Joining a migrant caravan: herd behaviour and structural factors

Abstract

The largest migrant caravan headed from the Northern Triangle of Central America to the southern border of the United States left Honduras on 13 October 2018. When it crossed the border into Mexico, many people wondered why more than 7000 Central Americans were moving to a country with such adverse immigration policies. This research answers the question by interviewing migrants from the Caravan during their travel through Mexico, and combining previously documented factors, such as the search for jobs, better wages, preserving their lives from threats from criminal groups, migration policies and economic interests, with novel explanations derived from herd behaviour in the Caravan. This theoretical addition of herd behaviour allows us to better understand the aggregation of individual preferences that have economic incentives and contributes to the academic debate on the factors that drive collective migrations.