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

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 228
Author(s):  
Richard L. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Central America ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Agrarian Change ◽  
Immigration Enforcement ◽  
Labor Exploitation ◽  
Agrarian Studies ◽  
Political Ecologies ◽  
Migrant Groups

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.

Circulations of Violence

2018 ◽  
pp. 29-50
Author(s):  
Wendy A. Vogt
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Central America ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Forms Of Violence

Chapter Two situates lived experiences of violence within a deeper temporal and spatial context of violence across the Americas. Structural forms of violence including the legacies of civil war, neoliberal securitization, and everyday insecurity are all forces that propel mobility from Central America. The chapter suggests a historical continuum where the violence people experience along the journey is not conceptualized as new or unique, but rather a continuation of processes they have known their entire lives.

scholarly journals Introduction: Peasants, Pastoralists and Proletarians: Joining the Debates on Trajectories of Agrarian Change, Livelihoods and Land USE

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brent McCusker ◽  
Paul O'Keefe ◽  
Phil O'Keefe ◽  
Geoff O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Agrarian Change ◽  
Dry Land ◽  
Accumulation By Dispossession ◽  
Common Ownership ◽  
Agrarian Studies ◽  
Food Shortages ◽  
Production Of Nature

Recent changes in the agrarian studies and geography literatures present differing views on the pace and trajectory of change in rural developing areas. In this special section of Human Geography, we contrast the theoretical and practice implications of these differing approaches, namely depeasantization, accumulation by dispossession and deproletarianization. Depeasantization refers to change in livelihood activities out of agriculture, long theorized as necessary for an area's transition into capitalism. Accumulation by dispossession is a process of on-going capital accumulation where a give resource is privatized, seized, or in some other manner alienated from common ownership in order to provide a basis for continued capital accumulation. Deproletarianization occurs when workers are no longer able to freely commodify and recommodify their only commodity, their own labour. In this section, we explore these three theses with case studies that draw upon empirical data. The papers in this collection all speak to one aspect or another of these debates. We do not intend to try to determine a “best approach”, rather we explore strengths and weaknesses of each argument. The production of nature, change in the mode of production and the political economy of nature are discussed in the first article by Brent McCusker. Phil O'Keefe and Geoff O'Brien examine the evolution of worked landscape under pre-capitalist modes of production in riverine ecologies. Through further case studies, Paul O'Keefe explores links between livelihoods and climate change in Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, while Franklin Graham explores the persistence of pastoralism in the Sahel. Finally, Naomi Shanguhyia and Brent McCusker examine the process of governance in dry land Kenya through the study of chronic food shortages.

scholarly journals Agrarian Transitions, Rural Resistance and Peasant Politics in Southeast Asia

2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-139
Author(s):  
Fabian Drahmoune
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Rural Population ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Agrarian Change ◽  
Research Traditions ◽  
Rural Change ◽  
Agrarian Studies ◽  
Peasant Politics ◽  
Agrarian Transition ◽  
Agrarian Transformation

In light of the recent revival of agrarian studies in the scholarship of Southeast Asia, this paper reviews three recent publications that are concerned with specific aspects of what has been framed as “agrarian transition”, “agrarian change” or “agrarian transformation”. It seeks to identify new perspectives and fresh approaches to the analytical challenges that arise from the multi-faceted and intertwined nature of agrarian change in the region. Further, it considers the implications of these processes – specifically in social, political and economic terms – for the rural population and examines their ways of embracing and resisting these changes. By emphasising the explanatory potential that linking approaches, theories and methodologies of different research traditions and disciplines in an integrative fashion has, it will be argued that – in order to enhance our understanding of people's responses to rural change – it is essential to recognise their agency and perceptions as interconnected across multiple scales within broader structural conditions.

