Between ' Trochas ', Orphans and Mourning

Migrant Mobilities and the Effects of US 'Soft' Remote Control in Ecuador

Bibliographic Data

ID3948637
AuthorsÁ Velasco (0000-0002-8836-7063, Anthropology and Latin American and Latino Studies, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, USA, corresponding author), Soledad Álvarez Velasco
Year2025
Volume30
Issue1
Pages68-94
Publication date2025-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2023.2296914
OpenAlexW4390752029
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited60

This article proposes a two-scale analysis of how US border externalisation is spatially embedded in Ecuador, producing place-making transformations. On a national scale, it has turned Ecuador into a ‘soft’ buffer to halt unwanted global migration to the US. On a cuerpo-territorio scale, it has had at least two effects. On the one hand, it has transformed migrant-sending communities into mourning and orphaned places as a direct effect of Ecuadorean migrant disappearances and deaths en route and the multiplication of child orphanages. On the other, instead of halting illegalised crossings of global migrants heading to the US, it has multiplied them via unlawful river and land border pathways locally known as trochas, which have increased across the Ecuador-Colombia border. Trochas are socially built spaces embodying fear, anguish, pain, struggle and resistance. As the article proves, mourning and orphaned places and trochas are shaped at the convergence of the effects of the geopolitics of externalised control and the politics of life that Ecuadorean families and global migrants continually deploy to sustain their mobilities and lives. These place-making effects derive from Ecuador’s twofold role as a sending and transit country for global migration to the US, an effect which ends up being highly productive to justify the redoubling of US border enforcement across the region and its increasingly overt meddling in security and border control matters in Ecuador

Business · Economic growth · Economics · Enforcement · Geography · Geopolitics · Mobilities · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Territoriality · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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