Promoting LGBTQ Forced Migrants’ Integration In Mexico City’s Labor Market
PROMOTING LGBTQ FORCED MIGRANTS’ INTEGRATION IN MEXICO CITY’S LABOR MARKET: PERSPECTIVES FROM MEXICAN GOVERNMENT AGENCIES & CIVIL SOCIETY
Rolando Diaz, MA Candidate
University of San Francisco
Mexico has long been a country of immigration, emigration, refuge, transit, and return migration. These phenomena compound migration policy for the Mexican government, which grapples with a highly securitized northern border and a southern border that continues to see troubling patterns of mass migration from the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA). High levels of violence rooted in social inequities, political instability, and armed conflict across the region have driven many to flee and seek safety in North America. Images of a “Rainbow caravan” appeared in US media in 2017, underscoring how NTCA asylum-seekers belonging to the LGBTQ community face particular hardships and conditions exacerbated by inadequate government protection and interest in strengthening LGBTQ rights. While the “Rainbow caravan” moved to seek asylum in the US, many LGBTQ forced migrants stay in Mexico, particularly in the capital. Mexico City, seen as an LGBTQ Mecca, coupled with the city’s sanctuary city policy protecting migrants, offers suitable conditions for studying LGBTQ migrants’ inclusion and integration in the city’s labor market.
In using queer theorists’ scholarship, chiefly in the realm of queer migration studies, this study gives rise to the emerging understandings of Mexico as a migrant-receiving state within an LGBTQ context. Through a qualitative research study, this paper includes the results of 17 in-depth semi-structured interviews with individuals representing 11 entities ranging from Mexican government agencies, international organizations, and civil society stakeholders with roles in labor market integration in Mexico City. Themes collected include insights into LGBTQ rights awareness, budget requisition, active integration efforts, and emerging economic sectors/ regions for future government-civil society cooperation. As migration flows into Mexico continue to be studied, the diversity within those flows offers an opportunity to visibilize the uniqueness of certain groups, especially those pertaining to sexual and gender diversity, in order to test how stakeholders in migration respond to migrants’ particularities.
The Migration Conference is an international peer-reviewed scientific event. The TMC is a venue for academics, policymakers, practitioners, students and everybody who is interested in intelligent debate and research informed discussions on human mobility and its impacts around the world.
Due to COVID-19 Pandemic, The Migration Conference 2021 will be held ONLINE from 6 to 10 July 2021. Visit the TMC website for more information.
Hosted by Ming Ai (London) Institute and International British Business School, United Kingdom.
Keynote Speakers at the TMC2021:
Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Loyola University Chicago, USA
Theresa Alfaro-Velcamp, Emeritus Professor, Sonoma State University, USA
James F. Hollifield, Director of the Tower Center for Public Policy and International Affairs at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, USA
Pia M. Orrenius, Vice President and Senior Economist Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, USA
Dr Rodolfo Cruz Piñeiro, Director, Departamento de Estudios de Población, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico
Hna. Leticia Gutiérrez Valderrama, General Director of Scalabrinianas Misión para Migrantes y Refugiados (SMR) sección México, México