Central American Female Migration and the Micro-Politics of Border Control: Mobile Ethnography along the Migrant Route in Mexico

Abstract: Every year hundreds of thousands of Central American migrants from mainly Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador embark on a journey through Mexican territory with the hopes of a better future in the United States - estimations suggest that up to thirty percent are women. Transnational migration is due to heightened violence in Central America on the rise. Although earlier research about women´s particular mobility is scarce, reports and studies maintain that women to a larger extent suffer violence and insecurity en route as compared to their male counterparts. The objective with this thesis is to explore current border policy and its practices in relation to women´s experiences en route. Motivated by mobile ethnography and the need for thorough research in contexts of conflict I follow migrants in transit and explore the various localities pertaining to the migrant route. Aided by theories about transnational border control, its human consequences and gender, I show how migrant women are funneled into a context of impunity, insecurity and violence and conclude that gender norms and expectations permeate these spatialities. Women are deemed as out of place, they have few options but using sex as a strategy for survival, and rape further functions as a regulating mechanism of border control. Violence against women is highly facilitated, thus serving as yet another feature to the gender-specific policing of borders in this frontier between the Global South and North.