Labor Borders: Recruitment of Central American Migrants in “Exodus” through Southern Mexico and Indigenous Mexican “Braceros” in the Californian Fields

Abstract

AbstractThe article proposes the concept of “labor border” to explore the evolution of migration policies in the Central America-Mexico-USA region by investigating the dimension of work, through two case studies: (1) the US H-2A program for the temporary recruitment of foreign agricultural workers from Mexico; and subsequently (2) the Mexican regularization programs with temporary labor opportunity, implemented by the Mexican government in the context of the so-called “Central American exodus”: Social Emergency Program (Programa de Emergencia Social) and Sowing Life (Sembrando Vida). The objective of the research is to analyze how the political use of a labor border contributes to the social construction of a hierarchy of immigrant workers, as well as to the progressive closure of borders, and the outsourcing of control operations by the USA to the south of Mexico and other Central American countries. The research took place between March 2016 and December 2021, with a combination of mainly qualitative methodologies.