For several decades and in the context of the global increase in the concentration of wealth and the accentuation of poverty and inequality, irregular and cross-border forced migrations are not only caused by contexts of lack of basic development levels and processes of violence and environmental impacts in the localities of origin. They are also produced by the motivations and capacity for action of millions of people in different regions of the world who, every year, try to have a decent life and another possible future. On the American continent, Mexico, traditionally a country from which thousands of migrants left en masse, has become a strategic place/territory of and for diverse migrant populations who, from the south (particularly the north of Central America), go to the USA.

Thus, for years, Mexico has not only been a transit country (of tens of thousands of irregular migrants annually), but also, and largely due to its geopolitical location and the pressure of the US anti-immigrant agenda, it was already prefigured as a huge device of containment and disarticulation of irregular migrant populations. This was especially noticeable with the Trump administration. Situation that was expressed, from the dynamics of migrant criminalization to the externalization processes of the US borders (towards Mexico), and with specific US strategies and policies such as the Migrant Protection Protocols (Stay in Mexico Program), which forced the thousands of migrants (the majority from northern Central America) who wanted to ask for asylum in the US to carry out said procedure from Mexico.

However, with the Covid19 Pandemic this got worse. Mexico not only continued as a national and regional territory of containment, but also of confinement for thousands of migrants. This dimension of Mexico as a confinement territory for irregular migrants was produced by two important processes: (1) the securitization and closure of borders in the north of Central America and in the (south) of the USA, through the political use of sanitary arguments ( that left irregularized migrants who were in transit through Mexico stranded, unprotected and immobilized); (2) and also, in the case of the US, by the application of Title 42, a political measure that allowed migrants to be expelled due to the Pandemic and deny them the right to request asylum. 

In this order of ideas, recently, the Documentation Network of Organizations for the Defense of Migrants (REDODEM) in Mexico, published Human mobility in confinement: containment, violation of rights and lack of protection in Mexico, REDODEM 2020 Report, corresponding to the first year of the Sars Cov2 pandemic. This is a collaborative exercise between pro-migrant organizations and groups, whose mission, for years, has been to produce a relevant diagnostic document on irregular migration in transit through Mexico. In the framework of the year 2020, the relevance of said report is underpinned in terms of the description of three processes: (1) the reduction and precariousness of the conditions of migrants, (2) the increase in migratory state controls, (3) and the greater precariousness and criminalization of migrants and pro-migrant organizations and groups.

Regarding migrants, the report recorded that ten of thousands of migrants transited through Mexico, the vast majority coming from the North of Central America (mainly and mostly from Honduras). And about 30% of all migrants were between 30 and 44 years old. Regarding the causes of migration, there was a relative continuity with previous years. In the first place, there were those of an economic nature (poverty, low wages, lack of work, low levels of development); then came what is related to the processes of violence; and, thirdly, the environmental impacts. Likewise, he reported on the effects of the Pandemic in relation to the deepening of the gaps in access to rights and factors of vulnerability and risk. Among the impacts, the following were documented: the increase of migrants being homeless; emotional crises; increased risk of contagion from Sars Cov2; and, finally, less access to employment and support.

In addition, it realizes the deepening of the different violence suffered by migrants in three areas: (1) by organized crime; (2) matters relating to immigration control by the Mexican and US governments; (3) and the greatest containment (with the political use of the health argument during the Pandemic). It is also pointed out that Mexican migration policy is based on the US agenda of containing cross-border mobility. It is aware of the state’s approach to migration as a “national security” problem and of violation of laws and health risk; what is opposed with a perspective of the exercise of human rights and respect for migrants. And, finally, in the case of pro-migrant groups, the capacity for adaptation and resilience of the houses and shelters of civil society was described, in the face of the critical scenario of the worst moments of the first year of the Covid19 Pandemic.

However, as highlighted in said work, for pro-migrant organizations the difficulties were not few: at the height of the Pandemic (in the year 2020) the attention to migrants was reduced, the staff also decreased by about 50%. with which they normally worked and, consequently, the workload doubled. Faced with these contexts of adversity, there were dynamics of adaptation, reorganization, and agency. In addition to the above, the report not only presents a quantitative and macro approach, but also weighs the centrality of migrant voices and of the people in migrant houses and shelters (through a more qualitative approach).

Finally, said report is an exercise in sociopolitical intervention, particularly about a series of reflections for an effective protection and “integration” policy. In this vein, three processes stand out: (1) a position in favor of migrant populations and respect for their human rights; (2) the denunciation and visibility of processes of exclusion, violence, and a resounding no to the strategies of mobility control and criminalization of migrant populations; (3) and, finally, specific recommendations towards an official migration policy with an axis in the human dignity of migrants.


 

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here