Unaccompanied minors from the Northern Central American countries in the migrant stream: social differentials and institutional contexts

Abstract

The migration of minors unaccompanied by adults from the northern countries of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) to the United States has risen sharply in recent years, surpassing the numbers that migrated during the political conflicts in the region in the 1980s and early 1990s. While the migration of minors from the northern region of Central America may appear as a homogeneous flow, significant sociodemographic and regional differentials exist in their migration. A conceptual model of institutional conditions is presented to conceptualise how changing institutional conditions in communities of origin can produce ‘push’ effects for the unaccompanied migration of minors in the northern countries of Central America. The goal of the model is to conceptually advance the analysis of migration by the unaccompanied minors to the root level of structural change. US response to the migration of unaccompanied minors in the future is uncertain given that a new administration has taken charge of the Executive Branch, promising to further restrict unauthorised immigration at the southwest border.

Introduction

The arrival at the US southwest border of 51,700 unaccompanied minors from the northern countries of Central America, i.e. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, in 2014 represented a dramatic increase of this migration from previous years. Central American children younger than 18 had been migrating unaccompanied by adults in fluctuating annual numbers since the 1980s when civil war and other social turmoil destabilised much of Central America, but the border apprehensions of these minors dropped below 10,000 per year after the political violence subsided in the region (Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez 1997; CRS 2017). Beginning in 2012, however, the border apprehensions of unaccompanied Central American minors rose above 10,000 per year, and above 20,000 per year in 2013 (US CBP 2015). Media and governmental reports made the child migrants seem like a homogeneous flow of Latino youth. But the arrival of unaccompanied minors from the northern Central American countries represented a heterogeneous flow of minors with different sociodemographic characteristics and with different institutional conditions in their communities of origin impelling their migration.

This paper seeks to further the analysis of unaccompanied migration by minors from the northern countries of Central America by elaborating on their sociodemographic differences, and by emphasising an institutional perspective for understanding how changes in established patterns of social life can stimulate the migration of unaccompanied minors. Studies undertaken since 1990 indicate the presence of significant sociodemographic differences among unaccompanied Central American minors in terms age, gender, ethnicity, and reasons for migrating (e.g. Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez 1990, 1997; Kennedy 2014; UNHCR 2014). Moreover, taking an institutional perspective of the economy, public security, the family, and established migration networks, helps to understand how institutional change can produce ‘push’ effects for the migration of minors from the northern Central American countries. The originality of this perspective is to attempt an understanding of how institutional, structural change lies at the root of incidences such as violence, poverty, and so on, associated with the unaccompanied migration of minors from the northern countries of Central America. For example, the research literature (e.g. Kennedy 2014; UNHCR 2014; Hipsman and Meissner 2015) has well established that violent gangs are a cause of the migration by minors attempting to escape their threats. But these gangs do not have an independent existence; they developed from changing institutional conditions in society that could no longer support an adequate social incorporation of youth, a situation exacerbated by US deportations of thousands of youth, including gang members, to the northern countries of Central America (Cruz 2009; Griffin 2009; Morris and Palazuelos 2015).

Migration of unaccompanied minors from Central America to the United States

Unaccompanied minors first developed a major visibility in the Central American migrant streams to the United States in the 1980s as part of the larger stream of Central Americans emigrating from countries in social turmoil (Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez 1990). The primary sending countries of the migration were El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. El Salvador and Guatemala underwent civil wars, and Nicaragua experienced a US-supported insurgency attempting to overthrow the leftist government of the country (Booth, Wade, and Walker 2015). As Menjívar and Perreira (2019) describe in the opening article in this special issue, political violence and accompanying economic decline drove many people from these countries to migrate by the thousands, especially to the United States (also see, Aguayo 1985; Aguayo and Fagen 1988). While Honduras did not experience civil war, it experienced political violence as the US-backed military leaders of the country undertook dramatic and deadly actions against university students and leaders of labour unions and peasant movements. The military abducted, tortured, and killed suspected guerrillas and other leftists (Munczek and Tuber 1998).

Against the background of political violence and economic deterioration, children younger than 18 and unaccompanied by adults joined the US-bound migrant streams from the four Central American countries (Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez 1990). Some youth migrated to join their parents in the United States, others to seek work, and some to escape forced recruitment into the military, or to desert combat units in war zones. Unaccompanied Central American youth became visible at the US southwest border in the 1980s as the Border Patrol began to apprehend from 2000 to 5000 of the youth annually in border sectors (Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez 1997). Moreover, given a higher got-away ratio among unauthorised entrants at the time due to the relative small size of the Border Patrol force in the 1980s (Donato, Wagner, and Patterson 2008), the apprehension of 2000 to 5000 unaccompanied minors annually meant that at least twice as many were entering clandestinely into the United States. Unaccompanied Central American minors also became visible in shelters organised on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border by religious and human rights workers to provide meals, sleeping quarters and information to undocumented Central Americans (Rodriguez and Hagan 2004; Rodriguez 2007).

As political violence ended or subsided and the economies regained some stability in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua by the mid-1990s, the migration of unaccompanied minors from the region tapered off, or at least did not continue to rise as dramatically as during the years of large-scale political conflict and wracked economies in Central America. Nonetheless, as described by Menjívar and Perreira (2019) in this special issue, a significant pattern of unaccompanied migration by youth younger than 18 to the United States had been established, creating an alternative survival strategy for minors facing economic hardship and danger from violence in Central America (also see, Chavez and Menjívar 2010). As the Central American migration to the United States unfolded through several stages from the 1980s to the 2000s (see, Jonas and Rodriguez 2014), the migration of unaccompanied minors remained a parallel flow to the larger migration of adults and families from the northern Central American countries.

