Migration.
Mural of children by Jessica Sabogal; located in Oakland, CA. Photo credit: William Newton.
Who is a Migrant?
Understanding Migration.
There is no one way to classify who a migrant is because human movements are complex.
The structures of governance and laws present in countries around the world all work in different ways to manage and discipline migrants.
“Being a migrant is complicated. We carry with us connections to our homeland and connections to the countries where we are traveling to in order to live.”
In order to survive, migrants often build networks that span many different national borders.
Migrants are part of most every society in the world today.
Understanding the challenges that migrants face can make us more aware of the impact of globalization, especially around experiences related to identity.
Blackness and sexuality impact how and why people migrate.
“Migrant” is the term by which people who migrate are identified. Learn more at https://meaningofmigrants.org/the-case-for-being-inclusive/
What is the difference between a migrant and refugee?
Migrant v.s. Refugee
A migrant is an umbrella term that serves to identify individuals who have for various social, political or economic reasons have moved across international borders away from their primary site of birth and naturalization for a varied period of time.
Migrants are people who have for various social, political or economic reasons for crossing international borders in seeking safety and a better life.
Refugees are persons who are outside their country of origin for reasons of feared persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or other circumstances that have seriously disturbed public order and, as a result, require international protection. The refugee definition can be found in the 1951 Convention and regional refugee instruments, as well as UNHCR’s Statute.
Not to be confused with migrant, the term “refugee” serves to identify individuals who have for various social, political or economic reasons relating to feared torment, conflict, widespread violence have moved away from the site of birth and naturalization, crossing international borders to actualize a more favorable life circumstance in search of safety.
Having clarified terms, we seek to emphasize how certain factors, usually unchangeable like race among other factors affect migration.
Global Context.
Over recent decades, intensifying inequality across the world, the proliferation of religious, political and wartime conflicts, reinforced by upregulated USA and European Union border regimes have led to epic transformations in global migratory patterns (Castles, de Haas, & Miller 2014). In the Americas, this has meant that Mexico, Central, and South American countries have become both transit and destination spaces of South-South global migratory flows, while also continuing to produce their own outwardly moving migrants (IOM 2019). Caribbean, African, Asian and Middle Eastern migrants and asylum-seekers increasingly reach those countries with the intention of either dwelling there or moving elsewhere, either to the USA or Argentina, Chile and Brazil (Álvarez Velasco 2020; Winters 2020).
Inmovilidadesamericas.org
Anti-blackness within a society prevents people of African descent from fully participating in government (i.e. kept from voting, running for office, or benefitting from social services), the economy, and opportunities for education and prevents their access to healthcare, places to live and land for farming.
Anti-blackness in “destination countries” the US also prevents black and black descended peoples from accessing resources in those places. Resources may include safe housing and the full legal recognitions or even being counted by the government’s census.
Migration and Latin America
The lasting legacy of racist colonialism in present-day Latin American countries explain the dire socio-economic conditions legacies of violence that force migrants to depart to the U.S.
Transiting the clandestine path from their home countries to the U.S. means confronting social and state violence which targets undocumented racialized bodies. Furthermore, from the moment they arrive in the U.S. and settle, even if temporarily, in Houston, they will have to face likewise other forms of everyday social and state racism which are materialized in their poverty and segregation to a decent legalized life.
Image by Francis Almendárez
Migration to Houston
The United States of America has been the most highly sought-after overall migratory destination in the world for some time. And in recent decades, Houston Texas has become the single most diverse, rapidly-growing American metropolitan area, due to national and international migration.
The greater Houston economy includes being the American port with the largest volume of foreign trade, home to an extensive biomedical hospital and research industry, to the corporate center of the world’s fossil fuel industries and its multifarious support industries, as well as extensive refining and petrochemical manufacturing infrastructures. The 2013 Houston metropolitan area was home to 6.3 million people, of whom 1.4 million were foreign-born—an increase of almost 60% since 2000.[1] There are quite literally people from all over the world living in Houston, such as Ethiopia, Jamaica, El Salvador, Vietnam, India, Honduras, Philippines, Guatemala, Pakistan, Colombia, Nigeria, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, Venezuela, Ecuador, Burma, and Trinidad and Tobago, to name just some.
Houston has also become a major American site of refugee resettlement. For all of these reasons, Houston’s longtime demographer Steven Kleinberg has dubbed Houston the “prophetic city” of the future [add reference and link to Kinder Institute as well as his UH HC lecture archived @ CPH].
The movements of migrants and their experiences have unfortunately been threatened and undermined by forms of structural racism and ethnoracial inequities and injustices as they intersect with other forms of cultural identity such as gender, language, religion, education and socioeconomic status. [finish this paragraph with overview of ways ANTI-BLACKNESS obstructs-discriminates against-undermines-injures Black migratory movements]
Migrants in Houston
Detroit Red by Jasmine Zelaya at Rice University.
A recent study from the Migration Policy Institute (2015) about Houston’s migratory diversity gives an account of how Latinx immigrants, being the most numerous migrant community in the city—especially Mexicans, Hondurans, Salvadorians, and Guatemalans, who come and go from the US for seasonal work--are less likely to become American citizens and hence are constantly denied elementary rights. Reinforced migratory policies prevent these migrant groups from to regularize their migratory situation, turning them into second-class citizens.
The household income of Mexican and Central American immigrants is about half that of the U.S.-born population in Houston and their poverty rate is almost twice as high. Here are some reasons why:
As undocumented migrants they are confined to work in the informal market, and face limitations to receive social and economic state aid, which makes them live in housing conditions and everyday uncertainty.
If they come to the US with low levels of formal education, limited English proficiency or through illegalized migratory conditions they face a huge barrier when trying to find a decent jobs.
Spatial and racial segregation go hand in hand. Undocumented Latinx migrants live in specific neighbourhoods, divided by major highways and rail lines, amid poverty and housing limitations.[2]
Migrants in Houston who are poor, racialized, criminalized and illegalized become easy targets for anti-migration raids, and are in constant danger of being detained and deported.
Migration to Houston
Migration to Houston
(subsequent page)
Our learning topics address the following topics:
Key factors driving the migration of Black LGBTQ+ migrants to the US South today
The depth and breadth of queer and trans Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latinidad histories and cultural productions related to migrations
The current realities of structural racism and anti-blackness within the U.S. as it impacts Black LGBTQ+ migrants
Uses of this knowledge to serve Black LGBTQ+ migrants
Our treatment of migration is informed by a broad feminist approach which is grounded in the work of Black, Latina, and transnational feminists. As a group, our connection to migration comes from varied experiences, including the personal experience of migration, the experience of being raised by im/migrants, and research on migration within various academic disciplines. Our learning topics will continue to expand to reflect our varied research and engagements.
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Learn more.
To learn more about transnational migration in the Americas, please see:
Black LGBTQ+ Migrant Project (BLMP) (English)
(IN)Movilidad en Las Américas (Spanish; English; Portuguese)
Migrants de otro mundo (Spanish; French)