Politicizing Irregularized Migration in Transit Through Mexico

Abstract

This article links the notion of rhizome with the field of migration studies, specifically to reflect on the vitality and political becoming of in-transit migrants passing through Mexico irregularly. Under this light, we aim to answer the following questions: How can we interpret the movements traced by undocumented migrants in transit? With what connections do they pass or not pass intensities that allow them to move? What is the political becoming of this migratory journey? The rhizome category is used as a methodological figuration to explore the paths, journeys, and walkers constituted in this becoming, in order to situate and map the collective resistances and singular experiences that emerge from these displacements. The working thesis asserts that irregularized migration in transit articulates an ongoing political process. Migrants who transit without the required legal documentation, when confronting a border order, create spaces outside State control and configure a type of politicized subjectivity. We applied a multi-situated ethnography, by following up the migrant caravan that crossed Mexico from its southern border up to reaching Tijuana, at its northern border, at the end of 2018, and employed observation and in- depth interviews techniques to document migrants’ experiences, movements, journeys, and displacements. Findings allowed us to map the creative, singular, and collective resistances that are woven during these transits and that somehow challenge the regime of control and borders.