Captive Migrations: Confinement and Care on the Mexico-U.S. Border

This presentation will provide an ethnographic account of the structures of captivity keeping migrants and deportees in conditions of immobility and precarity at the U.S.-Mexico border. Although deportees and asylum seekers reach the border region through different trajectories, Dr. Carlos Martinez’s research shows how a transnational set of forces—what he calls the carceral frontier—confines the movements of both communities while gradually wearing them down. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted since 2018, this presentation will explore the everyday lives, survival strategies, and forms of solidarity among these communities in Tijuana, Mexico.