Abstract
Mexico, long regarded as a “transit country” for migrants and refugees, has expanded its asylum system alongside intensified migration enforcement under the externalization of US border control. This paper examines how migrants and refugees are incorporated into Mexican society under a multilayered migration regime characterized by uncertainty. Focusing on those who refrain from regularization through the asylum system and remain in irregular status, the study explores how differentiated forms of inclusion are produced under such conditions. The findings show that migrants make decisions regarding legal status while considering possible effects on future mobility, including asylum claims in the US and return to their countries of origin. Under these conditions, undocumented status may become a conditionally rational “choice,” as migrants project imagined future mobility onto an uncertain present. While some gain access to more stable employment and welfare through refugee recognition, others become increasingly exposed to exploitation and marginalization.
Keywords
Introduction
Under global capitalism, economic and global inequalities have widened, making cross-border mobility from the Global South to the Global North one of the most effective ways of pursuing individual life chances (Faist, 2019). Economic hardship, political instability, violence, and conflict all contribute to the movement of people across borders. Yet, as inequalities in mobility deepen, crossing borders is no longer a linear process from a sending country to a receiving country. Instead, many people experience migration as a prolonged process involving multiple border crossings, extended journeys, and periods of forced stagnation (Basok et al., 2015; Papadopoulou-Kourkoula, 2008). While some reach their destinations safely, others are compelled to undertake life-threatening journeys. The Latin American and Caribbean migrants and refugees examined in this study initially sought to migrate to the United States, but many became stranded in Mexico during transit and experienced prolonged stays there. Their experiences reflect increasingly fragmented and high-risk forms of mobility.
Historically, Mexico has long been considered a country of transit for migrants, seeking refuge from persecution and insecurity or seeking better economic opportunities in the north. As reflected during the 2000s, Mexico’s asylum system remained relatively small. Between 2002 and 2011, Mexico received a total of 5255 asylum applications, of which 1186 resulted in refugee recognition (Torre Cantalapiedra et al., 2021: 7). This represents an overall recognition rate of 23% during this period (Cobo and Fuerte, 2012: 18). This trend changed in the 2010s due to institutional reforms within the Mexican Committee for Refugee Assistance (COMAR), implemented with financial support from the UNHCR. The number of asylum applications increased dramatically in the late 2010s and 2020s, reaching over 140,000 in 2023. In recent years, approximately 60% of asylum decisions have resulted in some form of international protection (UNHCR, 2025).
While this system functions as a humanitarian response to rising forced displacement in the Americas, it simultaneously operates as an apparatus that connects US driven border externalization with Mexico’s internalization of border control (Menjívar, 2014). Many migrants have been forced to stay in southern Mexico due to prolonged asylum procedures and restrictions on asylum seekers’ internal mobility within Mexico (Rizzo Lara, 2024). Under continuous pressure from successive US administrations to deter northward migration, Mexico has gradually assumed the role of a “buffer” for the US and Canada (FitzGerald, 2019). Consequently, many asylum seekers remain exposed to violence, precarious labor conditions, and extended uncertainty, highlighting the persistent tension between “protection” and “control” within Mexico’s refugee regime (Torre Cantalapiedra et al., 2021; Vogt, 2018). Mexico has come to be positioned not only as a “transit country” but also a “country of reception.” Many migrants and refugees arriving from across Latin America originally intended to reach the US, yet are increasingly compelled to abandon onward movement or, in some cases, to seek settlement in Mexico.
While international organizations and state actors attempt to govern mobility in North America, Mexico has continued to expand its refugee recognition system. Yet, this expansion does not guarantee equal rights for all. Rather, migrants must navigate a multilayered migration regime characterized by institutional opacity and uncertainty regarding how regulations are implemented, interpreted, and enforced across institutions and local contexts. In some cases, migrants avoid seeking legal status through the asylum process not because they reject social incorporation itself, but because the consequences of legalization remain opaque and uncertain. A clear institutional divide separates those who obtain refugee status and legal stability from those who do not. The latter may remain in the country for extended periods without access to basic rights such as formal employment, healthcare, freedom of movement, or long-term residence. In this setting, uncertainty is not merely temporary or incidental, but becomes structurally embedded within the migration regime itself, shaping migrants’ legal decision-making, imagined future mobility, and strategies of incorporation. Moreover, under a migration regime shaped by multiple states, some migrants avoid seeking refugee status in Mexico based on calculations for future mobility to the US or beyond, thereby reproducing legal precariousness. This reflects a broader process of “differential inclusion” (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013), in which migrants are incorporated into host societies in unstable and hierarchically stratified ways.
Drawing on scholarship in transit migration studies and border studies, this article analyzes how the experiences of (im)mobility under Mexico’s refugee system and a multi-layered border regime shape migrants’ and refugees’ incorporation into Mexican labor markets. It examines how recent policy shifts in US refugee and asylum policy following the Trump administration’s second term have transformed the experiences of migrants and refugees transiting through and residing in Mexico. Empirically, the study is based on fieldwork sporadically conducted between 2022 and 2026 in Tenosique, Mexico City, Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, and Monterrey, including visits to multiple migrant shelters, interviews with shelter staff, and in-depth interviews with fourteen migrants and refugees residing in these cities.
Based on these findings, the article demonstrates how migration regimes intended to manage cross-border mobility create processes of differential inclusion, by selectively incorporating migrants and refugees under precarious legal, social, and labor conditions. Particular attention is paid to how migrants navigate legal uncertainty and make decisions regarding asylum and regularization under conditions of profound uncertainty. Specifically, I highlight the differences between refugees granted protection and those who did not seek asylum in Mexico due to their desire for onward migration to the north or concerns about future return to their home country.
By focusing on the prolonged and increasingly fixed nature of migrants’ residence in Mexico, this study further examines how the refugee system contributes to unequal patterns of labor market incorporation. While previous studies often assume that migrants seek to obtain stable legal status in host countries, Mexico’s dual role as a transit and receiving country reveals that differential inclusion is not solely structured by a single nation-state, but through border regimes operating across multiple states. Migrants make legal decisions in response not only to their current situation in Mexico, but also the potential impact on their future mobility to the US or their country of origin. This article empirically demonstrates how migrants’ decisions regarding regularization, particularly through asylum claims, are shaped by immigration controls operating across Mexico and the United States, and how these arrangements, in turn, produce differential inclusion within Mexican society.