When Internal Migration Fails: A Case Study of Central American Youth Who Relocate Internally Before Leaving Their Countries

2021 ◽  
pp. 233150242110427
Author(s):  
Angel Alfonso Escamilla García
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Internal Migration ◽  
Home Country ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Executive Summary ◽  
Labor Exploitation ◽  
Central American Youth

Executive Summary This paper examines the experiences of Central American youth who have attempted internal relocation before migrating internationally. Based on interviews and participant observation with Guatemalan, Honduran, and Salvadoran youth migrating through Mexico, this paper shows how youth from the Northern Countries of Central America turn to their domestic networks to escape labor exploitation and gang violence before undertaking international journeys. The paper further demonstrates how those domestic networks lead youth into contexts of poverty and violence similar to those they seek to escape, making their internal relocation a disappointment. The failure of their internal relocation attempts makes them turn to international migrant networks as their next option. This paper sheds light on the underexplored issue of internal migration among Central American youth and that migration's synergy with Central American youths’ migration to the United States. The paper finds that internal relocation is unsuccessful when the internal destination fails to resolve the issues from which youth are attempting to escape. This failure ultimately triggers their departure from their home country.

scholarly journals Political ecologies of biopower: diversity, debates, and new frontiers of inquiry

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connor J Cavanagh
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Multiple Modes ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Political Ecologies ◽  
Change Mitigation

This article reviews recent literature on the political ecologies of conservation and environmental change mitigation, highlighting the biopolitical stakes of many writings in this field. Although a large and apparently growing number of political ecologists engage the concept of biopower directly – in its Foucauldian, Agambenian, and various other formulations – recent writings across the humanities and social sciences by scholars utilizing an explicitly biopolitical lens provide us with an array of concepts and research questions that may further enrich writings within political ecology. Seeking to extend dialogue between scholars of biopolitics, of political ecology, and of both, then, this article surveys both new and shifting contours of the various ways in which contemporary political ecologies increasingly compel us to bring the very lives of various human and nonhuman populations, as Foucault once put it, "into the realm of explicit calculations." In doing so, 'new frontiers' of biopolitical inquiry are examined related to: i) species, varieties, or 'multiple modes' of governmentality and biopower; ii) critical (ecosystem) infrastructure, risk, and 'reflexive' biopolitics; iii) environmental history, colonialism, and the genealogies of biopower, and iv) the proliferation of related neologisms, such as ontopower and geontopower.

scholarly journals Scam as survival in Central America

Ethnography ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-146
Author(s):  
Anthony Wayne Fontes ◽  
Kevin Lewis O’Neill
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Black Market ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Gang Members

This essay explores the intimate details and ethical quandaries of tele-promotion’s fraud. Perpetrated from inside Guatemalan prisons using black market cellphones, incarcerated gang members surf the affects of capitalism to create a sensorium of authenticity through which they swindle the unwary. An experiment in genre, this ethnographic essay foregrounds the lived experiences, survival strategies, and virtuosities of those pushed to the very margins of capitalism.

scholarly journals Reinvigorating a political ecology of the global agri-food system

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sören Köpke
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Food System ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Regime Theory ◽  
Food Regime ◽  
Food And Agriculture ◽  
Agrarian Studies ◽  
Political Ecologies

This contribution is a critical review of research on the global agri-food system directly or indirectly identified as political ecology (PE). It shows how food, famine and agricultural production were important topics to early proponents of PE, especially with regards to a critique of neo-Malthusian thought. It then traces further developments in the field and highlights the productive tension between materialist and poststructuralist streams, as well as the influence of actor-network theory. Further on, the paper discusses three neighbouring theories and frameworks with a potential to stimulate current political ecologies of food and agriculture, namely critical agrarian studies, food regime theory and world-ecology. Finally, seven clusters of potential research topics for a political ecology of the global agri-food system are identified. In conclusion, the relevance of PE as a theoretical lens is reiterated and the need for fruitful application of political ecology and related approaches is expressed.

scholarly journals Where Else Have You Been? The Effects of Diaspora Consciousness and Transcultural Mixtures on Ethnic Identity

10.28945/3037 ◽  
2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niranjala Weerakkody
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Census Bureau ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Migrant Groups

In social science research, the demographic categories of ethnicity are linked to what the census bureau considers as a person’s ethnic heritage. However, these categories are based on the societal assumption that members of a given category share the same characteristics and life experiences, even though the heterogeneity between members within a category may be as diverse as between categories. The paper examines the 15 interview subjects of a research study drawn from 10 minority migrant groups, where seven of them indicated significant transcultural experiences before migrating to Australia. It argues that their lived experiences and subjectivity vary from others who migrated directly from their native countries. The formers’ diaspora consciousness and transcultural mixtures may introduce an artifact to a research study’s design, affecting the validity of the data collected. The paper examines other situations where this anomaly can occur and proposes precautions to minimize its negative effects.

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