Caravanas de personas migrantes como expresiones contradictorias de tácticas de sobrevivencia y prácticas de subjetivación política

Abstract

From our reflections based on participant observation and accompaniment of migrant caravans from southern Mexico northward, this work focuses on highlighting the different meanings of caravans in the current migratory era. We highlight how the collective action and, particularly, the political collective bodiment in movement1 (acuerpamiento) of the caravans is based on necessity and survival, a context that encourages, in an emergent, temporary and sometimes contradictory way, the participants’ practices of political subjectivation. We explore the tendencies of unity and fragmentation, the oft-criticized form of decision-making, the way of carrying onward despite the obstacles, the rejection of the “captive refugee” regime promoted by the Mexican government as well as by some civil society organizations, and how the appropriation of asylum as a tool paradoxically re-signifies the role of victims to which many have sought to limit migrants.