Indigenous Migrants Research Articles

Analyzing Mexico's Indigenous internal migration dynamics through network centrality measures, 1990–2020

AbstractThis study examines the internal migration patterns among Mexico's Indigenous population from 1990 to 2020. We begin by estimating the total interstate migration flows for Indigenous groups and employ an advanced interaction component model to identify migration flows that exceed expectations. This model allows us to detect significant deviations and patterns within the migration data. Additionally, we apply network analysis techniques to identify states that are central to these migration flows and categorize states into distinct communities based on their migration interactions. Our findings reveal that Indigenous migration exhibits higher‐than‐expected flows, particularly from the West Central and North regions of Mexico. By contrast, non‐Indigenous migration shows greater flows, predominantly in the southern and central states. Through network analysis, particularly the use of eigenvector centrality, we identify Nayarit and Durango as key hubs for Indigenous migration, whereas Estado de Mexico and Ciudad de Mexico emerge as central nodes in non‐Indigenous migration. Our study highlights the growing significance of Mexico's northern region, with Nuevo León playing a crucial role in Indigenous and non‐Indigenous migration flow networks. This study's findings contribute valuable insights regarding the spatial dynamics of internal migration and the evolving migration patterns of Indigenous populations in Mexico.

Social Work and Support for Climate-Related Indigenous Migrants from South America

Social Work and Support for Climate-Related Indigenous Migrants from South America

Association between HTLV-1/2 infection and COVID-19 severity in a migrant Shipibo-Konibo population in Lima, Peru.

The migrant community of the Shipibo-Konibo indigenous people in Lima, Peru were extremely vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, infection with human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 and 2 (HTLV-1/2) is endemic in this population causing immunosuppression. The aim of the study was to describe the association between HTLV-1/2 infection and the clinical severity of COVID-19. This was a cross-sectional descriptive study involving a survey of adult Shipibo-Konibo indigenous migrants residing in Cantagallo-Rímac who were identified as suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19. Blood samples were collected for SARS-CoV-2 antibody and HTLV-1/2 ELISA testing. A confirmatory Western Blot test was performed for those with a positive ELISA test. A total of 182 individuals were surveyed and sampled. No significant association was found between HTLV-1/2 infection and the clinical severity of COVID-19. The prevalence of HTLV-1/2 was 8.8% (95%CI: 5.0-14.1) with Western Blot. Age was the only statistically significant risk factor for developing a more severe form of COVID-19 (OR: 1.03; 95%CI: 1.00-1.06; p = 0.032). There was no association found between HTLV-1/2 infection and the clinical severity of COVID-19. The prevalence of HTLV-1/2 infection in the Shipibo-Konibo population is high and warrants continuous monitoring in the advent of other infectious disease outbreaks and the development of HTLV-associated comorbidities.

United States Migration, case of the Mixteca of Oaxaca

This article presents a bibliographic review research, analyzed qualitatively on the indigenous migration of the Mixtec people of Oaxaca and their main destination to the United States of America. The migration of the Mixtec of Oaxaca is a phenomenon that transcends cultural, economic and social borders, and its impact on the countriesof origin and destination, the theoretical work focuses on the Mixtec region of Oaxaca and the impact it has on the indigenous language Mixtec of that region.

In Transit: The Making of Urban Migrants in India

The neo-liberal transformation of India was aided by the restructuring processes launched by the SAP in 1991 and brought the open market to the centre of economic imagination for new India. As the Indian economy opened up to the global financial capital systems and the private sector expanded, a large proportion of labour was relocated to the private, unorganized sector in India. This sector swallowed a majority of the migrant population that was flowing into the urban centers of India. The “middle class aspirations” that the migrants to the cities harbored materialize as a part of the larger neo-liberal aspiration of being upwardly mobile and living a ‘good life’. Based on an ethnographic study conducted in two phases, this paper accounts the narratives of men and women migrants who are employed in the various service sector units of two shopping malls in the city of New Delhi. This paper maps the diversity in the migrant experience by comparing the experiences of two distinct groups of migrants employed in these sectors in India- the indigenous migrants from North East India and the migrants from the rural hinterlands of North India. By comparing the narratives of two groups of migrants my paper tries to argue that in addition to education and credentials, classifications of caste, community and ethnicity play an important role in determining ‘life chances’ and employment opportunities for migrants in urban India.

