This book analyses the different ways in which forced migration comes together with organized violence in the Americas, focusing specifically on the migration corridor from Central America, through Mexico and on to the USA.

Ximena Alba Villalever is an anthropologist, researcher, and professor in the Institute for Latin American Studies of the Freie Universität Berlin, where she is a coordinator of the Gender Studies profile of the Master's program. Her research has focused on migration processes with a particular interest on gender, labor, inequality, globalization, and violence.

Stephanie Schütze is Professor for Cultural and Social Anthropology with a specialization in gender and migration studies at the Lateinamerika-Institut of Freie Universität Berlin. She has conducted research on political culture, social movements, migration, and gender relations in diverse contexts and regions in Mexico, the United States, and Brazil.

Ludger Pries held Chair of Sociology and is now Senior Professor at the Department of Social Science of Ruhr-University Bochum. He had longer teaching and research stays in Brazil, Mexico, Spain, and the United States. Fields of research are (international comparative) sociology of migration, work and organizations, life-course research, and transnationalism.

Oscar Calderón Morillón is Research Professor at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. His lines of research are labor studies and migration processes in the contexts of exclusion and vulnerability.

Table of contents

Chapter 1: Introduction: Approaches to organized violence and forced migration in transit through Mexico
Ximena Alba Villalever, Stephanie Schütze, Ludger Pries, and Oscar Calderón Morillón

Part I - The effects of violence and border regimes on migration processes

Chapter 2: Violence and Central American migrants on Mexico's southern border
Martha Luz Rojas-Wiesner

Chapter 3: Entanglement of violences: Doubly forced migrants transiting across the Americas
Soledad Álvarez Velasco and Bruno Miranda

Chapter 4: Externalization, violence, and migrants' lengthy wait at Mexico's northern border
M. Dolores París-Pombo

Part II - Forced migrants' experiences with organized violence

Chapter 5: Investigating in-transit migration through Mexico within the context of violence and the pandemic
Oscar Calderón Morillón, Amir Estrada, Marlene Rodríguez, Axel Ortiz, Karla Gutiérrez, Estefanía Gutiérrez, Aranza Climaco, Antonio Amat, Alan Rodríguez, Javier Solís, and Eusebio Moto

Chapter 6: Forced migration and organized violence between the Northern Triangle of Central America and Mexico: Evidence from a 2020 survey
Ludger Pries, Berna Safak Zülfikar Savci, Ximena Alba Villalever, and Oscar Calderón Morillón

Chapter 7: Caravanas migrantes as counter-strategies against violence and (im)mobility
Ximena Alba Villalever and Stephanie Schütze

Chapter 8: Ties along the arterial border in Mexico: Groups, institutions, and information
Alejandra Díaz de León and John Doering-White

Part III - Gender and violence in migration trajectories

Chapter 9: Gendered patterns of mobility and access to refugee protection of Central American migrants and refugees in Mexico
Susanne Willers

Chapter 10: Organized violence in life histories of Central American migrant women
Melanie Nayeli Wieschalla

Chapter 11: Waiting as violence: The interactions of gender and waiting mechanisms in the asylum systems of the United States and Mexico
Pia Berghoff and Lya Cuéllar