Abstract
This paper reviews the process of criminalization of transit migration experienced in Mexico since the country acknowledged this category of migrant in the 1990s. According to Stumpf (2020, p. 100), crimigration is based on existing and continuously functioning institutions and systems, as well as on an established infrastructure to increase or reduce detentions and deportations of migrants. It is presented as the logical continuation of the national security paradigm and the externalization of borders implemented after 9/11 (Koulish, van der Woude, 2020KOULISH, Robert; VAN DER WOUDE, Maartje. Introduction: The «problem» of migration. In: KOULISH, Robert; VAN DER WOUDE, Maartje (eds.). Crimmigrant Nations: Resurgent Nationalism and the Closing of Borders. Fordham University Press, 2020, p. 1-30.). The Mexican migration management coexists, since 2011, with the Human Security paradigm whose main actions clashed with the anti-immigrant discourse of the United States during Donald Trump’s administration. Hence, the question arises: how has the Mexican State adapted the management of borders and transmigrants in its territory, being part of the U.S. security perimeter? The idea that will guide this paper is that without Mexico having established a discourse that criminalizes migrants, in practice the migrant in transit has been illegalized and criminalized during the process of construction of this category as part of the domestic migration governance.
Keywords:
transmigration; crimmigration; borders externalization; national security; human security; Mexico