Literature review and analytical framework
Research on the experiences of migrants and refugees who cross multiple borders toward destination countries in Europe or the United States has developed along two interrelated strands. The first focuses on the process of migration itself, examining the unstable and dangerous journeys that constitute the experience of “transit” (Collyer, 2007; Díaz de León, 2023; Papadopoulou-Kourkoula, 2008; Pries et al., 2025). The second analyzes the legal systems and institutional practices through which states seek to manage and regulate such movements, conceptualizing borders as configurations of governance (FitzGerald, 2019; Fontanari, 2019; Gazzotti, 2021; Genç et al., 2019; Herrera Rosales, 2025; Hess, 2012; París Pombo, 2022, 2025). The experiences of Central and South American migrants and refugees who transit through Mexico toward the United States are situated at the intersection of these two research traditions (Basok et al., 2015; Vogt 2018).
Early discussions of transit migration conceptualized “transit” as a temporary condition between departure and settlement, shaped by structural constraints and individual choices (Papadopoulou-Kourkoula, 2008: 4). More recent scholarship, however, emphasizes that transit is better understood as a politically produced space generated by migration management and border control regimes in both destination and transit countries. Hess (2012), for example, reconceptualizes EU neighboring states as “precarious transit zones.” In such spaces, migrants and refugees experience conditions of legal uncertainty, forced immobility, exposure to violence, and the absence of foreseeable futures (Collyer, 2007; Pries, Schütze and Villalever, 2025; Vogt, 2018). Here, transit is understood not as a temporary state but as a structurally produced mode of protracted stagnation.
This reconceptualization of transit is closely connected to scholarship on border regimes (Genç et al., 2019; Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013). Borders extend beyond the territorial limits of nation-states and constitute assemblages of laws, institutions, technologies, discourses, and practices that organize power relations over movement of people (Genç et al., 2019; Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013). París Pombo (2022, 2025) shows that externalizing US border control and asylum procedures has produced governance spaces in northern and southern Mexico. In these spaces migrants and refugees are held in suspended conditions that are neither a temporary stage in their onward migration journey nor a more permanent form of settlement in Mexico. This externalized border control by the US involves multiple state agencies, international organizations, legal frameworks, security forces, and humanitarian actors (Herrera Rosales, 2025). Coupled with humanitarian discourses, this control legitimizes prolonged containment and restricted mobility in the name of “protection” and “orderly migration,” thereby sustaining the durability of the regime (París Pombo, 2022: 111).
Under such border regimes, the process of migration often extends over years, rendering it increasingly difficult to distinguish whether individuals remain “in transit” or have entered a de facto process of settlement (Papadopoulou-Kourkoula, 2008). Basok et al. (2015: 8-11) therefore argue that instead of asking whether migrants are in transit, scholars should analyze mobility itself as a relational and regulated condition. Movement and stagnation are not opposing states, but phenomena simultaneously produced under border governance.
In North America, externalized border controls have likewise generated governance structures that produce long-term containment and instability in peripheral regions (FitzGerald, 2019). In Mexico, since the 2010s, a growing tendency toward the de facto settlement of Central and South American migrants and refugees has been observed (Torre Cantalapiedra, 2020), alongside accumulating research on their experiences of labor market incorporation and legal status acquisition (Célleri, 2024; Garrapa, 2022; Lara Ramírez and Irazuzta, 2025; Willers, 2022). In particular, migrants seeking asylum are given a Humanitarian Visitors Card (Tarjeta de Visitante por Razones Humanitarias: TVRH) which is a temporary form of immigration status. This had been used instrumentally by some migrants to give them relatively safer internal mobility in Mexico (Angulo-Pasel, 2022; París Pombo, 2025; Torre Cantalapiedra, 2021). Yet, because of its provisional nature, TVRH often fails to secure substantive rights and instead generates structural vulnerability (Angulo-Pasel, 2022).
Prolonged immobility often leads to the incorporation of migrants and refugees into the most precarious and exploitative sectors of the labor markets in the “transit” countries. The institutionalization of mobility control embeds the regulation of movement itself into mechanisms of labor exploitation. This process produces differentiated labor regimes that insert specific mobile classes into the global labor market (Papadopoulos and Tsianos, 2013: 181). Mezzadra and Neilson (2013) conceptualize this as “differential inclusion,” which is tightly linked to the “multiplication of labor”: a stratified organization of labor along multiple axes such as nationality, legal status, residence permits, degrees of mobility, racialization, and gender. Differential inclusion constitutes the precondition that enables the stratification of the labor force, making it easier to exploit. The instability and temporariness of legal status undermine migrants’ capacity to claim rights and negotiate working conditions, positioning them as flexible and replaceable labor. Thus, incorporation into host societies proceeds through the internalization of differences and inequality, driven by a capitalist rationale of labor segmentation and management (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013).
Nevertheless, existing scholarship have not sufficiently explored at least two issues. First, little research in the Mexican context has examined how legal stabilization via formal refugee recognition reshapes processes of social incorporation through the lens of differential inclusion. Könönen’s (2018) study of Finland’s universal welfare state shows that a differentiated legal status structure affects not only labor market participation but also unequal access to welfare services. In Mexico, where informality pervades the economy, the broader ripple effects of acquiring refugee status with formal work authorization remain understudied and require empirical investigation. Second, most existing studies implicitly assume that the host country is the endpoint of migrants’ journeys. Yet, many migrants experience prolonged and unfinished trajectories, during which their aspirations to reach their perceived destination countries are thwarted. Consequently, existing scholarship inadequately captures how such unfinished migration journeys with aspirations and imagined future mobility shape processes of social incorporation.
Studies of refugees and migrants’ legal status in destination countries have often focused on the role of legal status in shaping incorporation within a single country of residence. Meanwhile, scholarship on border regimes has shown that contemporary migration control no longer operates within a single national framework, but emerges through the interactions of multiple states’ migration policies (FitzGerald, 2019; Longo, 2018). Genç et al. (2019) argue that peripheral states such as Turkey and Mexico experience “multi-layered migration regimes,” where multiple border controls and migration policies intersect. The ways in which migrants and refugees interpret these multi-layered regimes, as well as how these interpretations shape social incorporation in contexts of prolonged stays, have received limited empirical attention.
These discussions highlight a key implication: in Mexico, migrants’ decisions regarding their legal status are closely linked not only to domestic rights protection but also to considerations about future mobility. Some individuals avoid seeking asylum and the possibility of recognition or rejection as refugees in Mexico because they believe doing so may hinder their prospects of entering and seeking asylum in the United States. As a result, their irregular status becomes prolonged, which entrenches them as workers at the bottom of the labor market and generates insecurities regarding housing, healthcare, and everyday life.
This dynamic also resonates with debates in international refugee law, where return to the country of origin can constitute grounds for cessation of refugee status due to a perceived lack of need for protection (Fitzpatrick, 1999). Protection thus simultaneously secures humanitarian rights and restructures future mobility, exposing tensions between protection and migration control. In Mexico, this tension manifests in refugee migrants’ hesitation or refusal to undergo procedures that could recognize them as refugees.
