African migratory trajectories across Central America: displacements, transitory emplacements, and ambivalent migration nodes

这一研究项目旨在洞察流离失所的非洲移民的新轨迹，他们穿越面临严重挑战的中美洲国家，试图到达北美。在经验层面上，该项目回应了最近中美洲非洲移民和难民人数的增加，并将他们未得到充分研究的经历置于遍布全球但不平衡的移民路线、危机和产业的背景下。在理论层面上，该项目以对移徙、流离失所和流动之间的动态的批判性理解为基础，并进一步阐述。该项目特别询问，流离失所/安置辩证法的新概念可以在多大程度上适用于整个全球南方日益漫长和不稳定的移徙轨迹。为了做到这一点，其人种学的重点是移民之旅，以及将被称为走私、监视和团结的“移民节点”，在很大程度上没有得到充分研究，但在中美洲的关键地点。通过这些相互关联的旅程和节点，该项目提供了对移民轨迹的民族志理解，有助于将矛盾、纠缠和本地化的流离失所动态理论化。通过展示移民到达全球北部不断扩大的边界之前会发生什么，该项目反驳了对在全球南部途中的移民和难民的简单、管理的解释和表述，他们的经历需要以过程模式进行研究。

This research project aims to gain insight into the emerging trajectories of displaced African migrants who traverse severely challenged Central American countries in an attempt to reach North America. On an empirical level, the project responds to the recent increase of African migrants and refugees in Central America and situates their understudied experiences in a context of globe-spanning yet lopsided migration routes, crises and industries. On a theoretical level, the project builds on and further elaborates critical understandings of the dynamics between migration, displacement and (im)mobilities. In particular, the project asks to what extent novel conceptualizations of the displacement/emplacement dialectic can be applied to the increasingly drawn-out and volatile migrant trajectories across the Global South. To do so, its ethnographic focus lies on migrant journeys as well as on what will be referred to as “migration nodes” of smuggling, surveillance and solidarity throughout largely understudied yet key Central American sites. Offering an ethnographic understanding of migrant trajectories through these interconnected journeys and nodes, this project contributes to the theorization of ambivalent, entangled, and localized displacement dynamics. By showing what happens before migrants reach the expanding borders of the Global North, the project counters simplistic, managerial interpretations and representations of migrants and refugees en route within the Global South, whose experiences need to be researched in a processual mode.