From Transit to Mobility: Characteristics and Concepts

Abstract

This chapter argues that the concept of ‘transit migration’, frequently employed to characterize the flow of Central American migrants through Mexico, obscures the instability, circularity, and unpredictability of this so-called transitory movement. The chapter advances a model that explains migrants’ mobility and immobility by the precarity they experience. It suggests that migrants’ precarity is shaped in the context of the biopolitics of citizenship and the corresponding migration control techniques, both of which give rise to activities within the so-called migration industry composed of actors who: (1) facilitate the movement; (2) prey on migrants; and/or (3) provide humanitarian aid. In addition, migrants develop certain ‘techniques of the self’ to counteract the immobilizing effects of precarity. According to the conceptual model advanced in this chapter, mobility and immobility are shaped by a combination of experiences of precarity, humanitarian support, and techniques of the self.