Understanding the Mobilities of Indigenous Migrant Youth across the Americas

Enhanced immigration enforcement measures are now a dominant practice throughout the world. The concept of transnationalism, used by scholars to illuminate the complex dynamics these measures have across nation-state borders, has been critiqued for its replication of methodological nationalism—the assumption that the nation-state is a natural social and political form of the modern world. How then can migration scholars deepen the understanding of the mobilities of migrant children and youth without replicating methodological nationalism? We propose a relational socio-cultural analytic that synthesizes settler colonial theory and the theory of racialized legal status to comprehend the complex experiences of Indigenous migrant Maya youth and families throughout the Americas. Our use of a relational critical comparative analysis challenges structural functionalist approaches that limit the study migration dynamics within nation-state contexts, which can unwittingly sustain national membership in a state(s) as an aspirational emblem of belonging. We explore how Indigenous Maya experience and challenge the meaning of statelessness and the spillover effects of immigration enforcement measures along the US–Mexico and Mexico–Guatemala borders. We argue that a relational socio-cultural analytic lens serves as a powerful tool for understanding how nation-states co-produce stateless Indigenous populations and how these populations persist throughout the Americas and the world.

Indigenous migration in Latin America

Resumen. La migración indígena latinoamericana es un fenómeno multiétnico, más antiguo que la migración mestiza y con un carácter transnacional, debido a vínculos comunitarios antiguos y vitales. A lo largo del siglo XX, las migraciones indígenas en América Latina reconfiguraron la geografía étnica trazada por los estados modernos, no sólo dentro de los países sino también más allá de las líneas geopolíticas que dividen a América Latina de Estados Unidos, Canadá y el continente europeo en el Norte. Este artículo esboza un complejo campo de reflexión sobre las diferentes trayectorias de los flujos migratorios indígenas en la América Latina contemporánea. La migración indígena ha tenido un impacto en la redefinición de las identidades étnicas y en las nuevas formas de resistencia de los pueblos indígenas en la economía internacional, así como en la reconstrucción de la conciencia indígena en las configuraciones étnicas de más de un Estado-nación. El artículo ofrece un panorama general de la migración indígena continental y algunas experiencias regionales relevantes que van desde el sur al norte del continente.

Embodied Politics: Indigenous Migrant Activism, Cultural Competency and Health Promotion in California By Rebecca J.Hester, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.2022. 208 pp.

Embodied Politics: Indigenous Migrant Activism, Cultural Competency and Health Promotion in California By Rebecca J.Hester, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.2022. 208 pp.

Oaxacalifornia: Indigenous transnational spaces as Grassroots Cosmopolitanism

Paradoxically both immigration and indigeneity are common conditions for exclusion from full citizenship in contemporary settler nation-states. Marginalized populations such as immigrants and Indigenous groups, resist the homogenizing rules dictated by dominant notions of culture and citizenship deployed by settler colonial states, entailing often hegemonic practices of control from institutions, such as the school and media. This essay discusses the creation of a transborder space between Mexico and the US named “Oaxacalifornia”. This “deterritorial” space was named and is maintained by Mexican Indigenous migrants from the state of Oaxaca who spend their daily lives interacting through communicative and civic practices of resurgence and solidarity. These practices enable the interaction with multiple locations and groups of people, fostering grassroots cosmopolitanism, or a worldly engagement challenging the oppressive forces of globalization, such as the state, the dominant cultural spheres, and the market; and the creation of spaces of diversity, resurgence, and solidarity.

La consulta previa como herramienta de la multiculturalidad en contextos migratorios: Evidencia desde Nuevo León, México

En los Estados latinoamericanos, las migraciones de los indígenas del campo a la ciudad tienen ya tintes históricos, no obstante, en los últimos años dichos flujos se han acelerado, debido a conflictos extractivos en sus territorios ancestrales y la búsqueda de empleo. En este contexto, los gobiernos locales de ciudades que no cuentan con una población indígena autóctona se encuentran en una situación inesperada de diversidad étnica que demanda una respuesta multicultural. Así es el caso de Nuevo León, un Estado industrial en el noreste de México, que ha recibido intensos flujos de migrantes indígenasdesde la década de 1990, de forma que en 2015 más de cuatrocientas mil personas ahí residentes se autoadscribían como indígenas. A partir de trabajo de campo realizado entre 2015 y 2017, se analiza la consulta previa –que se suele asociar con conflictos territoriales– como herramienta de multiculturalidad frente a flujos de migración indígena a contextos urbanos. Se sugiere que, aun cuando las consultas realizadas no cumplan ni con los estándares del Derecho Internacional ni con los preceptos básicos de la participación ciuda- dana, pueden ofrecer un espacio simbólico que acerca a las partes para conocerse y entablar un incipiente diálogo intercultural