In this regard, migrants and refugees who deliberately refrain from pursuing regularization through asylum procedures raise an important question: Why do they choose to accept precarious legal statuses despite the risks of marginalization and exploitation? Polanco (2025) provides a useful point of reference for understanding such seemingly irrational choices. She analyzes the experiences of Filipino migrants working as low-wage employees in restaurant chains in Canada. Polanco shows that institutionally structured expectations regarding the future acquisition of permanent residency enable migrants to accept their current precarious conditions and exploitative labor arrangements. In other words, shared anticipation of future legal status underpins acceptance of present insecurity and marginalization.
In the case of Mexico, such temporal horizons are far more unstable. Migrants and refugees are not embedded within a single national institutional framework; instead, they are situated within a multilayered migration regime shaped by the overlapping policies of multiple states and international organizations. Here, uncertainty is structurally produced, rendering their prospects highly indeterminate. For example, the transition from the Biden to the Trump administration in the United States led to the rapid modification and suspension of various policies. One such policy was the mobile application (CBP One), which mediated access to asylum procedures. This demonstrates how opportunities for mobility and protection can change abruptly. Migrants therefore are unable to form stable expectations about regularization or onward movement. Instead, they must make decisions within a constantly shifting, opaque institutional landscape.
Accordingly, the decisions made by migrants regarding their current circumstances observed in this study should not be understood as being based on clear expectations about their future. Instead, they reflect constrained decision-making in a highly unstable policy environment. Rather than abandoning the possibility of future mobility, migrants accept present precarity while keeping alternative futures open. These decisions are not strategic actions based on anticipated outcomes, but they are provisional and revisable responses to uncertainty.
Importantly, this uncertainty does not stem from individual misperception or lack of information but is generated by the multilayered migration regime itself. It shapes migrants’ behavior by making it difficult for them to predict the consequences of legal decisions and leaving them more vulnerable to misinformation, fraud, and exploitation. These vulnerabilities should therefore not be attributed to individual responsibility but understood as effects of the institutional environment. From this perspective, this paper explores how such conditions shape migrants’ decisions regarding legal status and contribute to different forms of incorporation.
Research methods
This article is based on intermittent fieldwork conducted between 2022 and 2026 in four sites in Mexico: the southern border region (Tenosique, Tabasco), the periphery of Mexico City (Nezahualcóyotl, State of Mexico), central part of Mexico (Aguascalientes) and northeastern urban centers (Chihuahua City and Monterrey).
Preliminary fieldwork was first carried out in Tenosique from August to September 2022. I stayed at one migrant shelter and visited several others in the region, conducting participant observation and semi-structured interviews with shelter staff to understand the dynamics of migrant and refugee transit at the southern border. In March 2023, additional exploratory research was conducted in Mexico City and Monterrey. I visited migrant shelters and interviewed staff to examine the institutional and social conditions encountered by migrants and refugees as they moved within Mexican territory.
These preliminary investigations did not provide direct data for the analysis presented in this article, but they contributed to a broader contextual understanding of how migrants and refugees navigate legal institutions, including the refugee status determination system, under conditions shaped by immigration enforcement, violence, and the risk of detention and deportation. The core empirical material for this article was collected through semi-structured interviews conducted in March 2025 with 14 migrants and refugees in Mexico City, Chihuahua City, and Monterrey. In Chihuahua City, I stayed in a migrant shelter for several days and volunteered in daily activities, which allowed me to build trust with the staff. Through their referrals, I conducted interviews with four participants from Venezuela, Cuba, Guatemala, and Honduras. Their legal statuses varied; some were undergoing refugee status determination procedures, while others were undocumented.
In Monterrey, I interviewed two participants from Honduras. Although I visited several migrant shelters to learn about the local situation, the shelter organizations were cautious about allowing their spaces to be used for research purposes and were reluctant to introduce residents as research participants I therefore relied on personal contacts and academic networks and was eventually introduced to two participants through a Honduran woman who runs a local restaurant. Both had arrived in Mexico in the late 2010s, obtained refugee recognition and received permanent residency, allowing them to settle in the area long-term.
In Nezahualcóyotl, on the outskirts of Mexico City, I conducted interviews with eight Cuban participants. Since I lived in the area during my research, I had frequent contact with local residents and became acquainted with several Cuban women. Through snowball sampling, I expanded my network to other Cuban residents in the area. Most of them had arrived in Mexico in 2024, which enabled me to capture their relatively recent migration experiences. Unlike many Central American migrants who travel north through networks of shelters, these Cuban participants reached urban destinations via smuggling networks. By the time of interviews in 2025, only two had applied for refugee status; most remained undocumented.
Notably, the Cuban participants had arrived more recently than the other participants and had lived in Mexico for less than a year at the time of the interviews. This context is important for understanding the multiple forms of instability they faced, including a precarious legal status. Their narratives offer valuable insights into how migrants perceive policy shifts associated with the emergence of the second Trump administration and how these perceptions influence their decisions regarding future movement and settlement. Additionally, engaging with participants through networks beyond migrant shelters allowed me to capture a wider range of migration experiences, institutional navigation, and everyday survival practices.
In addition to the data discussed above, this article also draws on insights gained during fieldwork conducted in Aguascalientes, Monterrey and Mexico City in March 2026. It provided additional context for understanding how structural uncertainty shapes migrants’ decisions regarding regularization. Throughout the research process, I repeatedly encountered difficulties in making sense of the legal frameworks and policies surrounding regularization in Mexico. The narratives and practices described by informants were often hard to reconcile; even individuals in seemingly similar situations had different interpretations and courses of action. Furthermore, although institutional rules and constraints could theoretically be identified, their practical implementation at the local level often remained difficult to discern.
It is crucial to consider these divergent interpretations of migration regimes as objects of analysis in their own right, rather than treating them as problems of inaccurate information or misperception. The issue is not simply determining what constitutes “fact,” but also the broader uncertainty migrants experience under opaque and multilayered migration regimes. This uncertainty shapes migrants’ choices and influences the legal statuses and social positions they come to occupy within Mexican society, through which differential inclusion is organized. This article therefore examines how migrants navigate decisions about regularization through an analysis of narratives and practices.
The formation of a multilayered migration regime in Mexico
Mexico’s migration and refugee policies have historically been shaped by the interplay of two distinct forces: the development of asylum and refugee protection frameworks, and the externalization of US border control (Torre Cantalapiedra, París Pombo and Guitiérrez López, 2021). 1 Mexico has developed legal and institutional frameworks that position it itself as a country of asylum under domestic and international law (García, 2006). On the other hand, Mexico has been reconfigured to serve as a space of containment, restricting migrants’ onward movement on behalf of the United States (FitzGerald, 2019). In other words, these policies combine the contradictory objectives of protection and migration control. This duality extends beyond a policy contradiction; it has generated structural conditions that force migrants and refugees to make difficult decisions: whether to continue or abandon their migration, whether to pursue or postpone legal regularization, and how to endure their prolonged confinement. This section traces the historical development of the institutional environment that has emerged at the intersection of these forces.
