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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2019

Linda Alvarez Open the ORCID record for Linda Alvarez [Opens in a new window]
Linda Alvarez*
Affiliation:
California State University
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Linda Alvarez, California State University, Northridge, 18111 Nordhoff St., NorthridgeCA91330. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This 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.

Keywords

neoliberalismmigrationviolenceCentral America
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 4 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2019

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