Migration Biopolitics: Scenarios of Securitization, Containment, and Violence in the Trajectories of Transit Migration through Mexico

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the impacts of migration policies on the trajectories and living conditions of migrants during their transit through Mexico, as they seek to reach the northern border and eventually cross into the United States. It seeks to understand how the formulation and implementation of these policies violently affect human mobility, by examining the historical relationship between the United States and Latin America. This relationship is reflected in the imposition of securitization policies intended to halt migratory flows through containment strategies designed beyond national borders.

Nation-states implement such policies under the pretext of national security and border defense, giving rise to multiple forms of violence rooted in biopolitical and necropolitical logics that expose migrants to risk and death. Through micro-social qualitative research, this study analyzes how anti-immigrant power structures—devised by the Global North—are inscribed on migrants' bodies. Their narratives allow for an understanding of the structural and symbolic configuration of their migratory experience as they travel through Mexico.