Transit as racialized space: Comparing perceptions of refugees along the Mexico–Guatemala border

Abstract

Scholars have attuned to the challenges Central American migrants face along increasingly perilous northward journeys. However, most studies of “transit spaces” are relatively migrant-centric, focusing on the meanings these spaces hold for migrants, or how particular locales are reconfigured in relation to migratory processes. There has been less attention to the meanings such places hold for long-term inhabitants, as well as how they change over time. This article draws on long-term ethnographic fieldwork along the Mexico–Guatemala border to compare how inhabitants perceived migrants and refugees in two different periods: narratives recalling suspicion of Guatemalan refugees in the 1980s and more recent anxieties held toward Central American migrants. Through the comparison, it problematizes how the very conceptualization of transit spaces and migrants in transit serves to uphold larger racial projects of exclusionary nationalism and the “national order of things” where territory, ethno-racial identity, and belonging are assumed to align.