Casualties among Unauthorized Migrants at the Arizona Border : A Race, Class and Gender Perspective

Abstract: This bachelor thesis deals with the increasing borders control/security between nations, especially between the, so-called third world and first world nations. Security and wall building is something that is becoming a more and more current issue at borders. Today we live under the scare of terrorism which excuses this behavior. The state seeks to gain more control over whom they are letting in. This has, created harsher laws for immigration, and especially unauthorized such, creating a global apartheid and mistreatment of unauthorized migrants. This study focuses on unauthorized migration and especially on the casualties of such attempts to cross the border betweenMexicoandArizonacaused by walking through the Sonoran desert. The United States has during the 90’s and this the 2000’s deliberately been pushing unauthorized migration routes further from urban areas out in to remote desert in order to discourage it. This has led to a rising number of deaths among unauthorized migrants trying to cross into theUnited StatesfromMexicoand other Latin American countries. This bachelor thesis focuses on the statistics taken from border patrol reports that were listed in the newspaper the Arizona Daily Star. It also contains an interview made with a volunteer from the organization No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes, an organization working for the prevention of deaths in the Sonoran desert and more human immigration policies. A perspective of this bachelor thesis is also gender: how these policies affect gender, and whether women who migrate unauthorized are exposed to more risks than men. The conclusion of the essay is that the majority who migrate unauthorized are male. The women who migrate, however, are exposed to more risks. They are more prone to travel with family or children making them more vulnerable due to the extra responsibility. Traveling alone, they are more vulnerable to sexual assaults. Sexual assaults can come from coyotes, other migrants and border patrol. Risks for human trafficking exist not only while crossing the border but also after deportation.