Carmen Guadalupe Fernández Casanueva received her master’s degree and PhD in Sociology from the University of Essex, Great Britain. She had previously completed a degree in Communication Sciences from ITESM CEM. She currently works as a professor-researcher at the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) Southeast campus, where she has also been regional director until 2020. It belongs to the National System of Researchers of Mexico, level III. Her research topics are related to migration studies, especially mobility between Guatemala and Mexico on the southern border.

Publications (selection)

Books

2017. “La vida en una orilla del sur. Inmigración hondureña en dos ciudades de la frontera Chiapas-Guatemala”. Casa Chata. CIESAS. DF. ISBN 978-607-486-441-0

Articles and book chapters

2021. Those Who “Don’t Move” Dynamics of Mobility at Two Crossing Points on the Guatemala-Mexico Borderland, from the Experience of Workers Who Vitalize the Region”.Land 2021, 10(1), 19;  Pag. 1-18. https://doi.org/10.3390/land10010019.

2020 (con Belen Febres-Cordero, Kimberly C. Brouwer, Teresita Rocha Jimenez, Sonia Morales-Miranda Shira M. Goldenberg). ”Communication Strategies To Enhance HIV/STI Prevention, Sexual and Reproductive Health, and Safety Among Migrant Sex Workers at the Mexico-Guatemala Border”. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, Volume 31, Number 2, May 2020, pp. 767-790. https://doi.org/10.1353/hpu.2020.0060.

2020 (con Ollinca Villanueva). “Cruzando la línea entre México y Guatemala. Una mirada a la movilidad transfronteriza en el punto fronterizo entre La Mesilla y Ciudad Cuauhtémoc”, en Vidas transfronterizadas: dinámicas y actores en el límite Guatemala/México, siglos xix-xx, Justus Fenner Enriqueta Lerma Rodríguez Ruth Piedrasanta Herrera Rosa Torras Conangla (coordinadores), ISBN: 978-607-30-3262-9, UNAM, CIMSUR paginas 313-338.

2020 (con Rubén Muñoz Martínez, Sonia Morales Miranda and Kimberly C. Brouwer). “Border Spaces: Stigma and social vulnerability to HIV/AIDS, among Central American male migrants at the Mexico–Guatemala border” en Critical Medical Anthropology,  Perspectives in and from Latin America, Edited by Jennie Gamlin, Sahra Gibbon, Paola M. Sesia and Lina Berrio, UCL Press , ISBN: 978-1-78735-582-8 (PDF), páginas 145-169. Cap 6.

2019 (con Juárez Paulín Arli). El punto más al sur y el punto al norte: Tapachula y Tijuana como ciudades fronterizas escenarios de inmovilidades forzadas de migrantes, desplazados internos, solicitantes de refugio y deportados, en Revista Península, Vol. XIV, núm. 2 julio –diciembre, 2019. ISSN 1870-5766. Pp. 155-174

2019. “Negociar la integración: hombres y mujeres hondureños en Tapachula y Huixtla ante relacionamientos en posición de desventaja” en Entre dos fuegos Naturalización e invisibilidad de la violencia de género contra migrantres en territorio mexicano, Hiroko Asakura y Marta W. Torres Falcón (coordinadoras). CIESAS. CDMX. ISBN: 978-607-486-524-0. Páginas 81-106.

2017. “Entre tránsito y asentamiento. El caso de (in)migrantes de origen hondureño en dos ciudades de la frontera sur mexicana“, en Migración: nuevos actores, procesos y retos. Vol. II Migración interna y migrantes en tránsito en México, Magdalena Barros y Agustín Escobar (eds.) Colección México. CIESAS. Ciudad de México. ISBN: 978-607-486-447-2.

2017. “Wenn der Weg zum Ziel wird. Honduranische Migrant_innen in Tapachula”, en Transit Mexiko. Migration, Gewalt, Menschenrechte. Miriam Trzeciak, Elisabeth Tuider, Hanns Wienold (eds.) Westfälisches Dampfboot. Alemania.  ISBN: 978-3-89691-296-1. PP: 263-268.

 Proyecto de investigación como fellow del CALAS (tándem transatlántico con Yaatsil Guevara)

Title: Surviving the necropolitics of refuge: Waiting as a strategy of flight and discouragement in migrants in transit through Mexico and Costa Rica

Summary: The year 2014 has been pointed out by scholars of the Central American-United States migratory corridor as a water part for the analysis of the phenomenon of irregular migration in that geopolitical region. During that year, the United States declared a "humanitarian crisis" on its southern border after hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied migrant minors were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. That year marked a turning point in the way US and Mexican border regimes operate. Since then, new binational agreements emerged between the United States and Mexico, to counteract the flow of population northward: this is how it was possible to observe the increase in mass deportations, the implementation of "national security" programs that reinforced the southern border of Mexico, in addition to the development of a new operational dynamic in
the policy of refuge in Mexican territory, requesting refuge almost the only possible door to aspire to a regular stay in Mexico.
These new dynamics have worked as strategies of attrition and discouragement since, on the one hand, the vast majority of applicants are denied refugee status; and on the other, the request for refuge before the Mexican state obscures the possibilities of seeking refuge in the American Union. In this sense, border regimes in Mexico and the United States promote and operate strategies of attrition and (dis)encouragement towards irregular migrants who, through their migratory trajectories, challenge the selective permeability of borders in transit and destination countries.
Under this tenor, this study is guided by two central assumptions: a) We affirm that the policy of refuge in Mexico has become a necropolitical device, beyond a policy to "safeguard lives". And b) We consider that, as a result, the uncertain and prolonged conditions of waiting to which asylum seekers are subjected have an ambivalent nature, where, on the one hand, they create platforms for what we call escape strategies, and, on the other hand, they generate discouragement strategies. The questions that guide this research are: How are escape strategies built during the wait? And what is the effect of discouragement strategies on their migratory trajectories, their plans, and their daily lives?