Abstract
This chapter moves the focus of migrant death and repatriation from the US-Mexico borderlands to explore a wider geography of migration-related risk, disappearance, and death. Based on ethnographic research with both transit migrants and the families of missing migrants in Oaxaca, Mexico, it examines how individuals and communities grapple with the daily uncertainty of loved ones who have been detained, have disappeared, or have perished during their journeys to the north. Migrant families are not simply victims but engage state and non-state actors, institutions, and mediums as they confront the emotional, legal, scientific, and financial implications of loss. Increasingly, their actions span across borders, creating new openings for solidarity and engagement. As migrant journeys across the globe become more clandestine and dangerous, it is crucial for social scientists to recognize the ways transnational families are being reshaped not only by family separation and deportation but also by disappearance and death.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, this type of militarization became most recently visible with the 2014 implementation of Mexico’s Programa Frontera Sur, a result of US pressure on Mexico in the wake of the 2014 unaccompanied minor “crisis.”
- 2.
For example, one group “Desaparecidos Que Murieron Tras Perseguir El Sueño Americano” has over 25,000 members (https://www.facebook.com/groups/775009732596941/).
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Vogt, W.A. (2018). Loss, Uncertainty, and Action: Ethnographic Encounters with Families of the Missing in the Central America-Mexico-United States Corridor. In: Latham, K., O'Daniel, A. (eds) Sociopolitics of Migrant Death and Repatriation. Bioarchaeology and Social Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61866-1_5
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