Coyotes, caravans, and the Central American migrant smuggling continuum

In this article, I draw from ten years of accompaniment with migrant caravans in Mexico to argue that the caravan as a mobility tactic emerges in response to the increased difficulties and costs of moving across space without authorization as a consequence of the externalization of the US-Mexico border. I demonstrate how, in this context, the caravan and coyotaje – the term used across the Americas to loosely designate the practice of migrant smuggling – are parallel strategies that migrants employ to navigate the shifting terrain of immigration enforcement, exploitation, corruption, and organized crime in the space of transit. The collectivity that emerges in the caravan, though full of potential for political action, is delimited by the conditions that shape it and produce it in the first place. People come together in a caravan because heightened enforcement and the corresponding dangers and rising costs have left them with few other options.