Nolan Publishes Article on Guatemalan Child Migration
On November 13, 2020, Rachel Nolan, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published an article with The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) on the history of Guatemalan child refugees and the crimes now underway in the United States migration system. This is the third article in series on child migration from the Infancias y Migración Working Group, an international interdisciplinary working group on child migration in the Americas–with participation from scholars in the U.S. and Latin America.
In the article, titled “Guatemalan Child Refugees, Then and Now,” Nolan discusses the atrocities carried out during the Guatemalan civil war, the existential threat the war was for the country’s children, and the global response to this refugee crisis. Nolan details the policies toward refugees in of both Mexico and the U.S., the latter of which was much less friendly. As she details, the U.S. has in recent years expelled children from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador alone to Mexico, a country in which they have no family.
In detailing the history of Guatemalan migration to the U.S., Nolan details current efforts by the U.S. to deter family and child migration. She explains that the U.S. has turned a blind eye to history and its role in this refugee crisis; however, for those who were threatened by the violence, the memories are still very clear.
An excerpt:
Beyond Indigenous politicians and those who themselves escaped to Mexico, few draw the link between families of refugees in Mexico during the war and families attempting to access asylum in the U.S. now. But only by moving the chronology backward from the Obama Administration do the longer waves of anti-Indigenous violence come into view, along with the decades of ongoing displacement and dispossession of Indigenous and poor Guatemalans that built over generations and continue to fuel the flow of families to the U.S. border.
The full article can be read on NACLA’s website.
Rachel Nolan is a historian of modern Latin America. Her research focuses on political violence, Central American civil wars, childhood and the family, historical memory, and U.S.-Latin American relations. She is currently completing a book manuscript on the history of international adoption from Guatemala. Read more about her here.