Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the structural violence surrounding Honduran migration, and the consequences for the lives of ‘failed’ migrants. Findings are based on fieldwork interviews with returned migrants including detainees, long-term US residents, and migrants seriously injured on the journey North.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I discuss the structural violence surrounding Central American migration, by examining the impacts and implications of legal structures and physical barriers on the lives and bodies of "failed" Honduran migrants. Based on fieldwork I conducted in Honduras, I analyze the consequences for those who are returned to their countries of origin, a critical subject that is seldom discussed at length in the literature on migration. With immigration as an increasingly hot-button issue in United States, the more violent or tragic stories can no longer be left out of the discourse on policy reform.

It is well known that the migrant path from Central America to the United States is fraught with danger, from the physical demands of the journey to victimization at the hands of criminals or immigration officials. For this project I interviewed return migrants of many kinds: deportees who had built lives in the United States, migrants who failed to reach the US, immigration detainees, and men who lost limbs falling from the trains on their way Al Norte through Mexico. Returning to Honduras as an "unsuccessful" migrant has deep social and psychological implications for their sense of agency and identity, and for those mutilados, the physical consequences of their injuries could permanently impact their employability and mobility. My paper explores the grounded perspective of unsuccessful migrants, and the structural violence which mediates the experience of Honduran emigration.