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Summary
Fernández de la Reguera Ahedo, A. (2024). The Militarization of Immigration Control and the Effects of Detention on Migrant Women in Mexico. In: Chamberlen, A., Bandyopadhyay, M. (eds) Geographies of Gendered Punishment. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Abstract
As a result of the hardening of securitization and criminalization of immigration policy in Mexico, in 2019, the Guardia Nacional [National Guard] began to formally support the Instituto Nacional de Migración [National Institute of Migration] (INM) in border and immigration control. This measure consolidated militarization in border zones, transit routes and cities, which has particularly affected women through the proliferation of arbitrary detentions and human rights violations along a process that starts when people on the move are identified and deprived of their liberty in a detention center until they are deported. Through extensive fieldwork that includes an institutional ethnography of immigration detention centers in Chiapas (southern border of Mexico with Guatemala) between 2017 and 2019 and visits to Mexico City´s immigration detention center in 2021, as well as in-depth interviews in 2023 with ten NGOs that monitor immigration detention centers, in this chapter, I reflect on how the militarization of immigration control exacerbates gender-based violence, specifically sexual violence and other human rights violations against women along the detention process. I argue that through securitization and militarization of immigration control, women are identified as body territories of a targeted collective enemy by a masculine power, which makes them vulnerable to suffering and cruelty perpetrated by INM and Guardia Nacional agents along all stages of immigration detention. Sexual difference impacts the experience of violence which can be subtle or direct, for example, denying access to a sanitary pad, a medical check or an interview to identify whether a woman is a victim of sexual violence. I analyze one case of militarized border rape (Falcón, 2001) as a mechanism of power, subordination, and deterrence during immigration detention.
