Migratory Disaster in Mexico-United States Transit: Migration Control, Racism, and COVID-19

• Main Author: Nancy Rios-Contreras
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: GRID Chile 2021-07-01
• Series: REDER
• Subjects: migración, covid-19, racismo, desastres, fronteras, méxico, estados unidos
• Online Access: http://www.revistareder.com/ojs/index.php/reder/article/view/78

This article proposes the use of a disaster perspective to explore transit migration from Mexico to the United States and to take the dialogue beyond a crisis and a national security threat. The theoretical reflection is based on ethnographic research focused on the analysis of journalistic stories and face-to-face and virtual observations made between 2018 and 2020 on the Mexico-United States border. Migrants in transit face a migration disaster with underlying factors such as militarization, securitization, and the externalization of borders. Likewise, historical legacies of racism and anti- blackness, and the contemporary context of the COVID-19 pandemic, are concurrent factors that reinforce the migratory disaster and occur simultaneously with immigration enforcement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, migrants continue to be racialized and disproportionately affected. Disaster planning and mitigation provides alternatives to rethink possible actions that reduce the impact of COVID-19 on Latin American migrants by offering a humanitarian approach that addresses inequality and challenge the immigration control regime.