ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a preliminary discursive analysis of the contemporary “immigration state of emergency” (Oliviero, 2013) that was posited by the Trump administration in response to the emergence of the 2018 migrant caravans. The Trump administration's use of a rhetoric of crisis, threat and even humanitarian protection to justify punitive immigration policies follows a long history in the United States of framing migration as a source of crisis and emergency, producing migrants as subjects of state power and control. In this chapter, we present an alternative genealogy of the caravanization of migration, arguing that the migrant caravans, organized for the protection and preservation of migrants’ lives, represent a modality of resistance and self-defence. This emerging Mesoamerican social movement (Balaguera and Gonzales, 2018) of the displaced has challenged the grammar with which migration is understood, explained and managed and has generated a shift in the networks of solidarity and radical hospitality in Mexico.
