Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: A Social Science Investigation of Violence along the Migrant Trail in Mexico

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University of Arizona graduate student Wendy Vogt, advised by Dr. Linda B. Green, will undertake research on the violence experienced by Central American migrants travelling through Mexico to the United States. Mexico has become a major transit country for Central American migrants hoping to reach the United States. Increasingly, these migrants have violent encounters, particularly between Guatemala and Mexico City. Vogt's research will be focused on what produces this violence and why it has increased in recent years.Vogt will employ a multi-methods approach. She will use archival records in southern Mexico and Mexico City to document changes in government policies towards immigrants as well as recent changes in economic patterns in the communities through which the migrants pass. In addition to the archival component, Vogt will identify three key communites along the migrant trail. In each of these communities she will employ ethnographic methods such as participant observation, structured and semi-structured interviews, and oral history elicitation. These data will allow Vogt to link local experiences with larger national and international processes, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to determine at how these external factors are mediated locally through everyday social relations between and among Central American migrants and local Mexican residents. This research is important in that it will contribute to social science theory about how changes in national and international processes connect with regional and local lives. The research also may contribute to developing policies for protecting both migrants and the communities through which they pass from escalating violence. Finally, the research will contribute to the education of a social scientist.An anthropological focus on the journey will contribute to a more complete understanding of how migration processes and violence impact not only migrants, but reshape the lives of multiple actors in meaningful and material ways.