SciPost Submission Page
“Reborn in Guate”: Making Resource Frontiers in Asylum in Guatemala’s Northern Petén
by Julia Morris
Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Julia Morris |
| Submission information | |
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| Preprint Link: | scipost_202402_00023v2 (pdf) |
| Date submitted: | 2024-06-28 13:01 |
| Submitted by: | Morris, Julia |
| Submitted to: | Migration Politics |
| Ontological classification | |
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| Academic field: | Political Science |
| Specialties: |
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Abstract
The last decade and a half have seen a dramatic increase in the outsourcing and offshoring of asylum processing and resettlement to countries in the Global South. This article advances a new theoretical framework to examine the surge in new asylum regimes worldwide. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in several externalised asylum sites and specifically in Guatemala, it looks at these recent developments through the lens of ‘resource frontiers.’ Merging critical political ecological approaches on resource frontiers with research on border externalisation, I argue that ‘asylum frontiers’ are the social spaces connected to the exploration and development of a resource sector that extracts value from people on the move. I centre my analysis on the US-driven development of an asylum regime in Guatemala’s northern Petén region. I consider the specificities of Guatemala’s emerging asylum frontier, detailing how this arrangement sits with the country’s own histories of asylum and enforced return.
Author comments upon resubmission
List of changes
I have addressed both reviewers’ suggestions as follows:
Reviewer 1:
1. I have better detailed the earlier phase of migration governance when value was also extracted from refugees under general migration schemes. This includes distinguishing the new phase of value extraction/asylum frontiers as one connected to humanitarian sentiments (pg. 12).
2. As suggested, I have clarified the analytical and normative dimensions of my argument by explicitly stating it in the introduction (pg. 3), towards the end of Section IV (pg. 19), and the end of the conclusion (pg. 20), as well as being more critical of northern states’ use of asylum (pgs. 8, 17-18) and the inability for the arrangement in Guatemala to work (pgs. 14-15).
Reviewer 2:
1. I have better explained the context of people on the move in Guatemala, including the dictates of the Geneva Convention (pgs. 6 and 18).
2. Guatemala’s use of the Cartagena Convention is clarified in note 19 on pg. 14.
3. I discuss the comparison between the numbers of asylum seekers in Mexico and Guatemala to better strengthen my argument and show how most migrants are not staying in Guatemala (pgs. 9, 16, and 19).
4. I better detail the US’ violation to it commitments to international refugee law (pg. 8) and clarify the disproportionate benefit to the US (pgs. 17/18).
5. I have removed the term ‘asylum industry frontier’ to avoid confusion.
6. I have better explained the notion of durable solutions (note 14 on pg. 12).
7. I have removed the term ‘migration externalisation’ to avoid confusion.
8. By stating my argument from the outset (pg. 3), I have clarified that it is asylum being promoted by industry actors owing to the value economy around it. This includes noting that it is a precarious system of protection that is being promoted.
9. As well suggested, I have reorganised the introduction to move my past work in Jordan and Nauru to the beginning of the paper. To ensure that the introduction remains succinct, I have shifted paragraphs around my theoretical contributions to section 1.
10. I have clarified the processes of exploitation and administrative violence baked into the racialised mobility regime of the international refugee system (pg. 5).
11. I removed the phrase “embodying resource frontiers as a subversion of asylum controls” and the resistance aspect of the paper.
12. By clarifying the paper’s argument (pg. 3), I have addressed the point around the precarity of the expansion of asylum.
13. On pgs. 6 and 11 I mentioned that many migrants have also left their countries because of extractivist practices.
14. I removed the term ‘humanitarian migrants’ to avoid confusion and excessive definitions.
15. I clarified the case of Mexico and that it is the state that asylum seekers cannot leave (pg. 13).
16. I have clarified that it is Belize where migrants must apply for asylum within 14 days from the moment of entry (pg. 13).
17. I have better explained what social services refugees have access to in practice on pg. 14.
18. I have better explained from the start that a major contradiction of Guatemala’s asylum system is that there are no policies or programmes for returnees or internally displaced persons (pgs. 3 and 5).