Ruptured Journeys, Ruptured Lives: Central American Migration, Transnational Violence, and Hope in Southern Mexico

Abstract

This dissertation examines the processes by which Central American women and men face unprecedented forms of violence and exploitation as they migrate through Mexico. Central Americans are regularly subject to abuse, extortion, rape, kidnapping, dismemberment and death as multiple actors profit off of their bodies, labor and lives. In turn, the political economy of violence and security along the migrant journey permeates into local Mexican communities, creating new tensions and social ruptures. Going beyond a simple accounting of abuse, I engage ethnography as a lens through which to understand the social effects of historical and contemporary processes of war, displacement, economic restructuring and social dislocation as people move through local spaces. Throughout the journey, the logics of migration and violence rework social relations based on race, gender and nationality where migrants are both victims of and agents within the often de-humanizing processes of human mobility. I use a lens of gender in particular to understand the ways larger processes impact the intimate spaces of people's lives and the intimate labors they perform as parents, migrants, partners, laborers and activists. I also examine the ways violence is not simply destructive, but also generates new possibilities for solidarity and political action through social movements around humanitarianism and migrant rights. In particular, I examine the emergence of a movement of Catholic-based migrant shelters and a transnational feminist movement of mothers and families of disappeared migrants.