The migration of the indigenous Miskito population in Costa Rica from the identity and construction of “the other”

In the following article, the social imaginary about migration is analyzed, as well as the myths and stereotypes that the Costa Rican population has in relation to the Nicaraguan immigrant population. The perception and discourse that exist about the construction of the other is identified from the myths and reproduction of stereotypes, the identity and individual or survival strategies of indigenous migrants, especially the Miskito population. For this purpose, some textual and discursive manifestations that Costa Ricans produce and reproduce about immigrant persons are analyzed, in terms of images, as well as perception of this population. All this to demonstrate the mechanisms of naturalization, legitimation and reproduction of power that exist and that help to promote social inequalities, preventing understanding the meaning of migration in Costa Rican society.

Indian Time: Temporality, Gender, Mobility

Indian Time: Temporality, Gender, Mobility

Indigenous Border Migrants and (Im)Mobility Policies in Chile in Times of COVID-19.

The commodification of healthcare and the structural violence towards the migrant population in the Chilean system materialize in a series of structural barriers to accessing healthcare. In the face of this structural vulnerability, cross-border health mobility is one of the primary resources of indigenous border migrants living in the Tarapacá region (Chile). This involves crossing the border of both people (specialists/patients) and objects (such as ritual supplies or biomedicines), which play a crucial role as, in many cases, it is the only way to satisfy their healthcare needs. The security-orientated geopolitics of border closure (Plan Frontera Segura) has been reinforced by immobility policies linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. While doing so leaves people without the fundamental resource of healthcare mobility or obliges them to cross the border via unauthorized crossings, exposing them to criminalization and abuse by different agents of violence (the military, people smugglers, etc.). In this paper, we will offer a description of these processes of (im)mobility, analyzing their conformation both by the current policies of the Chilean State and by the notorious deficiency in indigenous and migrant rights, denouncing the material impact they have on the health/illness/care process of indigenous migrants.

Climate migration, resilience and adaptation in the Anthropocene: Insights from the migrating Frafra to Southern Ghana

Climate-induced indigenous migration has become a radical adaptation vision in the Anthropocene. The article focuses on the problematic of representation of indigenous traditional knowledge and imagination in the Anthropocene, in Frafra ethnic group especially. The article does so by critically examining how indigenous traditional knowledge politicise anthropogenic climate change and migration conceived as a struggle between regimes of governing. It analyses alternative approaches to adaptation and resilience, from the Western scientific knowledge and modernist ontologies, often relying on the engagement of local communities, actively produced through the possibility of the existence of multiplicity in the sense of contemporaneous plurality, understood as a relational outcome and contingent relation. I argue that indigenous traditional knowledge approaches to resilience and adaptation in the Anthropocene disrupt, contest and subvert modernist discourses of climate-induced migration. It is suggested that contemporary discourses of resilience and adaptation appear to be drawing to a close as it lacks an adequate agential, transformative and also opening up alternative possibilities.

Indigenous Peoples on the Move: Intersectional Invisibility and the Quest for Pluriversal Human Rights for Indigenous Migrants from Venezuela in Brazil

ABSTRACT Indigenous migrants are often treated without regard for their status as Indigenous Peoples, as if their migrant status would hierarchically supersede their Indigenous one. The flow of Indigenous migrants from Venezuela to neighboring countries has largely increased over the years. Currently, there are several Indigenous Peoples from Venezuela in Brazil. This evaluative interdisciplinary research addresses the relations between Indigenous and migration human rights protection with consideration for decolonial perspectives. It questions how living coloniality impacts Indigenous migrants' rights, leading to their intersectional invisibility, and how decolonial views on human rights may help overcoming these challenges. It claims that a decolonial perspective on human rights rooted in the pluriverse may situate human rights as emancipatory scripts when led by Indigenous cosmologies. Ultimately, this article aims to contribute to critical understandings on the intersectional oppression faced by Indigenous migrants and, by calling for a shift towards pluriversal approaches to their human rights, illustrate possible paths to the realization of Indigenous migrants' rights and the need to decolonize their lived realities. This may inform potential directions for decolonizing the human rights agenda as well as the law and practice of human rights in the case of Indigenous migrants in Latin America.

Power-building Partnerships for Health: Lessons From Santa Barbara About Building Power to Protect Farmworker Health and Advance Health Equity.

