Perilous Passages

Abstract

This chapter explores the journeys women undertake through Central America, Mexico and the United States as they seek to escape violence, and the new forms of violence they are made vulnerable to. Exploring youth gang, cartel, police, military, and immigration officials’ violence, the chapter argues that there is a fundamentally new type of state that is analytically inseparable from the illegality and violence, a “Neoliberal multicriminal” state. It considers the relation of this state to structures of settler capitalism.