Elsevier

Applied Geography

Volume 154, May 2023, 102939
Applied Geography

New trends in South-South migration: The economic impact of COVID-19 and immigration enforcement

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2023.102939Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • Article examines emigration crossings from Guatemala to Mexico during 2017–2020.

  • Emigration crossings from Guatemala fell by 10%.

  • But crossings by male adults emigrating with their children increased by 30%.

  • Fewer US child deportations during 2020 increased some of these emigration flows.

  • In contrast to previous years, emigrants fled economic hardship not violence.

Abstract

This paper evaluates the impact of the pandemic and enforcement at the US and Mexican borders on the emigration of Guatemalans during 2017–2020. During this period, the number of crossings from Guatemala to Mexico fell approximately by 10%, according to the Survey of Migration to the Southern Border of Mexico. Yet, there was a rise of nearly 30% in the number of emigration crossings of male adults travelling with their children. This new trend was partly driven by the recent reduction in the number of children deported from the US. A one-point decrease in the number of children deported from the US to Guatemalan municipalities resulted in 14 additional crossings from Guatemala to Mexico made by adults, and nearly 0.5 more emigration crossings made by adult males travelling with their children. However, the surge of emigrants travelling with their children was also driven by the acute economic shock that Guatemala experienced during the pandemic. During this period, air pollution in the analysed Guatemalan municipalities fell by 4%, night light per capita fell by 15%, and homicide rates fell by 40%. Unlike in previous years, during the pandemic emigrants were fleeing poverty rather than violence.

Keywords

Conflict
Local economy
Migration enforcement
Central America
Pandemic

JEL classification

C26
D74
F22
J15
K37

Cited by (0)

We acknowledge funding from the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) [RE-CL-2021-01] . We are grateful to Daniel Chavez and Tania Rodríguez for excellent research assistance. We also sincerely thank Han Li, our managing editor, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions that greatly helped us in refining our manuscript.