The distribution of power in society is "upstream of the upstream" social determinants of health, and community organizers redistribute power to change social and political systems that shape health. Power-building Partnerships for Health (PPH) was launched in 2018 and pairs local public health departments and community organizing groups to support transformational health equity work, prioritizing trust and relationship building as precursors for action. Through PPH, the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department partnered with 2 grassroots organizations, CAUSE and MICOP. This partnership led to their launching a Latinx Indigenous Migrant Health COVID-19 Task Force and to the passing of a first-of-its-kind Health Officer Order on safety in farmworker housing. This practice brief discusses the importance of relationship building and key activities within PPH, and the roles of both the health department and community organizers in taking action to advance health equity in Santa Barbara County during the pandemic.

Finding a New Illinois History: Connecting with the Revival of Midwestern Regional History

Finding a New Illinois History: Connecting with the Revival of Midwestern Regional History

Вызовы и противоречия в развитии Севера и Арктики: демографическое измерение

The North and the Arctic have been in the focus of attention of the Russian statehood for more than one century. The North and the Arctic have been in the focus of attention of the Russian statehood for more than one century. They received special attention, provided socio-economic preferences. The North of Russia had a development strategy, a unified legislative base, while the Arctic as part of the North was mostly a transport artery and protective borders of Russia. The situation changed after the separation of the Arctic territories from the North. Since 2014, most of the strategic documents concerned the Arctic, and least of all the northern territories. Artificial competition aroused between the regions for access to material, financial and human resources. The paper identifies the following types of conflicts: between the northern and arctic regions and regions located outside of them; between the Arctic and non-Arctic regions of the Russian North; between indigenous and small-numbered peoples of the North and resource companies; between the indigenous and old-time population and migrants (newcomers). The authors outline that the allocation of the Arctic territories also determined a different development vector of the Arctic and the North of Russia. The economy of the Arctic more often represent large corporations, and own funds of enterprises dominate in the structure of investments in the Arctic regions; in the regions of the North, the structure of investments is more dispersed, less concentrated and corporate. The Arctic settlement system includes large, medium and small industrial cities and single-industry settlements, stationary and rotational; in the North, there are more agricultural villages, administrative regional centers and service settlements. The Arctic settlement system, in comparison with the northern one, is generally urban, more concentrated, more industrial and less settled. The viewpoint on the overpopulation of territories and the need to “unload” the network of settlements already created here, on the need for a total transition to a rotational model of development has more grounds in the North than in the Arctic.

Contextualización transformativa de Educación Intercultural Bilingüe: A migrant Indigenous Andean community in the Galapagos Islands

ABSTRACT Latin American countries have experienced demographic and linguistic changes since Educación Intercultural Bilingüe (EIB) was first developed. Yet, ministries of education continue to impose generic models that do not reflect the realities of migrant Indigenous groups, who experience linguistic and ethnic minoritisation processes. Based on our ongoing work with a migrant Salasaka Indigenous community from the Ecuadorian Andes living in Galapagos, a region in which the majority of the population does not identify as Indigenous nor speak Kichwa, we propose Contextualización Transformativa de Educación Intercultural Bilingüe (CTEIB). CTEIB 1) considers processes of enacting Indigeneity in migratory contexts; 2) reflects the dialogic influence of place on migrant Indigenous communities’ languages, traditional ecological knowledge, and culture; and 3) acknowledges the agency and creativity of Indigenous groups as transformative agents in maintaining their languages and Indigeneity outside their ancestral lands. This paper describes the theoretical underpinnings of CTEIB by building on the work of the Salasaka community in contextualising and adapting the Ecuadorian EIB programme to Galapagos. Beyond the importance of this work for migrant Indigenous communities, this work advocates for EIB programmes to address Indigenous migration in their design and implementation with implications for educational researchers, policy makers, and educators.

K’iche’, Mam, and Nahua Migrant Youth Navigating Colonial Codes of Power

This study examines how three recently arrived Indigenous male migrant youth from Guatemala and Mexico in an urban high school in the Pacific Northwest understood and employed Spanish and English to navigate racialized and languaged interactions. Utilizing a Critical Latinx Indigeneities framework, findings from this study show that Spanish is a racialized and languaged system of power that traveled with youth. In the U.S., Spanish interacts with English as a new system of power resulting in the diminishing of Indigenous languages. This study provides urban educators with understandings of the complex systems of race, language, and power Indigenous migrants navigate.