Labor Migration and Migrant Routes

The Global Impact of Human Migration ANTH 2301 Labor Migration and Migrant Routes While every journey that reestablishes a family is considered migration in the broadest sense, many migratory patterns are directly linked to socioeconomic necessity, primarily including moving work prospects. Migration of labour might be cyclical or permanent. A recurring trend of moving between places, typically associated with the availability of employment, is known as circular migration. Seasonal migration, or migratory mobility that aligns with seasonal labour demands, such planting, harvesting, servicing, and building work, is one kind of cyclical migration. Some seasonal workers move for short-term, frequently low-paying jobs, either with or without their families. Some seasonal workers return to the same work sites year after year, sometimes keeping up a joint household with other families at the work site. These workers have long-term relationships with their employers and legal work permits, also known as Employment Authorization Documents, or EADs, in the United States. These people frequently keep up a family residence in their home country and send money home via remittances, which are worker-to-home payments, mainly for their families. Remittances from migrants support one in nine persons globally now (Global Migration Data Analysis Centre 2021). Without official documents or a guarantee of job, a large number of individuals travel in quest of employment and a better life. Migration can include risks, adversity, and even death on the journey in pursuit of opportunity. The majority of global migration follows wellestablished migrant trails in several parts of the world. The migration routes that are busiest are the following: the eastern Mediterranean route, which travels through Turkey to carry migrants from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe; the Mediterranean Sea route, which travels across the Mediterranean Sea to carry migrants from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe; the Southeast Asian route, which mainly carries migrants southward from the Asian mainland into Indonesia and Malaysia; and the Central American route, which travels from South and Central America to North America. The social, political, and economic lives of all the nations along the path are greatly impacted by these migration routes, posing both advantages and disadvantages. The Central American route, which starts in South America and goes as far north as Canada, is the one that most Americans are familiar with. The section of the "trail" that runs beside the Rio Grande, the river that divides Mexico and the United States, is the most hotly debated section. Chicano anthropologist Jason De León presents a less well-known aspect of undocumented migration in his groundbreaking fourfield research, The Land of Open Graves (2015), which examines undocumented migrants crossing the border into the United States from Mexico. He talks about how people trying to halt migrants are playing a kind of cat and mouse game that causes a lot of hardship and expensive human and material expenses. De León carried out a multi-sited ethnography, doing research in several parts of Mexico and the United States and spoke with a range of people along the migration path, such as drug dealers, smugglers, border patrol personnel, and illegal migrants. The goal of the US Border Patrol's "prevention through deterrence" strategy, which was implemented in 1994, is to keep illegal immigrants from entering the country. Legal international entryways were tightly defended with fence and more patrol agents in places like El Paso, Texas, and Tucson, Arizona, to make illegal immigration extremely difficult. As a result, entrance locations for migrants moved out of cities and into more dangerous places, such Arizona's Sonoran Desert. The frequency of these crossings has not decreased greatly as a result, but the voyage is now considerably riskier and less obvious to nearby residents and aid organisations. Extreme weather, thirst, robbers, and even wild animals pose a concern in addition to the hard and mountainous environments. "The Border Patrol has purposefully set the stage so that other actors [agents of deterrence] can do the majority of the brutal work," says De León in his conclusion (61). De León and his colleagues discovered the remains of Maricela Zhagüi Puyas, an Ecuadorian woman who was originally from Cuenca, during their research. With the intention of sending money home to her family in Ecuador, she had left them behind and moved to the United States in search of work. She owed over $10,000, the most of which was owed to the coyote, the trail guide who was meant to assist her on her trek. These trail guides frequently extort vulnerable travellers for substantial sums of money before abandoning them to fend for themselves. Maricela technically reached the United States after travelling more than 5,000 miles from Cuenca, Ecuador, to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, where she passed out from weariness and exposure. About 800 of the 2,721 migrants who were discovered dead in Arizona's Sonoran Desert over the 14-year period between 2000 and 2014 are still unidentified. 2020 was the bloodiest year on record for that corridor path, with an estimated 227 migrant deaths in the Sonoran cemetery (Snow 2021). Hostile Terrain 94 is a series of pop-up exhibits and seminars that carry on De León's legacy. Resolving this humanitarian disaster is far from certain. The U.S. Border Patrol detained and removed 400,651 illegal migrants in 2020 (U.S. Customs and Border Protection 2020). Most of the workers in the United States' meatpacking and farmwork industries are immigrants, both legal and illegal. After finding work, these immigrants—who are usually cut off from their families—face dangerous working conditions, communication difficulties, long hours, poor pay, and inadequate housing. Many also face increasing prejudice and insufficient access to health care due to their immigration status. In the Yakima Valley of Washington State, 69 male and female Mexican immigrant farmworkers participated in focus groups led by biocultural anthropologist Shedra Snipes and her colleagues (Snipes et al. 2007). Their area of interest was the definition and experience of stress among farmworkers. Their respondents identified job, personal disease, lack of work, family illness, and family stress as the most prevalent sources of stress, making a distinction between physical and mental pressures. Snipes et al. observed that a prevalent theme among numerous stresses was inconsistent employment and the injusticia (unfairness and injustice) of low pay and unfavourable working circumstances. There are times when a large number of individuals desire to work in the fields, according to one farmworker. When you voice concerns about issues such as unclean restrooms or a lack of water, they immediately respond by telling you to go find another work (366). Living in a foreign society may be stressful, which was another recurring subject. Several farmworkers mentioned that cultural differences added to their stress, including language hurdles, contact from schools about their kids, or concerns from neighbours about noisy family gatherings. This illustration demonstrates how a variety of factors interact with migration and culture to influence a person's capacity to adjust to new surroundings.