement

Abstract

Unauthorized migration under global regimes of border and immigration enforcement has become more risky and costly than ever. Despite the increasing challenges of reaching, remaining in, and remitting from destination countries, scholarship exploring the implications of migration for agricultural and environmental change in migrant-sending regions has largely overlooked the prevalent experiences and consequences of “failed” migration. Drawing from recent fieldwork in Central America with deportees, this paper demonstrates how contemporary migration at times reverses the “channels” of agrarian change in migrant-sending regions: instead of driving remittance inflow and labor loss, migration under contemporary enforcement can result in debt and asset dispossession, increased vulnerability, and heightened labor exploitation. Diverse migration outcomes under expanded enforcement also reveal a need to move beyond the analytical binary that emphasizes differentiations between migrant and non-migrant groups while overlooking the profound socioeconomic unevenness experienced among migrants themselves. With grounding in critical agrarian studies, feminist geographies, and emerging political ecologies of migration, this paper argues that increased attention to the highly dynamic and diverse lived experiences of migration under expanded enforcement stands to enhance our understanding of the multiple ways in which contemporary out-migration shapes livelihoods and landscapes in migrant-sending regions.

A Diversity of Migration and Land Couplings: An Introduction to the Special Issue “Migration and Land”

“…Angelsen and colleagues [8] combine qualitative and quantitative information gathered through household surveys with remote sensing analysis of land change. Johnson [6] supplements quantitative data on migration financing and debt with qualitative interviews to uncover how very uneven the experience of migration is for everyone in the communities where he worked. Robson and colleagues' [14] qualitative methods consist of youth workshops, questionnaires, and in-depth case studies.…”

“…Johnson [6], with his research undertaken in Guatemala, reveals the experiences and consequences of "failed" migration for migrants and their families. His timely and important emphasis is on the consequences of failed migration, referring to migrants who did not make it to the U.S. or who have been deported after their arrival.…”

“…It also speaks to the challenges posed by "slow displacement" [15] under contemporary migration enforcement regimes. While some approach migration as a strategy to avoid displacement from land and livelihoods, Johnson's [6] research reveals how migration, at times, reinforces displacement and proletarianization among migrant-sending families. In doing so, it highlights the production of new forms of differentiation in smallholder communities, tied to the transnational enforcement of mobility restriction.…”

Human Migration and Natural Resources: Global assessment of an adaptive complex system

“…Local populations in areas of Guatemala "identified cycles of fruitless investments and outstanding debts in agriculture as immediate drivers of decisions to migrate" (Johnson 2021). An underresearched field of analysis in Central America relates to the nexus between resource scarcity, violence and conflict and migration -where limited resources may lead to violence, struggles and ultimately migration.…”