Migration processes in Northern Central America and the unequal outcomes of US and Mexican migration policies

We examine the migratory processes from the global South (particularly from North Central America) who go to the United States and forcibly transit through Mexico. US immigration policy has hit migrants from North Central America hard as never before. Explanations are needed about these migratory flows and the institutional and social actors involved, within the United States and Mexico. The United States will continue to attract foreign migrants with and without immigration authorization, Mexico will continue to detain undocumented foreign migrants, and people from the global South will continue to send migrants in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. With statistical support, this text examines the actions of US and Mexican governments and migrants over the past 20 years. Between the power that wants to control how many and who enters, the neighbouring country that is pressured by its northern counterpart to stop migrants and which is used by nationals of its southern counterparts as a necessary corridor to reach the destination country, and the expectations of undocumented migrants, their families, social sectors, businesses and governments that in different ways receive benefits from this migrant population: what they have done in the 21st century is something that is analysed here from a broad perspective. As in so many social processes, international migration processes present diverse outcomes, where there are neither definitive nor irrevocable results that favour or harm only one of the parties involved.