Labor Borders: Recruitment of Central American Migrants in “Exodus” through Southern Mexico and Indigenous Mexican “Braceros” in the Californian Fields

The article proposes the concept of “labor border” to explore the migration policies in the Central America-Mexico-United States region, through two case studies. First, the US H-2A program for the temporary recruitment of foreign agricultural workers from Mexico. Subsequently, the Mexican regularization programs with temporary labor opportunity, implemented by the Mexican government in the context of the so-called “Central American exodus”: Social Emergency Program (Programa de Emergencia Social) and Sowing Life (Sembrando Vida). The objective of the research is to analyze how the political use of a labor border contributes to the social construction of a hierarchy of immigrant workers, as well as to the process of externalization of border controls by the United States to the south of Mexico. The research took place between March 2016 to December 2021, with a combination of mainly qualitative methodologies.