Abstract
This issue of Sociologias critically reflects on the production of migrant “illegality" in Latin American and the Caribbean border contexts. It gathers articles that explore the production of illegality through different border regimes in the region. The articles bring, through different empirical studies, conceptual and epistemological contributions to the field of Sociology to think how the multiplication of border controls in the contemporary world takes shape in Latin America and the Caribbean. Although this discussion has received little attention so far, the region offers an important heterogeneity of experiences of “illegalization” of the migrant population, linked to various changes that have occurred in the region. In this direction, this Dossier focuses, in particular, on some relevant social spaces or border areas to organize the proposal: the southern border of Mexico, a strategic region for the US government to control the entry of Central Americans into its national territory and which, currently, makes headlines because of the Central American migrant caravans; the conflicting border area between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, where the Dominican state, through legal provisions, promotes the illegality of migrants; the role of Ecuador, as an articulating center for undocumented workers for the United States; and, finally, the criminalization process in the northern border of Chile, a region characterized by the high circulation of Latin American and Caribbean migrants.
Keywords
migration; migrant irregularity; borders’ control; criminalization of migration