Date: 2020
Type: Article
In their own words : children and the facilitation of migrant journeys on the U.S.-Mexico border
Victims and offenders, 2020, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 370-389[Migration Policy Centre]
SANCHEZ, Gabriella, ZHANG, Sheldon X., In their own words : children and the facilitation of migrant journeys on the U.S.-Mexico border, Victims and offenders, 2020, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 370-389[Migration Policy Centre] - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/66632
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
This essay documents a qualitative study of the perspectives of a group of children from neighbourhoods (called colonias) with a history of involvement in the facilitation for profit of irregular migration across the U.S. -Mexico border (a practice legally known as migrant smuggling). Recognizing the children’s ability to articulate their own decisions and perspectives, we challenge the narrow claims that simplistically frame them as victims of organized crime. Children participate in the facilitation of irregular migration encouraged by the potential of financial returns, but their roles also allow them to attain social status and to fulfill gendered expectations. Most remarkably, the tasks their carry out constitute intricate, often intimate forms of emotional labour performed to improve their lives, those of their friends and family members, and ultimately those of the people whose journeys they facilitate. This contribution problematizes the sensationalistic portrayals of children as natural criminals or victims in need of rescue present in mainstream academic and media discourses, by prioritizing the dynamics the children themselves articulate as important in their experiences as facilitators of mobility.
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/66632
Full-text via DOI: 10.1080/15564886.2020.1721388
ISSN: 1556-4886; 1556-4991
Series/Number: [Migration Policy Centre]
Publisher: Routledge Taylor & Francis
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