Knowledge, Place, and Experience in the Migrant Journey:  How Central American Migrant Youth Negotiate Violence in Mexico

Escamilla Garcia, Angel Alfonso

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-sbg4-hb56

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Knowledge, Place, and Experience in the Migrant Journey: How Central American Migrant Youth Negotiate Violence in Mexico

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This dissertation explores the experience of violence and precarity among Central American youth as they travel through Mexico to the United States. Based on a multi-sited ethnographic study conducted across Mexico from 2015 to 2019, I illustrate how the journey of these youth migrants is, in its basic expression, an experience of movement, violence and precarity. Over the last decade, the number of Central American youth moving through Mexico has grown exponentially. As a result, the U.S. has pressured Mexico to stop migrants from crossing through its territory, and Mexico has responded by more closely surveilling common migration routes and increasing the detention and deportations of Central Americans. This extension of U.S. immigration control beyond the U.S. border has turned Mexico into a space where Central American youth migrants are increasingly persecuted, robbed, harmed, and even murdered for the mere act of migrating. And yet, Central American youth continue to migrate, begging the question: how? I found that youth migrants deal with the violence they encounter along the way through a process of negotiation. During a youth’s journey, where experiences of violence are almost inescapable, youth adapt their journeys to attempt to avoid violence and improve the quality of their migration journeys. In the three chapters of this dissertation, I will analyze three elements present in the negotiation of violence and precarity: rumor, time, and space. The chapter on rumor explains how, in the absence of reliable information about the route ahead, youth rely on rumors and the experiences of others to avoid violence and seek opportunities. The chapter on time explores how migrant youths’ journeys take longer than many youth expect, which imposes additional hardships, but also leads to unintended consequences, like the gaining of additional knowledge about how to successfully move and the formation of new friendships. Finally, the chapter on space explores the spaces through which migrants move as they migrate, analyzing how they make decisions based on space and how spaces affect their journeys. This intensive view of the ins and outs of migration contributes to a novel understanding of migrant journeys from the perspective of youth. Sociological studies of migrant journeys have primarily focused on the journey’s beginning and end, and the dangers that migrants in Mexico face. These studies typically focus on migrants’ vulnerabilities, failing to analyze how migrants experience or respond to those vulnerabilities. My research reveals that youth are not exclusively passive actors: they feel, respond, plan, and adapt as they try to achieve their goals. By exploring how rumor, time, and space interplay in youths’ migrant journeys, I reveal how those experiences are lived. Ultimately, this research helps us understand not only youth migrants’ journeys, but also how people more broadly face and overcome challenges that seem insurmountable.

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