Precarious Wait

How U.S. Externalization and Waiting Policies Affect Haitian Asylum Seekers in Northeastern Mexico

Bibliographic Data

ID19220951
AuthorsPedro Valdez-Castro (0000-0003-4674-223X, The University of Texas at Austin, corresponding author)
Year2026
Pages1-23
Publication date2026-05-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Borderlands Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0886-5655 • E-ISSN: 2159-1229
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/08865655.2026.2671019
OpenAlexW7161249706
LanguageEN
References cited38

Haitian asylum seekers (HAS) at the U.S.-Mexico border have become a focal point for academic, governmental, and media discussions. They have long been affected by border externalization and waiting policies, which have led to economic, political, and emotional precarity. Drawing on ethnographic data, life stories, and in-depth interviews collected using a narrative-biographic approach in Northeastern Mexico, this paper examines the repercussions of U.S. externalization and waiting policies and the sociopolitical production of precarity among HAS waiting in the region. It centers on the story of Leslie as an analytically telling case to illustrate how HAS endure a precarious wait, a compound state of immobility that intersects systemic inequalities, socioeconomic deprivation, affective control, racial neglect, and institutional violence. The analysis reveals how bordering practices and state-imposed immobility are sustained by the state’s strategic deployment of geopolitical coordination, temporal–spatial constraints, legal ambiguity, and affective manipulation, as tools for controlling racialized migrants

Externalization · Foreign policy · Immigration · Refugee · Migration, Health, Geopolitics, Historical Geography · Migration, Racism, and Human Rights · Sex work and related issues

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