Migration and refugee policy became a salient political issue in Mexico in the late twentieth century, when political repression under US-backed authoritarian regimes in Central America forced large numbers of people to flee their countries of origin (FitzGerald, 2019; García, 2006). In response, COMAR was established in 1980, and multiple refugee camps were opened in Central American border regions with the support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (García, 2006: 49-50). The UNHCR worked closely with the Mexican government to provide protection and assistance to Central American refugees (FitzGerald, 2019: 132–136). In 1990, the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Cartagena Declaration were incorporated into domestic law, legally clarifying the definition of refugee status. Yet, 4 years after the law came into effect, the system remained largely inoperative, with no asylum applications being transmitted from local delegations to the central office (García, 2006: 77). In fact, only around 100 individuals were formally recognized as refugees in the early 1980s, and between 1986 and 1990 the number of recognized refugees dropped to zero (FitzGerald, 2019: 133).
From the late 1980s onward, migration control within Mexico was gradually strengthened through the activities of Mexican immigration authorities and the military (FitzGerald, 2019: 133). As part of this broader shift, the United States and Mexico intensified bilateral cooperation around migration control, including US support in areas such as training and administrative coordination related to border enforcement. This support was particularly focused on controlling the movement of migrants and refugees from Central America (FitzGerald, 2019: 135-136).
These dynamics unfolded alongside major security initiatives that formalized US–Mexico cooperation. One such initiative was the Mérida Initiative, a multibillion-dollar security partnership launched in the late 2000s that was ostensibly aimed at drug trafficking and organized crime. Through this initiative, the US invested substantial resources in US-led training and intelligence sharing, which contributed to the militarization of migration enforcement and border control (FitzGerald, 2019: 139; Rizzo Lara, 2024; Vogt, 2018: 61).
From 2014 onward, existing enforcement mechanisms were reframed and intensified under the Southern Border Program, which was officially justified as a humanitarian response to migrant vulnerability (FitzGerald, 2019: 141, París Pombo, 2021; Rizzo Lara, 2024; Torre Cantalapiedra and Quintero, 2018). Under this humanitarian framing, migration control became increasingly securitized, leading to a substantial increase in detention, apprehension, and deportation in southern and interior regions of Mexico (Rizzo Lara, 2024).
At a time when migration control was becoming increasingly restrictive, Mexico simultaneously moved to strengthen its legal frameworks for refugee protection and migrants’ rights throughout the 1990s and 2000s (FitzGerald, 2019: 152). In 2011, Mexico enacted both refugee and immigration laws, reconfiguring the legal frameworks governing migration and protection. The 2011 Law on Refugees and Complementary Protection formally consolidated Mexico’s existing commitments to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Cartagena Declaration within domestic law. It is widely regarded as a rights-based framework that redefined Mexico as a country of asylum. FitzGerald (2019: 153), however, points out that a persistent gap exists between the law’s normative commitments and its actual implementation. The exercise of refugee protection in Mexico has become increasingly constrained as border control intensified and cooperation with the United States expanded.
On the other hand, the 2011 Law of Immigration reorganized the governance of immigration status, residence, and regularization processes for undocumented migrants. Although the law is framed in the language of human rights, it has been criticized for making regularization more difficult in practice (Basok and Rojas Wiesner, 2018). Several studies have examined the 2011 Immigration Law and found that the Mexican legal framework recognizes various pathways through which undocumented migrants may regularize their legal status within Mexico (Basok and Rojas Wiesner, 2018; Navarrete-Suárez and Masferrer, 2026). These pathways include special regularization programs (implemented only in 2015 and 2017), family reunification, rectification procedures for expired documents or unauthorized activities, and humanitarian grounds (Navarrete-Suárez and Masferrer, 2026: 7).
In principle, migrants may seek regularization regardless of the duration of their irregular stay, provided that they meet the requirements of an available legal pathway. However, this process generally requires paying fines determined at the discretion of immigration authorities (Navarrete-Suárez and Masferrer, 2026: 8). In addition, research has shown that irregularity in Mexico is shaped by a complex combination of factors, including limited access to work permits and legal pathways for family members, expensive administrative procedures involving multiple applications for household members, and legal reforms that have made the regularization of immigration status increasingly difficult and costly (Basok and Rojas Wiesner, 2018). Consequently, while the legal framework formally provides multiple pathways, the range of options accessible to undocumented migrants is substantially limited in practice.
Mexican immigration law also provides residence pathways linked to formal employment (Navarrete-Suárez and Masferrer, 2026). However, as discussed later in this article, undocumented migrants often find these pathways effectively inaccessible in practice because they must depend on employer sponsorship procedures designed for applicants outside Mexico. My recent fieldwork suggests that the constraints on non-asylum-based pathways are administrative and bureaucratic. Employers seeking to hire foreign workers must be formally registered, comply with tax obligations to Mexico’s Tax Administration Service (Servicio de Administración Tributaria: SAT), and obtain authorization from immigration authorities. Furthermore, migrants who entered the country irregularly and lack legal status generally encounter significant challenges in obtaining legal status through employment-linked pathways within Mexico and are often required to leave the country and apply for visas from abroad. 2
As a result, although these pathways exist within the legal framework, they are extremely difficult to achieve, especially for low-income migrants who lack financial resources and institutional support. For many migrants, pathways tied to family relations, such as marrying a Mexican national or giving birth to a child in Mexico, often become more viable routes to legal status. At the same time, asylum procedures themselves are also shaped by temporal and procedural constraints. While Mexican refugee law permits delayed applications under certain circumstances, asylum claims are typically expected to be submitted within 30 days of entry (Torre Cantalapiedra, París Pombo and Guitiérrez López, 2021: 8). This makes timely access to information and institutional support crucial.
Taken together, the Mexican legal framework formally appears to provide multiple legal pathways for regularizing immigration status. In reality, administrative, financial, and institutional barriers substantially narrow the available options for migrants. While non-asylum-based pathways to legal status have become extremely difficult to access under immigration law, refugee recognition has become a comparatively accessible pathway. As a result, many migrants and refugees are left with a limited set of choices: remaining in a state of prolonged illegality to preserve the possibilities for future mobility or seeking refugee status in Mexico.
Since the 2010s Mexico has promoted human rights protections and expanded its refugee status determination system, while intensifying border enforcement. The establishment of the Guardia Nacional, a militarized security tasked with maintaining public order, has further expanded the state’s ability to deploy security organizations and personnel for border control in both northern and southern regions of the country (París Pombo, 2022; 2025). Thus, over the past three decades, Mexico has advanced migrant inclusion and rights protection, while simultaneously increasing its control of migration into and through the country under the strong influence of the externalization of US border control.
