scholarly journals Dirty Work, Dangerous Others

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-63
Author(s):  
Wendy Vogt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Immigration Enforcement ◽  
Dirty Work ◽  
Strategic Partner ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
Transit Migration

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.

The United States and the Central American Federation

1967 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Grieb
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
American Federation ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
American Union

The administration of Warren G. Harding found itself facing the issue of Central American Union when it assumed office in March, 1921. Central Americans had debated combination since independence, and the question came to the fore periodically, resulting in numerous attempts to reunite the isthmus. But the previous proposals had all faltered when governments favoring confederation were overthrown. The issue was periodically revived whenever renewed coups returned pro-union regimes to power in several of the countries. In this way the debate continued throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, ebbing and flowing with the frequent revolutions, coups, and counter coups that constituted Central American politics.

Securing Central America Against Communism: The United States and the Modernization of Surveillance in the Cold War

1999 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert H. Holden
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Central America ◽  
Formation Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Sponsored Programs ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War

The US.-sponsored programs of military and police collaboration with the Central American governments during the Cold War also contributed to the surveillance capacity of those states during the period when the Central American state formation process was being completed. Guatemala is used as a case study. Washington’s contribution was framed by the conventional discourse of “security against communism” but also by an underlying technocratic ethos in which “modernization” and “security” were higher priorities than democratization.

The Sanctuary Movement

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio González
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Humanitarian Organizations ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
National Human ◽  
The Us

In the spring of 1982, six faith communities in Arizona and California declared themselves places of safe harbor for the hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans and Guatemalans that had been denied legal proceedings for political asylum in the United States. Alleging that immigration officials had intentionally miscategorized Central Americans as “economic migrants” in order to accelerate their deportation, humanitarian organizations, legal advocates, and religious bodies sought alternatives for aid within their faiths’ scriptural teachings and the juridical parameters offered by international and national human rights and refugee law. Known as the sanctuary movement, this decade-long interfaith mobilization of lay and clerical activists indicted the US detention and deportation system and the country’s foreign policy initiatives in Latin America as morally bankrupt while arguing that human lives, regardless of documentation status, were sacred. In accusing the United States of being a violator of both domestic and international refugee legislation, subsequently exposing hundreds of thousands of people to persecution, torture, and death, the movement tested the idea that the country had always extended welcome to victims of persecution. Along with a broad network of anti-interventionist and humanitarian aid organizations, sanctuary galvanized more than 60,000 participants in 500 faith communities across the nation. By the 1990s, the movement had spurred congressional action in support of Central American asylees and served as the model for a renewed movement for sanctuary in support of undocumented Americans in the 21st century.

Central American migrants reassess their options

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
Content Type

Significance Numerous large caravans of Central American migrants have formed in recent weeks, with more than 6,000 people coalescing in Mexico City earlier this month. The growing frequency and size of the caravans illustrates the desperation of some Central Americans to leave their countries and provides a direct challenge to the immigration policy of US President Donald Trump. Impacts The United States will remain the primary destination for migrants but the Mexican alternative may reduce some pressure on border crossings. Publicity will spike as migrants amass at the border, with any allegations of harsh treatment potentially having diplomatic ramifications. Any spike in migrant numbers choosing to stay in parts of Mexico could cause domestic tensions over issues such as jobs and social support. AMLO’s move to welcome migrants could put pressure on wealthier Central American countries (Panama and Costa Rica) to match his offer.

No Safe Space: Neoliberalism and the Production of Violence in the Lives of Central American Migrants

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Central America ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Central American ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Local Economies ◽  
Central Americans

AbstractThis paper explores the ways in which neoliberal policies enacted by elites across the Northern Triangle have led to increased violence in Central America, a lived experience that continues as individuals migrate to Mexico and the United States. In this work, I examine how neoliberal polices in the region have created limited economic opportunities and means of subsistence for the poor in Central America, as well as the rise of extra-legal actors and criminal enterprises. Together these conditions leave Central Americans with no choice but to migrate north. This paper then explores the violence migrants experience as they move through Mexico. In this stage of the journey, migrant bodies are objectified and then commodified as cheap labor for the global market as well as local economies of violence. Lastly, I discuss the multiple zones of violence that migrants experience at Mexico's border with the United States. This project relies on in-depth, semi-structured interviews (n = 99) with Central American migrants over the course of 4 years (2014–18). Ultimately, I find that for Central American migrants, violence can be a seemingly inescapable reality as neoliberal forces maintain and normalize violence in order to preserve an established social order at the expense of these migrants.

scholarly journals The Effects of Enhanced Enforcement at Mexico’s Southern Border: Evidence From Central American Deportees

Demography ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 1597-1623
Author(s):  
Fernanda Martínez Flores
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Comparison Group ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Immigration Enforcement ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Final Destination ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
Southern Border

Abstract Immigration enforcement cooperation between final-destination and transit countries has increased in the last decades. I examine whether the Southern Border Plan, an immigration enforcement program implemented by the Mexican government in 2014, has curbed intentions of unauthorized migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to migrate to the United States. I use the announcement of the Southern Border Plan to implement a difference-in-differences approach and compare the evolution of short-run intentions to engage in additional unauthorized crossings of Central American (treatment group) relative to Mexican deportees (comparison group). The findings suggest that increased enforcement in Mexico decreases the likelihood of attempting repeated unauthorized crossings.

Gendered differences in emigration and mobility perspectives among European researchers working abroad

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Scheibelhofer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
The Future ◽  
Highly Skilled

This paper focuses on gendered mobilities of highly skilled researchers working abroad. It is based on an empirical qualitative study that explored the mobility aspirations of Austrian scientists who were working in the United States at the time they were interviewed. Supported by a case study, the paper demonstrates how a qualitative research strategy including graphic drawings sketched by the interviewed persons can help us gain a better understanding of the gendered importance of social relations for the future mobility aspirations of scientists working abroad.

‘A Routh O’ Auld Nick-Nackets’ – the antiquarian collection of John Rae

2015 ◽  
Vol 36-37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Paul Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Case ◽  
National Museums ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University

John Rae, a Scottish antiquarian collector and spirit merchant, played a highly prominent role in the local natural history societies and exhibitions of nineteenth-century Aberdeen. While he modestly described his collection of archaeological lithics and other artefacts, principally drawn from Aberdeenshire but including some items from as far afield as the United States, as a mere ‘routh o’ auld nick-nackets' (abundance of old knick-knacks), a contemporary singled it out as ‘the best known in private hands' (Daily Free Press 4/5/91). After Rae's death, Glasgow Museums, National Museums Scotland, the University of Aberdeen Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, as well as numerous individual private collectors, purchased items from the collection. Making use of historical and archive materials to explore the individual biography of Rae and his collection, this article examines how Rae's collecting and other antiquarian activities represent and mirror wider developments in both the ‘amateur’ antiquarianism carried out by Rae and his fellow collectors for reasons of self-improvement and moral education, and the ‘professional’ antiquarianism of the museums which purchased his artefacts. Considered in its wider nineteenth-century context, this is a representative case study of the early development of archaeology in the wider intellectual, scientific and social context of the era.

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