Zapotecs on the Move: Cultural, Social, and Political Processes in Transnational Perspective. By Adriana Cruz‐Manjarrez. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2013. xii, 249 pages.

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110816/1/imre12182.pd

Stuck in Motion: Inhabiting the Space of Transit in Central American Migration

In this article, I examine what it means to inhabit the space of transit; I argue for an analysis centered on the - middle,- rather than thinking of this - in between- primarily in relationship to places and moments on either side. This article answers calls to focus on the migration journey, adding an anthropological lens to the human condition of being in between. I discuss the migration of undocumented Central Americans in Mexico, and detail how both the criminalization of migrants and approaches to their care in transit push people into further motion. Using the accounts of migrant smugglers and victimized migrants, I show how the regional migration regime produces and perpetuates clandestine movement, which keeps many migrants stuck in motion. As more people are made to inhabit the space of transit, it is critical to understand the roles that are produced there, and how they are read, reacted to, and deployed by states, humanitarian actors, and the migrants themselves. [ethnography of the mobile, human smuggling, transit migration]Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155495/1/jlca12465.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155495/2/jlca12465_am.pd

Central America, Human Rights, and Displacement

While migration and displacement are not new phenomena in the region, parts of Central America are experiencing a crisis of displacement. This crisis has emerged due to the compounding effects of multiple factors: environmental degradation and climate change, economic upheavals caused by neoliberal reforms, political instability (especially in Honduras and Nicaragua), and violence stemming from corruption and organized crime. With a particular focus on factors related to violence and the deterioration of the rule of law, participants in this round table will describe and discuss the roots of displacement, the methodological and political challenges in documenting these migratory flows, and the risks and abuses faced by peoples in movement. Finally, the panelists will dialogue about strategies to support the empowerment of migrants, mobilize critical humanitarian aid, combat xenophobia and dehumanization, and compel states in the hemisphere to respect the rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and asylum seekers. Participants in this panel have direct experience at the heart of this crisis, ranging from academic research and in-depth journalism to direct services, advocacy and activism

Migration and Mortality: Social Death, Dispossession, and Survival in the Americas

This panel presents research from the new edited volume Migration and Mortality (edited by Longazel and Hallett, Temple University Press, 2021). Death threatens migrants physically during perilous border crossings between Central and North America, but many also experience legal, social, and economic mortality. Rooted in histories of colonialism and conquest, exclusionary policies and practices deliberately take aim at racialized, dispossessed people in transit. Once in the new land, migrants endure a web of systems across every facet of their world—work, home, healthcare, culture, justice—that strips them of their personhood, denies them resources, and creates additional obstacles that deprive them of their ability to live fully. As laws and policies create ripe conditions for the further extraction of money, resources, and labor power from the dispossessed, the contributors to Migration and Mortality examine immigration policies as not only restrictive, but extractive. The work presented denounces the violence of such policies and critiques the inadequacy of current human rights protections, while nonetheless highlighting the power of migrants’ collective resistance and resilience. The case studies and theoretical interventions presented in this panel explore the complicity of mainstream human rights discourses with global apartheid and examine the limitations of liberalism and minimal humanitarianism, as well as describe the oppressive system itself from points all along the migrant trail from Central America north. Ultimately, these examples of oppression and survival contribute to understanding contemporary movements for life and justice in the Americas

Leave if You're Able: Migration, Survival, and the Everydayness of Deportation in Honduras

Drawing from 21 months of fieldwork in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, Leave if You’re Able focuses on the experiences of young men deported back to neighborhoods labeled as among the world’s most violent. I argue for understanding deportation not as rupture but, rather, I place it within a continuum of exclusions and displacements, examining what it means when deportation becomes an ordinary and traumatic experience, routine and catastrophic. Clandestine migration and deportation are positioned here not as exceptional, spectacular events in a life of otherwise stability but are instead shown to be the extension across national boundaries of the marginalization, criminalization, and displaceability of a population who is always already excluded, deportable, before ever leaving their country of citizenship. From 2015 to 2019, Honduras saw nearly 400,000 people deported – mostly from Mexico and the United States. With a population of just over 9 million, this means that more than four percent of Hondurans were deported over just five years. Through stories of deportation and displacement, I trace the legal violences employed to detain young Hondurans, the legal and illegal violences poised to harm them in their home country, and the circulation of violence through circuits of clandestine migration and re-migration. The first generation of deportation studies literature revealed deportation to be a process of rending, exiling people back to countries of citizenship that are unfamiliar and do not feel like home. This was a crucial turn, but a study of Honduran deportation today tells a different story than most of the existing deportation-as-exile centered ethnographies. While there is a small percentage of Hondurans who are deported after growing up in the United States, the majority of Honduran deportees were caught and deported before ever settling into life in the United States, many after having a claim for asylum denied, many before they ever reached the U.S.-Mexico border. Understanding post-deportation life in these circumstances is crucial, as this kind of engagement with migration and deportation is likely to become increasingly common, as borders harden even further while many people all over the world find life in their country of citizenship to be too hard to survive.PHDAnthropologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/170053/1/ameliafv_1.pd

The Generation of the Coup: Honduran Youth at Risk and of Risk

In this article, we show how generation as a category is an important analytic for understanding social and political dynamics in Honduras. We argue that coming of age in the post- coup d- état era in Honduras has shaped young Honduran’s sense of their own life chances, what they can expect from society and government, and what kinds of possibilities they imagine for their futures. Drawing from ethnography conducted in Honduras and with Hondurans during the 2018 and 2019 migrant caravans, we show how the category of youth is a potential source of risk for the regime in Honduras and, simultaneously, it puts those who are in it at risk. The article concludes with reflections on the legal limitations of generation as category and the lethal consequences of this limitation.ResumenEste artículo muestra cómo la generación como categoría es una herramienta de análisis importante para comprender la dinámica social y política en Honduras. Sostenemos que la mayoría de edad en la era posterior al golpe de Estado en Honduras ha moldeado la percepción de los jóvenes hondureños sobre sus oportunidades de vida, lo que pueden esperar de la sociedad y el gobierno y qué posibilidades imaginan para su futuro. A partir de una etnografía realizada en Honduras y con hondureños que formaron parte de las caravanas de migrantes de 2018 y 2019, mostramos que categorizar como joven es una potencial fuente de riesgo para el régimen en Honduras, a la vez que pone en riesgo a quienes integran este grupo. El artículo concluye con reflexiones sobre las limitaciones legales de la generación como categoría y las consecuencias letales de esta prescripción. [generación, golpe de Estado, juventud, migración, pandillas]Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167122/1/jlca12512_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167122/2/jlca12512.pd

Towards a social determination of health framework for understanding climate disruption and health‐disease processes

We compare the social determinants of health (SDOH) and the social determination of health (SDET) from the school of Latin American Social Medicine/Collective Health. Whereas SDET acknowledges how capitalist rule continues to shape global structures and public health concerns, SDOH proffers neoliberal solutions that obscure much of the violence and dispossession that influence contemporary migration and health-disease experiences. Working in simultaneous ethnographic teams, the researchers here interviewed Honduran migrants in their respective sites of Honduras, Mexico, and the United States. These interlocutors connected their experiences of disaster and health-disease to lack of economic resources and political corruption. Accordingly, we provide an elucidation of the liberal and dehumanizing foundations of SDOH by relying on theorizations from Africana philosophy and argue that the social determination of health model better captures the intersecting historical inequalities that structure relationships between climate, health-disease, and violence