It was within this ambivalent policy environment that the leftist administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) launched the New Migration Policy (NMP) in 2018. The NMP emphasized commitments to human rights-based asylum, humanitarian protection, and development in migrant-sending regions. Under this framework, Mexico signed the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), and approximately 13,000 migrants were granted temporary humanitarian protection status (TVRH) (Rizzo Lara, 2024: 439). The expansion of the capacities of INM and COMAR was also identified as a policy priority (Rizzo Lara, 2024).
This policy must be understood within the context of the broader international refugee regime, in which Mexico is increasingly treated as a de facto “safe third country” (Díaz Carnero, 2021; Ortega Velázquez, 2020). According to this logic, individuals who obtain refugee status in Mexico are, in principle, rendered ineligible to apply for asylum in the United States (Díaz Carnero, 2021; Ortega Velázquez, 2020). 3 Similar dynamics have been observed in Europe, where the Dublin II Regulation restricts onward movement by requiring asylum seekers to remain in the first country of entry. This often limits their access to protection and exposes them to the risks of deportation (Schuster, 2011). In practice, the safe-third-country logic places migrants and refugees in a structurally constrained position, where seeking protection in Mexico can foreclose their future access to asylum in the United States.
Moreover, refugee recognition under international protection regimes provides a level of legal stabilization that is difficult to reverse. Once refugee status is granted, individuals may risk losing refugee status if they return to their country of origin or are deemed no longer in need of international protection, unless they obtain an alternative form of permanent legal status (Fitzpatrick, 1999). For those who do not wish to remain in Mexico, refugee recognition not only provides protection, but it may also constrain their mobility, future planning, and maintenance of transnational ties in the long term. Thus, for many migrants, the decision to apply for refugee status can have irreversible consequences beyond the immediate protection that may be granted.
Under pressure from the United States, the Mexican government tightened border control and introduced the program known as “Remain in Mexico” (formally, the Migrant Protection Protocols, MPP). Asylum seekers had previously been permitted to remain in the United States while their cases were being adjudicated, but under MPP, they were denied entry and forced to wait in Mexico. By December 2020, approximately 68,000 individuals had been subjected to MPP, and only 0.7% were ultimately granted asylum in the United States (DHS, 2021; Rizzo Lara, 2024). Restrictions became even tighter under Title 42, a US public health order introduced during the global COVID 19 related pandemic to justify border closures (París Pombo, 2025). Although the Biden administration formally ended the entry ban in 2022, efforts to control migrant flows continued.
The Biden administration introduced a new system requiring asylum seekers to start their applications in Mexico using a mobile app called CBP One. The system was widely criticized for creating what Kocher (2023) describes as “digital barriers to asylum,” since many migrants lacked reliable internet access or smartphones, appointment slots were scarce, and technical problems were common. As a result, many asylum seekers were left waiting in Mexico for long periods in unstable conditions. When President Trump returned for a second term, the system was discontinued, making access to asylum at the US–Mexico border even more limited as discussed later in this article. Many migrants perceived entry to the United States through asylum procedures as no longer feasible and expected to remain in Mexico for extended periods.
These developments demonstrate how migrants’ decisions regarding movement and legal status are influenced by overlapping migration policies. These policies are shaped by international refugee law, US border enforcement, and Mexico’s migration and asylum system, as well as shifting political pressures and diplomatic relations. However, this system does not operate in a fully coherent way. Instead, migrants encounter a mix of legal rules, policy measures, and enforcement practices that affect various aspects of their lives in different ways. Such policies are often revised or implemented with little warning. In addition, protections that exist in law may be narrowed through interpretation and enforcement, and in some cases become effectively meaningless in practice (FitzGerald 2019: 153). Institutional arrangements are also assumed to be connected across national contexts. Although data sharing, including biometric information, is widely believed to occur, its scope and operation still remain unclear even to researchers. Consequently, it is often difficult to determine which rules apply and how they are enforced.
This condition can be described as a form of institutional opacity. 4 It reflects a lack of information, temporary system dysfunction, and the complex nature of the migration system itself. It is often unclear how overlapping policies are applied or what outcomes they may produce. Formal regulations do not always translate clearly into everyday practices. Uncertainty therefore becomes a persistent part of migrants’ experiences and enables the circulation of rumors, misinformation, and deception, exposing migrants and refugees to risks such as fraud and exploitation. Decisions made under these conditions may seem individual or strategic, but they are shaped by overlapping migration control regimes that provide unequal access to protection, mobility, and legal stability. The following section examines qualitative cases to illustrate how migrants navigate these uncertainties and how differential inclusion emerges through their decisions.
The impact of multilayered migration regimes in producing differential inclusion
Refugee recognition, employment, and access to social welfare
The intensification of immigration enforcement in the United States, together with the insecurity associated with undocumented status in Mexico, has led to an increasing number of migrants and refugees seeking asylum in Mexico. Migrants are becoming increasingly vulnerable to detention, labor exploitation and housing insecurity in different border enforcement contexts. Within this context, seeking asylum in Mexico functions both as humanitarian protection and as a way to avoid policing and increasingly precarious living conditions. The case of Clara, a Honduran woman, illustrates how this institutional environment, characterized by increased enforcement and protection, shapes migrants’ perceptions, choices and opportunities for social inclusion. Her experience indicates that obtaining refugee status enables migrants to move from informal labor to formal employment, providing access to more stable wages, social benefits, and improved housing.
Clara left Honduras in 2019 after her small business was targeted by criminal gangs demanding extortionate payments. She left Honduras intending to enter the United States and initially stayed in Monterrey, an industrial city in north-eastern Mexico, relying on relatives while seeking opportunities to cross the US border. During this period, she was undocumented and survived through unstable informal employment, including domestic work.
However, as US border enforcement intensified and the Remain in Mexico program was implemented, entering the United States as an asylum seeker became increasingly difficult. Clara abandoned this asylum pathway and instead attempted to cross the border into the US irregularly with the assistance of smugglers on three occasions, all of which failed. During this time, she was also kidnapped by criminal gangs. Following repeated apprehensions and experiencing violence in these border regions, she ultimately decided to abandon any further attempts to enter the United States.
Returning to Monterrey, Clara resumed informal employment in car washing and domestic work while living with relatives. A police stop-and-search operation in her neighborhood made her acutely aware of the risks associated with her undocumented status and became a pivotal moment that changed how she viewed her future in Mexico. Confronted with the vulnerability of being undocumented in Mexico, she decided to seek refugee recognition. With the assistance of UNHCR, she submitted an asylum application to COMAR in February 2021 and was granted refugee status in October of the same year. What had initially been understood as a temporary stay in Mexico became a de facto long-term residence, first under precarious conditions and later under more secure ones.
