Abstract
Through ethnographic research with indigenous migrant youth and their families in Guatemala, Southern Mexico, and the United States, Lauren Heidbrink’s timely book demonstrates “how migration is socially constructed, practiced, and experienced” (p. 3), or what she terms “migranthood.” Migranthood begins with the arrival of 70,000 unaccompanied children from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras at the US-Mexico border in 2014. Heidbrink complicates the widely accepted narrative of the unprecedented humanitarian crisis by demonstrating that it was, in fact, a policy crisis long in the making and largely a result of US economic and political intervention in Central America. The effects of US and foreign intervention directly affect indigenous Guatemalan migrants, who have resorted to migration as a collective and historically rooted survival strategy against racism, historical violence, and intergenerational structural inequality in Guatemala. US immigration policy, however, classifies unaccompanied youth as economic migrants rather than as refugees, a stance the United States has long taken toward Central Americans.
Migranthood contributes to the study of migration by centering the voices and experiences of indigenous youth as they respond to assumptions and narratives created about their migration. Heidbrink demonstrates how migration is a cultural elaboration of care in which indigenous families have partaken for generations at the local, regional, and transnational level. Rather than abused children “sent” to the United States by neglectful parents, unaccompanied youth are family members deemed reliable enough to make it to the United States to support their families. Heidbrink highlights youth agency in migration decision-making processes and demonstrates how youth challenge messages engrained in deterrence campaigns that assume that indigenous families are unaware of the dangers of unauthorized migration and pathologize parents for “sending” children to the United States.
Heidbrink criticizes development initiatives, including free trade agreements and reintegration programs for deportees meant to deter migration. Free trade agreements, she argues, enable extractive industries to create environmental contamination, displacing indigenous people and forcing them to migrate. Development initiatives, which claim to reintegrate Guatemalan deportees and create alternatives to remigration, fail to grasp the underlying issues causing youth migration and perpetuate social hierarchies between indigenous peoples and ladinos (which Heidbrink defines as people of mixed indigenous and Spanish descent). Indeed, the resources these programs claim to offer, including medical exams and mental health evaluations, never materialize, while those that have, do not provide sustainable alternatives to deter remigration.
Migranthood’s psychological toll for indigenous youth is most visceral in Chapter 6. In it, Heidbrink describes how families assume debt to manage intergenerational structural poverty, better living conditions, and acute crises. High-interest loans, ranging from 5 to 50 percent monthly interest, put indigenous families in a perpetual cycle of debt and poverty. Since loan repayment requires US-level wages, debt forces families into a cycle of migration and deportation. For migrant youth who are apprehended and subsequently deported, deportation is not a singular event but a process that has long-lasting impacts on them, their families, and entire communities. Since migration has become a rite of passage, a way to repay debt, and a fulfillment of caregiving responsibilities, some deportees internalize deportation as failure. This “failure” produces feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression, as well as guilt and shame when community members attribute deportation to criminality or a lack of religious faith.
While Heidbrink is attentive to economic and environmental devastation brought about by US economic and political intervention, settler capitalism and US empire go virtually unquestioned. Speed (2019) effectively links racial logics with capitalist exploitation and argues that settler ideologies continue to structure the conditions of possibility for indigenous peoples and render them vulnerable in multiple ways. Heidbrink’s call for decolonization falls short if it does not extend to the economic system that wreaks havoc on indigenous peoples and lands. A serious engagement with indigenous scholars and decolonial thought throughout the text could have allowed this book to bridge indigenous studies, decolonial praxis, and migration studies.
Overall, Migranthood effectively depicts how indigenous youth and their families experience, construct, and practice migration. The data gathered through a mixed-method approach which incorporates ethnographic fieldwork, focus groups, and household surveys provide rich insight into youths’ understanding of their migranthood, as well as their responses to the meanings outsiders assign to their experiences. The household surveys, in particular, have the potential to make the research legible to US policy-makers. Thus, this book provides great insight for qualitative researchers trying to strike a balance between grounded research and generalizable data that can be applied in public policy. Still, Heidbrink reminds migration scholars of the importance of contextualized data through her encounters with key actors who, she finds, are susceptible to misinformation which prevents them from instituting effective change. Centering the experiences of indigenous youth allows Heidbrink to critically examine the shortcomings of policies when actually implemented. Migranthood is accessible to undergraduates and is an excellent text for courses in Latin American Studies, Central American Studies, development studies, youth studies, international relations, and transnational migration.