Mexican bureaucrats and the everyday restriction of transnational migration in a context of scarcity

Abstract

ABSTRACTMexican bureaucrats and the everyday restriction of transnational migration in a context of scarcity. Territory, Politics, Governance. Examining the everyday practices of the state is crucial to our understanding of the multiple ways that governments regulate transnational migration. While geographers have increasingly focused on these practices at a broad, institutional scale and in sites in the Global North, less attention has been given to the mundane and often unseen processes of regulation and restriction that take place beyond physical borders and outside of the formal spaces and practices of the state immigration apparatus in the Global South. This article draws on ethnographic research to understand the contexts in which low-level officials and bureaucrats’ practices of policy implementation with the Central American immigrant community in the Mexico–Guatemala border city of Tapachula unfold. It explores how institutional contexts and conditions shape officials’ restrictive actions. In particular, it focuses on conditions of material and resource scarcity and how this connects to poor service provision. I argue that officials’ actions occur within a complex context in which neoliberal scarcity prevails alongside pressure to increase productivity and long-held, practices. These factors entangle to create spaces that allow everyday restriction to flourish.