Clara describes the stabilization of her legal status as a decisive factor in her labor market incorporation. Prior to recognition, she worked continuously in informal jobs with no access to social benefits or employment protections. After receiving refugee status, she obtained a CURP (Clave Única de Registro de Población), a personal identification number required for formal employment and access to public services in Mexico, which made formal labor market participation possible. She subsequently secured a job at a factory producing telecommunications cables, initially as a line worker. After 3 years, she was promoted to a supervisory position and now earns approximately 2500 pesos per week (around 145–150 USD).
She emphasized that formal employment provided not only higher wages but also access to social security, paid leave, and INFONAVIT housing benefits (Instituto del Fondo Nacional de la Vivienda para los Trabajadores). As a public housing fund tied to formal employment, INFONAVIT allows workers to accumulate credits for home loans and plan for home ownership. She also expressed intentions to improve her English and computer skills to pursue better employment opportunities. Currently living with a Mexican partner, she is preparing to apply for naturalization. Reflecting on her life in Mexico, she stated that such stability would have been impossible had she remained in Honduras, and she now sees her future in Mexico.
A similar trajectory can be observed in other cases where refugee recognition has facilitated access to formal employment, social welfare institutions, and longer-term socioeconomic stabilization in Mexico. This indicates that Clara’s experience was not exceptional but part of broader pattern of incorporation through legal regularization. A Guatemalan woman living in Chihuahua City recounted that, prior to receiving refugee status, she had relied on informal street vending and domestic work. After being recognized as a refugee, she found factory employment and steadily advanced, combining paid work with childcare thanks to access to public daycare. With her employer’s support, she was able to pay for part of her university tuition in preparation for a promotion, and she later transitioned to a better-paying managerial position in Mexico.
However, such stabilization should not be understood merely as upward social mobility but also as a mechanism of class containment. While refugee recognition enables access to formal employment and social protection, it simultaneously channels migrants into labor-intensive sectors facing labor shortages, including manufacturing and low-wage service work, where prospects for upward mobility remain limited. Stabilization does not eliminate inequality; instead it reshapes how migrants are incorporated into the labor market. While migrants may transition from informal and unstable conditions into more institutionalized forms of labor, those with limited formal education often remain concentrated in sectors that offer limited prospects for advancement. Meanwhile, even migrants with higher education or professional experience often face barriers relating to credential recognition and limited social networks, which make access to professional occupations difficult in practice.
For instance, a Honduran man in his thirties living in Chihuahua City, despite holding a university degree, expressed strong frustration that his employment opportunities remained limited to low-wage factory work even after receiving refugee status. As he put it, “but most of the jobs offered to me here in Chihuahua—or the ones that are actually accessible—are, well, factory operator jobs in maquilas, earning minimum wage.” He described his inability to access the white-collar occupations he had aspired to prior to migration, including writing-related work, thereby highlighting a process of professional downward mobility. He added, “It wouldn’t be enough for me to survive here in Chihuahua City, because the cost of living here is higher,” suggesting that factory wages are insufficient to meet basic living expenses.
A similar perspective was found in an interview with a Venezuelan woman working in a food-processing factory after receiving refugee status. When asked whether she intended to continue in her current job, she expressed gratitude for having secured stable employment, yet her response remained somewhat ambiguous. Contrasting her current position with her previous experience as a primary school teacher in Venezuela, she placed her hand on a back support belt used for carrying heavy loads and described the physically demanding nature of her work. She also noted that her wages were only sufficient to sustain basic living expenses and referred to the possibility of taking on side work in the future to supplement her income. Notably, the side work she mentioned belongs to the informal economy, revealing a structural irony: despite being incorporated into formal employment through refugee recognition, she is compelled to rely on informal practices to sustain her livelihood.
As demonstrated above, refugee recognition may stabilize migrants’ lives within industrial labor regimes and, in some cases, contribute to a sense of upward mobility through access to welfare. However, such stabilization does not necessarily translate into broad access to professional or middle-class trajectories. While refugee recognition facilitates formal labor market incorporation and legal stability, many migrants remain concentrated in labor-intensive sectors due to barriers related to educational attainment, credential recognition, and social networks. In this sense, formalization does not necessarily entail upward mobility. Instead, it often secures migrants’ incorporation into a subordinate stratum of global capitalism. From the perspective of differential inclusion, refugee recognition in Mexico stabilizes migrants’ incorporation into the labor market while reproducing class hierarchies by structurally limiting opportunities for mobility beyond subordinate forms of labor. 5
Future mobility to the United States and the production of precarity
While some migrants achieve stability through refugee recognition, others find that seeking asylum in Mexico and being recognized as a refugee does not constitute a viable option. Even after prolonged residence in Mexico, some migrants avoid refugee recognition because they believe it would undermine their prospects of entering the United States. This section examines how prospects for future migration to the United States, particularly the possibility of applying for asylum there, discourage legal stabilization in Mexico and keep migrants in precarious conditions of employment and housing.
Ella and Miguel are a Venezuelan couple who left their home in 2009. Before migration to Mexico, they had previously lived in Peru and Chile with their children. Encouraged by relatives in the United States, they migrated to Mexico in 2023, with the intention of crossing into the US. They tried to secure an appointment via CBP One, a US government mobile application designed for managing asylum appointments at ports of entry. Despite making repeated attempts, they were ultimately unsuccessful. After the inauguration of the second Trump administration, which foreclosed this pathway, they were forced to abandon their plans to enter the United States.
As their stay in Mexico became far longer than initially anticipated, Miguel began working at a construction site in Chihuahua City as the family’s sole breadwinner, earning approximately 2400 pesos per week (around 140 USD). Ella remained responsible for childcare while continuing to search unsuccessfully for night work. Although she considered engaging in street vending, she was unable to do so due to the lack of initial capital required to start such a small-scale business.
Without legal status, they faced persistent difficulties in daily life. Miguel’s employer, aware of his undocumented status, imposed exploitative conditions. Despite physically demanding work, Miguel was required to manage construction tasks alone without assistance, and repeated requests for support with these tasks were ignored. Lacking access to medical coverage or workplace insurance, he was working under constant risk of injury. Moreover, their housing was being provided by Miguel’s employer, meaning that changing jobs would simultaneously entail losing their home. This housing dependency thus structurally trapped him in such exploitative labor relations.
The decision of these migrants who did not apply for refugee status in Mexico must be understood in relation to imagined future mobility to the United States and the broader reconfiguration of asylum governance. As previously discussed, Mexico is increasingly being treated as a de facto safe third country within US asylum practices. This perception circulates not only through policy but also through legal advice and humanitarian intermediaries. Ella explained that although seeking asylum in the United States under the current Trump administration is inaccessible, she believes that political conditions there may change again. A lawyer at a migrant shelter advised that obtaining refugee status in Mexico could negatively affect a future asylum claim in the United States. While the precise legal accuracy of this claim should be analyzed separately, what matters here is that some migrants and those advising them, share the understanding that “becoming a refugee in Mexico closes the path to the United States.” It is this interpretation that informs their decisions regarding legal status and contributes to the persistence of their irregular status.
