Documenting the undocumented: Journeys of Honduran migrants to the United States.
Item
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Title
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Documenting the undocumented: Journeys of Honduran migrants to the United States.
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Identifier
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AAI3288947
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identifier
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3288947
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Creator
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Sladkova, Jana.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Colette Daiute
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Date
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2007
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Social | Hispanic American Studies
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Abstract
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This dissertation is a psycho-social study of the process of migration of Hondurans to the United States. Many Honduran migrants try to solve the increasing oppression of poverty in the poorest country in Latin America through migrating illegally to the United States. Even though there is demand for such undocumented labor in the United States, most migrants undergo a long and dangerous journey to fulfill this demand without documents they cannot obtain due to stringent visa policies. In this dissertation, I explore the dynamic complexity of this migration process and bring attention to the individual, subjective experiences of individual migrants while also taking into consideration the historical, social, and economic structures and contexts in which their migration takes place. I collected my data, 21 in-depth individual interviews, 220 newspaper articles, and field notes, during summers of 2004 and 2006, in Copan Ruinas, a migrant sending community in Honduras. Because of the difficulty of the journey, the majority of people who attempt it, do not get to the United States. Hence, the interviews included migrants who reached their destinations and those who did not. Systemic narrative design and analysis of individual and public narratives was instrumental in unfolding the complexities of the migration process and the interplay of individual experiences and larger structures. The narrative tools of script/story analysis (Daiute, in press; Labov & Waletzky, 1997) helped me identify shared and unique meanings in the individual interviews and led to findings about the immigration process as well as the subjective psychological processes of the journey. Analysis of public narratives in Copan Ruinas provided socio-historical context of the journeys and their interaction with individual narratives illustrated which of them were persuasive for the individual migrants (Bakhtin, 1986) and mediated their future actions (Sarbin, 2004; Sladkova, 2007).;The results indicate that the success of the journey is mostly determined by migrants' access to finances. Those who are able to hire a coyote to facilitate the journey have a better chance of reaching their destinations. Those who can't afford one, travel alone mostly on top of freight trains in Mexico. Those trains, along with gangs and the Mexican police, present major obstacles for migrants and lead to deportations, injury, and death. The hardest part of the journey for Honduran migrants is Mexico, not the U.S.-Mexican border, mostly because the United States has enlisted the Mexican authorities in the efforts to stop undocumented migrants before they reach the U.S. soil. The findings further suggest a systematic nature of this undocumented migration involving many actors in sending, transit, and receiving countries and illustrate the journey with detailed accounts of lived experiences of Honduran migrants. The narrative analysis also revealed how migrants psychologically resolve the results of their journeys. While some unsuccessful migrants stressed the positive aspects of being back home with their families where they were most needed, others were bitter and sad comparing themselves to others who made it and were in better situations than they were after going through a terrible experience. On the other hand, many of those who made it to the United States minimized their own suffering and explained the journey's hardships through other less fortunate migrants.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
