Suchergebnisse

"Deported to Death explores the consequences of the United States' policies of mass removal into some of the most dangerous regions in the world. Over the past decade Mexico has experienced an earthshaking conflict over control of drug trafficking while millions of people were simultaneous deported directly into the midst of this violence often without identification, money, contacts or in the middle of the night. This book explores how the violence associated with the drug trade has impacted the movement of people back and forth across the border. This includes Central Americans and Mexicans, travelling north, but also those that have been removed. By studying the dynamics of removal and the ways that deportees are targeted by organized crime along Mexico's northern border, not only does it give us a better sense of the consequences of a militarized war on drugs, but it helps us understand the violence intrinsic to forced removal. The dynamics of border enforcement make it easy to kidnap, extort and kill deportees who are neither from the border, nor are they at their final destination. This puts people at extreme risks that we are woefully ill equipped to address"--Provided by publisher

In this article, we examine the social repercussions of criminally prosecuting individuals that cross into the United States without official documentation. The "criminalization of immigration law" (Coleman, 2007), federal- and state-level anti-immigrant initiatives, and an incarceration-oriented approach to dealing with unauthorized migration have redefined what it means to be undocumented in the United States, a definition with more sociological implications than ever before. Using strain theory (Agnew, 1992; Merton, 1938) and Cloward and Ohlin's (1960) concept of illegitimate means structures, we discuss the social ramifications for migrants who are exposed to a potentially unfamiliar criminal element while incarcerated for unauthorized entry. First-hand accounts of migrants' experiences were gathered from face-to-face semi-structured interviews of 210 randomly selected individuals at a migrant shelter in northern Mexico.

This article draws on a unique dataset of more than eleven hundred postdeportation surveys to examine migrants' experiences with coyotes (human smugglers) along the U.S.-Mexico border. Our focus is on migrants' satisfaction with the services provided by their most recent smuggler and whether they would be willing to put family or friends in contact with that person. We find a distinct difference between people's expectations for their own migratory experience compared to what they would be willing to subject loved ones to. Expectations of comfort and safety are decidedly low for oneself; but for loved ones, a more expressive, qualitative assessment shapes their willingness to recommend a coyote: qualities such as trustworthiness, honesty, comportment, and treatment come to the fore. News coverage focusing on the deaths of smuggled migrants often portrays coyotes as nefarious and exploitative, but the migrant-smuggler relationship is much more complex than suggested by these media accounts. We provide empirical insight into the factors associated with successful, satisfactory, and safe relationships between migrants and their guides.