However, this shared understanding is itself unstable and has emerged in conditions of profound uncertainty. Although lawyers at migrant shelters, researchers, and humanitarian organizations often refer to the possibility of information sharing between Mexico and the United States, the scope and operation of such information exchange remain unclear. My fieldwork also revealed numerous cases in which individuals who had already obtained refugee status in Mexico later secured appointments through CBP One and entered the United States to apply for asylum.
Migrants themselves are aware that making asylum claims in multiple jurisdictions may be viewed as undesirable and potentially disadvantageous, so they actively try to mitigate such risks. For example, a Honduran man recounted the case of a family who had obtained refugee status in Mexico but left their Mexican permanent resident cards when traveling to the United States after securing a CBP One appointment. They later asked for the cards to be sent by mail. Such practices reflect an attempt to navigate anticipated risks in situations where the consequences of holding a previous refugee status remain unclear.
These practices point to a broader condition in which migrants must act without reliable knowledge of how legal statuses are evaluated across jurisdictions. It is precisely within this uncertainty and institutional opacity that migrants like Ella and Miguel are compelled to make decisions about legal status and mobility. As a result, Ella and Miguel find themselves caught in a prolonged dilemma with no clear exit. Legal recognition as refugees offers the possibility of social incorporation within Mexico yet simultaneously reconfigures future mobility by potentially narrowing access to asylum pathways in the United States. Unable to relinquish the possibility of onward mobility to “el Norte,” they postpone legal stabilization and remain undocumented, thereby prolonging their experience of extreme precarity in both the labor market and housing.
Precarity produced by anticipated return to the country of origin
Although refugee recognition is widely regarded as the most secure pathway to legal status for forcibly displaced migrants, not all individuals perceive it as the optimal choice due to considerations regarding future mobility. Some migrants and refugees may be reluctant to seek refugee recognition, even if they have experienced violence or persecution, because they cannot return to their country of origin. 6 As previously mentioned, while there are multiple pathways to regularization in theory, the practical attainability of such pathways remains uncertain and largely speculative. This section examines how considering such alternative routes can generate distinct forms of instability amid tightening border controls in Mexico and the United States. The case of Roxana, a Cuban woman, illustrates how institutional opacity surrounding legal status and future mobility can leave migrants vulnerable to exploitation and social marginalization.
Relying on her mother who had already settled in the United States, she traveled by air to Nicaragua with relatives and acquaintances, crossed Central America overland, and reached Mexico’s southern border with the help of smugglers. After several days of travel, she arrived in Mexico City. Her journey took place amid tightened mobility restrictions for Cuban nationals: access to the United States was becoming more difficult due to stricter visa requirements (Wei and Batalova, 2023). Entry into Mexico also required advance visa authorization, which was reintroduced in 2021, and limited possibilities for lawful and flexible movement. Upon arrival, she began seeking an appointment through CBP One but she fell victim to fraud linked to the application process and lost a substantial amount of money without ever receiving an appointment.
At the time of our interview in 2025, Roxana lived with relatives and acquaintances from Cuba in a room owned by the employer of her uncle who worked at a confectionery factory. Around eight people shared the space, which was crudely partitioned with pieces of cloth and makeshift dividers, offering little separation between sleeping, eating, and resting areas. Privacy was extremely limited, as the partitions did little to block sound or sight, and everyday activities unfolded in full view of others. They slept on thin mats laid directly on the floor and rearranged them each day to make room for cooking and other daily tasks. The basic facilities were extremely limited, providing only the minimum necessary for daily life and highlighting the provisional and overcrowded nature of their living conditions.
As her stay in Mexico extended with no prospect of entry into the United States, Roxana urgently sought employment to support her child. Her first job was at a pizza shop in Mexico City. Unlike some recognized refugees who could place their children in public daycare and thus access more stable employment, Roxana had no such option. 7 As she could not leave her child anywhere else, she had to bring her child to work with her, which meant that she had no real choice in terms of employment. Despite working from morning until night, she was paid only 50 pesos (approximately 3 USD) per day. The employer justified this extremely low wage on the grounds that Roxana was allowed to keep her child with her at work, with the cost of “watching the child” informally deducted from her pay. She also undertook home-based piecework binding notebooks but was never paid for this. Following these exploitative experiences, Roxana tried selling “Cuban coffee” as a street vendor. Through contacts made during this activity, she later obtained a position as a beauty salon assistant, earning 2500 pesos every 15 days (approximately 145–150 USD).
Following the abolition of CBP One under the second Trump administration, Roxana abandoned her immediate plans to move to the United States and began to prioritize building a livelihood in Mexico. However, she remained reluctant to pursue refugee status, fearing it might prevent her from returning to Cuba in the future. Instead of seeking asylum-based regularization, she tried to obtain legal status through non-asylum channels. This decision was influenced by a proposal from an individual who claimed to be an immigration lawyer and said he could regularize her and her family through an employment-based arrangement.
For Roxana, who was unable to regularize her status through marriage or childbirth and who wished to retain the possibility of returning to her home country, this offer seemed like a rare opportunity. However, it turned out to be a fraudulent scheme targeting migrants. Despite paying a substantial amount of money, Roxana and her family saw no progress in the process of regularizing their status and were left waiting for almost a year. The promised procedures were never carried out, and the money was never returned. Disillusioned by this experience, Roxana eventually left the beauty salon where she had worked, as she had first encountered the arrangement through social connections linked to her workplace, which made it difficult for her to continue working there.
Roxana’s experience reflects the profound uncertainty surrounding both the regularization process in Mexico and the implications of asylum applications for a future return to one’s home country. While undocumented migrants can theoretically regularize their legal status, information about the procedures and requirements is often unclear and difficult to access in practice. In such a context, migrants often rely on informal networks or intermediaries for guidance, which leaves them susceptible to misinformation and deception. As a consequence, uncertainty becomes an everyday experience for migrants and increases their vulnerability to fraud and exploitation.
Seeking to protect herself and her daughter while preserving the possibility of returning to her home country, Roxana sought to obtain legal status in Mexico. Given the limited options available to her, she attempted to regularize her status in the most feasible way. However, this very effort placed her in a position of heightened vulnerability, making her a target for exploitation. Her urgent need for legal stability ultimately exposed her to fraud, exacerbating her already marginalized situation. This resulted not only financial loss, but also in a profound sense of distrust towards Mexican society, making it difficult for her to seek support from others.
