The Donkey Trail: A Difficult New Migrant Pathway to the U.S. Border

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Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In 2017, owners of a food cart selling burritos were famously shamed into shutting down their business, as both were seen to be “appropriating” the cuisine that purportedly belonged to others. This subsequently led to a public list of Portland restaurants deemed “culturally appropriative” by some. Both aspects of this episode are widely discussed on the internet.

2 Yesh is a pseudonym selected by the young man himself.

3 He was in the 11th Standard in the British-Indian system. We didn’t discuss whether he had actually completed the 11th grade.

4 Yesh reports that the dead boy’s body went to the hospital and eventually back to India.

5 Yesh referred to all of the persons between here and the United States as “Spanish,” indicating Spanish speakers of different nationalities.

6 But as he notes, different agents use different routes through the Panama jungle. Others he encountered on the journey had been in the jungle for 6 days, for example.

7 He meant jaguars, we suspect.

8 He didn’t learn these details until he reached the United States, Yesh added.

9 Yesh often refers to the Border Patrol and other uniformed forces as “the army.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew Gardner

Andrew Gardner is a professor of anthropology at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. He has several decades of experience researching transnational labor migration, with a particular focus on migration flows connecting South Asia to the Arabian Peninsula. He is the author of several books and numerous articles.

Deeipendra Giri

Deeipendra Giri is an independent researcher and a former transnational labor migrant himself. Originally from Nepal, his life experiences have carried him to several different continents. He has experience speaking about transnational migration in Los Angeles, London and Abu Dhabi, and he has contributed to several research projects stewarded by Andrew Gardner and others.