Los Haitianos, las caravanas and transborder racial affect: Emotions and triangulated representations of Caribbean and Central American migrants in Mexico

Abstract

Increasingly foreclosed possibilities of asylum in the US-Mexico border have been accompanied in Mexico by two seemingly divergent narratives laden with affective assessments targeting Haitians and Central Americans, the largest populations of migrants forced to temporarily resettle in Northern Mexican cities. Ethnographic analysis in Tijuana offers insight into diverging representations of docility and gratefulness of Haitians versus aggressiveness and rudeness of Central Americans—alongside converging state and economic violence these migrants face. Bringing comparative ethnic studies with Caribbeanist and Mexicanist anthropology to bear on contemporary Mexican migration politics, this article elucidates how Tijuanenses’ public perceptions are racially triangulated to a valorized Mexicanidad in directly relationship with the border. This paper sheds light on how organized state and non-state violence, enshrined in border regimes, become routinized in everyday “common sense” discourse tied to affective relations through a process proposed herein as transborder racial affect.