Toward the end of our interview, Roxana said, “God willing, the next time we meet, it will be in the United States.” This remark suggests that her desire to migrate to the United States has not disappeared. Despite her prolonged stay in Mexico, repeated experiences of hardship, exclusion, and mistrust continue to shape her desire to leave. Her words indicate that the prospect of onward migration continues to shape how she imagines her future. In this sense, the desire to preserve the possibility of returning to her country of origin and the aspiration to move to the United States are not mutually exclusive but coexist under conditions of uncertainty. Roxana’s case therefore suggests that differential inclusion is reproduced not only through institutional arrangements but also through the ways migrants imagine and pursue their futures.
Conclusion
Due to the externalization of border control by the United States and heightened immigration enforcement within Mexico, many migrants facing a prolonged stay in Mexico experience insecurity and precarity. I demonstrated that migrants and refugees in Mexico must navigate legal status decisions amid profound uncertainty caused by multiple and sometimes contradictory laws and policies at the intersection of U.S. border externalization policies, Mexican migration and asylum policies, and international refugee protection frameworks. Under these multilayered migration regimes, the consequences of legal regularization are difficult to predict. Legal stabilization in the present may be perceived as limiting future mobility opportunities. Some migrants therefore avoid applying for asylum because they fear losing future mobility options, despite the risks associated with legal precarity. These findings show how migrants navigate legal status decisions in an opaque institutional environment, resulting in unequal forms of incorporation.
The analysis showed that differential inclusion takes shape through two primary pathways, alongside a third pathway, which remains largely inaccessible in practice. The first pathway is refugee recognition. It provides protection and enables migrants to enter the formal labor market, while simultaneously limiting possibilities for future mobility. As Mexico has intensified its migration control, refugee recognition has emerged as an important means of regularizing legal status. Some individuals who obtained refugee status gained access to formal employment, social protection, and housing, and achieved a certain degree of legal and material stability. However, this form of incorporation often channels migrants into low-wage labor markets such as manufacturing, construction, and service industries. For migrants with professional occupations or higher levels of education in their home countries, this means that refugee recognition does not necessarily lead to the forms of upward social mobility they had anticipated.
The second pathway involves maintaining an unstable legal status while considering future mobility possibilities to the United States or to their home countries. For migrants considering seeking asylum in the US, for example, obtaining refugee recognition in Mexico could be seen as having already received protection in a “safe third country.” This could put them at a disadvantage in U.S. asylum proceedings. For this reason, some migrants deliberately choose to avoid applying for asylum in Mexico. The extent to which Mexico and the United States share information related to refugee recognition, including biometric data, remains unclear. In addition, acquiring refugee status may make returning to one’s country of origin legally and practically difficult. Such return could lead to the revocation of migrants’ refugee status by Mexico which had granted protection to them under international refugee law. Faced with unclear consequences of regularization through refugee recognition, migrants and refugees must make decisions without knowing how these choices may affect their future mobility. This leaves some migrants caught between the prospect of acquiring refugee status and their desire to maintain mobility options. Consequently, they may be compelled to endure labor exploitation and precarious living conditions.
Due to the tension between regularization through refugee recognition in Mexico and the desire to preserve mobility, some migrants avoid refugee recognition in order to maintain their future mobility prospects. As a result, some pursue a third pathway to regularization, although this option is often unattainable in practice. Complex legal procedures and their implementation contribute to what can be described as institutional opacity. Such uncertainty often exposes migrants to further exploitation, including misinformation and fraud, thereby further marginalizing them.
The primary theoretical contribution of this article lies in extending the concept of differential inclusion beyond labor market incorporation alone. Specifically, the article shows that institutional uncertainty shapes migrants’ decisions about legal status and future mobility, producing forms of differential inclusion in the process. Importantly, differential inclusion in this context is not produced solely through the policies of a single state. It emerges within multilayered migration regimes shaped by the interaction of border control and asylum systems across multiple states. These regimes shape not only migrants’ trajectories, but also migrants’ decisions regarding whether and how to pursue regularization itself. In this sense, the article also contributes to border studies by demonstrating how institutional opacity produced under multilayered migration regimes structures migrants’ decision-making.
As this article has shown, Mexico increasingly occupies a dual position as both a transit and a receiving country, while simultaneously becoming a space of prolonged stay and precarious waiting. The insecurity and marginalization of irregularized migrants are produced by a policy framework that expands refugee recognition while keeping other pathways to regularization, beyond family reunification, highly restricted. In this context, many undocumented migrants are effectively left in prolonged legal precarity. The Mexican government must urgently address this situation and expand both the legal frameworks and institutional practices that would make regularization more accessible.
As political conditions in the United States shift rapidly and international funding support declines, UNHCR operations in Mexico have faced severe budget cuts, resulting in office closures and staff reductions that have reportedly weakened COMAR’s operational capacity. Given these constraints, there are growing numbers of asylum seekers whose legal status remains unresolved for nearly a year despite formally submitting asylum applications. 8 The experiences of those subjected to prolonged stay while remaining in legally and economically unstable conditions require further examination. This article has not sufficiently addressed family-based pathways to legal status, including those linked to marriage and childbirth. Fieldwork findings suggest that some migrants do achieve regularization through means other than asylum procedures, and these experiences also warrant further research.
Furthermore, as asylum governance expands across North America alongside intensified biometric data collection and cross-border information sharing, “protection” increasingly operates in tandem with containment. Greater attention should therefore be paid to migrants who obtained refugee recognition in Mexico but later sought asylum in the United States. Future research should further examine how these evolving forms of governance are reshaping the distribution of mobility opportunities and forms of hierarchical incorporation into global labor markets, housing, and welfare systems across North America.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr Shinji Hirai for hosting me as a Visiting Researcher at Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) in 2025. I am also deeply grateful to Dr Eric Luna Gonzalez for his assistance during the fieldwork conducted in 2022 and 2025. Finally, I would like to thank Stephen Patrick McIntyre for his valuable insights, comments, and native English proofreading of the manuscript.
Ethical considerations
At the time this research was conducted, formal ethics committee review was not mandatory at the author’s affiliated institution for non-clinical, minimal-risk sociological fieldwork. Prior to each interview, participants were informed of the purpose of the study, the voluntary nature of participation, and their right to withdraw at any time without consequence. Verbal informed consent was obtained, and all identifying information has been anonymized.
Consent to participate
Informed verbal consent to participate was obtained from all participants.
Consent for publication
Consent for publication was obtained as part of the informed consent process. No identifying personal information is included in the manuscript.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists (Grant Number: 24K16498) and by the JSPS KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) (Principal Investigator: Prof. Akihiro Koido; Grant Number: 19H00607).
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data availability statement
Due to the qualitative nature of the data and ethical commitments to participant confidentiality, the interview data are not publicly available.