Abstract

ORTEGA VELAZQUEZ, Elisa. Containing unwanted migration: securitization discourses used by the United States to outsource its border to Mexico from 1988 to 2020. Inter disciplina [online]. 2023, vol.11, n.29, pp.23-51.  Epub June 26, 2023. ISSN 2448-5705.  https://doi.org/10.22201/ceiich.24485705e.2023.29.84479.

This paper argues that the United States’ migration management has used the discourse of the securitization of migrations to contain irregular migration from Central America, which is considered “undesirable”. This has been executed for three decades through different biopolitics which externalize US borders to Mexico, situating Mexico as Trump’s first line of “defense” on undesired immigration. For those purposes, migration management will be analyzed from the legal biopolitical framework by approaching securitization of migrations through a genealogy of the discourses used by the United States to externalize its borders to Mexico from 1988 to 2020: migrants as drug dealers, migrants as terrorists and migrant caravans as invasions. It will be concluded that even though Central American migrants and asylum seekers have enough reasons to be afforded international protection from the US and Mexico, they just have a few opportunities to obtain it because their lives are considered disposable for these countries and other interests prime over their lives.

Keywords : securitization; outsourcing; Mexico-United States; Central America; irregular migration.