Re-conceptualising agency in migrant children from Central America and Mexico

ABSTRACT

With child migration on the rise, there is a critical need to understand how migrant children express their agency. To date, popular narratives cast migrant children as either victims or criminals, an unhelpful binary that does little to further efforts to develop effective interventions to help migrant youth. Drawing from 32 in-depth interviews and participatory activities with Mexican and Central American children in Mexican youth immigration detention centres, this paper seeks to reconceptualise current understandings of migrant children’s agency. In this paper, we explore how youth express their motivations, assert their will, develop pragmatic dependencies, employ strategic parroting and guard information to achieve their goals. We also examine how state and non-state actors both support and suppress young people’s agency as they try to navigate their way to the U.S./Mexico border. In doing so, we argue for a more nuanced approach to child migrants’ agency. A non-binary approach recognises the development of agency as a process, embracing children and young people’s rights and vulnerabilities, while acknowledging their resiliencies, competencies, goals and strengths. We conclude by proposing a transdisciplinary research agenda to promote this non-binary approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Unaccompanied child
• migration
• agency
• Central America
• Mexico

Acknowledgments

We appreciate COLEF (Colegio de la Frontera Norte) of Matamoros for providing our U.S. researchers with a home in Mexico and DIF (Desarollo Integral de la Familia) for granting access to study sites and participants. The authors wish to especially acknowledge our research assistants Tamara Segura and Daniela Garcia. Additional thanks to Lauren Gulbas and Megan Scarborough for providing input on drafts. All mistakes and shortcomings are our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. All Mexican participants were apprehended in the U.S. and deported to Mexico. All Central American participants were apprehended and detained in Mexico, prior to attempting to cross the U.S. border.

2. Sampling criteria specified children under the age of 18 years. One participant turned 18 in the shelter, days before being interviewed. We included her as an exception. Most of the interview related to her recent experiences as a minor, except for the few questions related to her future plans.

Additional information

Funding

Support for this research was provided by the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) at the University of Texas at Austin from funds granted to the institute by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Matías Romero Visiting Scholars Program; the C.B. Smith, Sr. Centennial Chair Emeritus in U.S.–Mexico Relations #1, Dr Bryan Roberts; the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Texas at Austin; a Research Enhancement Grant from Texas State University; and a University Grants Program Award from San Diego State University.