Why do you trust him? The construction of the good migrant on the Mexican migrant route

Abstract

How do Central American migrants in transit decide which other migrants they can trust when they are crossing Mexico? In this article, based on extensive multi-situated ethnogra-phy in Mexico, I suggest that migrants look for the same signs and signals when deciding whom to trust, thus creating a single, ideal "good migrant". This stereotype is fed to them by the migrant shelters and advocacy institutions which, in an effort to protect the migrants and to humanise them, create a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate migrants. The construction of the "good migrant" ideal forces migrants to change the way they behave and affects those migrants who are unable to conform to the stereotype as they are likely to get less solidarity and help.