Migration - Gender - Human Rights. Local structures, realities of life and social organizations under the influence of migration

In the coming winter semester, the Department of Sociology of Diversity at the University of Kassel (Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Tuider & Miriam Trzeciak) is organizing a teaching research project to southern Mexico in cooperation with the Institute of Sociology at the University of Münster (Prof. Dr. Hanns Wienold). On the way to the southern border, we want to make stops in Mexico City, Oaxaca, San Cristóbal and Tapachula and conduct interviews and discussions with renowned social scientists, members and representatives of migrant and women's organizations and social organizations (NGOs) and with migrants. In the teaching research project, we will deal with the border regime on the Mexican southern border, with the changing rural and local structures in the context of migration and with the realities of life of (trans)migrants, their families and children in the region of origin.

The journey to the Mexican southern border is interesting for a sociological research project in various respects. Every year, hundreds of thousands of migrants from Central and South America cross the 962 km strip of land on their way 'al Norte'. As the penultimate state border crossing, Mexico's southern border with Guatemala is one of the most important transit areas. Since 2001 - when the Mexican government, in cooperation with the USA, agreed Plan Sur in parallel with the construction of the wall and the personnel build-up on the northern border and moved the border regime around 3000 km to the south - this region has been subject to increased control and militarization.

Historically, the border between Guatemala and Mexico is the result of protracted political negotiation and border demarcation processes, so that the Soconusco region can look back on a diverse, hybrid culture and migratory tradition. The (temporary) labor migration that has always taken place to the coffee fincas and, since the 1990s, to the larger cities of Chiapas and Oaxaca, primarily by indigenous people and women, can be attributed to this context.

Not only the route through the south to the north, but also the high level of internal migration is a characteristic of the structurally weak southern border. Despite a high level of natural resources, the region is one of the poorest in the country. Particularly affected by the situation of multiple marginalization is the indigenous population, whose economic income is in many cases secured by subsistence farming. Until 1994, the structures of the hacienda system were still predominant in Chiapas. After the Zapatista uprising, autonomous infrastructures in areas such as education, health and sustainable, ecological agriculture were implemented in many communities in addition to the redistribution of large areas of land, and this has certainly also had an impact on migration from indigenous communities.

The effects of migrations on local gender relations and the influences of gender on (trans)migrations (paths, forms and reasons) are of particular thematic relevance for the teaching research project. In the context of intersectionally related structures of exclusion (such as race, class, gender, etc.), it is above all the women from the indigenous communities who are the focus of the journey.