When social, economic, and security institutional conditions in the northern countries of Central America failed to improve or actually worsened in the early 2000s, many minors in the region joined the migrant streams headed to the United States (Chavez and Menjívar 2010). By 2010, the number of unaccompanied minors surpassed the numbers they had reached during the political violence in the 1980s and early 1990s. A strong cycle of unaccompanied Central American youth migration to the United States emerged, reaching 20,805 apprehensions of unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras at the southwest border in 2013 and 51,705 in 2014 (US CBP 2015).

According to researchers at the Pew Research Center, of the 51,074 encounters by US border agents with unaccompanied minors in the first ten months of fiscal year 2014, Hondurans accounted for 18,244, Guatemalans for 17,057, and Salvadorans for 16,404 (Krogstad, Gonzalez-Barrera, and Lopez 2014). In each group of unaccompanied minors, the percentage of minors age 12 or younger increased from fiscal year 2013 to fiscal year 2014 for Hondurans and for Salvadorans and Guatemalans. The Pew researchers noted that the number of minors traveling with a parent or a guardian had also increased in the same period from fiscal year 2013 to fiscal year 2014 (Krogstad, Gonzalez-Barrera, and Lopez 2014). When the unaccompanied minors encountered the Border Patrol, they cited violence and poverty to be the main reasons for their migration.

While the annual count of unaccompanied minors from the northern Central American countries encountered by the Border Patrol has increased dramatically and peaked at 51,705 in 2014, the number may only be the tip of the iceberg of the total population of minors living in desperate, if not lethal, situations in the northern countries of Central America. Table 1 demonstrates the small percentages of minors encountered by the Border Patrol at the US southwest border in 2016 when compared with the total populations of youth ages 0–17 and ages 14–17 for each country.

Table 1.

Relative frequencies and percentages of unaccompanied minors encountered by Border Patrol, by country of origin, fiscal year 2016.

	El Salvador	Guatemala	Honduras
Minors encountered by Border Patrol	17,512	18,913	10,468
Percent of home country population age 0–17	0.87	0.03	0.29
Percent of home country population age 14–17	3.45	1.38	1.32

Sources: US CBP (2016); US Census Bureau (2016).

The percentage for the 0–17 age group may appear as a theoretical reference marker, but in the 2014 peak year of unaccompanied child migration, when the Border Patrol encountered a total of 68,541 unaccompanied minors from all countries, 2% were 5 years of age or younger, and 14% were ages 6–12 (Krogstad, Gonzalez-Barrera, and Lopez 2014). The very small children (0–5 years old) tend to be ones who separate from a parent or guardian during the migration, such as when a gang abducts a young mother, leaving her small children behind, or who when smugglers abandon small children they are transporting. Older children may assist abandoned small children until contact is made with authorities or a migrant shelter. Also, some mothers younger than 18 migrate with their infants or give birth during the journey. Children age 6–12 usually travel with older children who are family members but younger than 18. It is the 14–17 age group, however, that contains the largest number of unaccompanied minors from the northern Central American countries. These percentages do not take into account the youth who entered the United States clandestinely, or the children accompanied by a parent or guardian, which are estimated to number fewer than half of the unaccompanied minors (Krogstad, Gonzalez-Barrera, and Lopez 2014).

The small percentages in Table 1 are not meant to lessen the significance of the thousands of unaccompanied minors who arrive at the US southwest border from the northern countries of Central America; to the contrary, the percentages indicate that, while tens of thousands of unaccompanied children make the dangerous journey to the US border, most children living in severe poverty and danger in the northern countries of Central America do not emigrate but remain locked in their precarious conditions. The small percentages also present evidence against the argument of US officials who claim that US asylum, or other forms of reception that do not immediately deport the youth, only serves to create widespread youth emigration abroad to the United States (Zezima and O’Keefe 2014; Gomez 2016). Clearly, according to the small percentages in Table 1, children younger than 18 years in the northern Central American countries are not using emigration as their first choice of options to cope with the hardships of poverty and dangers of violence in their countries. According to research in El Salvador, internal migration has become a survival strategy in the country, with thousands of Salvadorans moving internally to escape violence, and some youth moving several times (Kennedy 2014).

A number of reports have been issued regarding the rise of unaccompanied Central American youth migration since 2010 (e.g. Kennedy 2014; Stinchcomb and Hershberg 2014; UNHCR 2014; Musalo and Cernadas 2015). The reports identify crime, violence, gang threats, poverty, and family unification as significant factors, with some regional variations, spurring the migration of unaccompanied minors from the northern countries of Central America to the United States. Two studies based on the collection of primary interview data of unaccompanied or separated migrant minors (Kennedy 2014; UNHCR 2014) provide elaborate details of their findings. One study by the UNHCR Washington office conducted 404 interviews in the United States of unaccompanied or separated children from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras who had entered the United States after September 2011. The study attempted to collect a representative sample to generalise to the larger migrant stream of unaccompanied children migrating to the United States from the northern Central American countries. The UNHCR study found that 58% of the sample experienced or faced threats of harm sufficient to constitute ‘a potential or actual need for international protection’. (UNHCR 2014, 6). The sources of the harm were mainly violence by organised armed criminal actors and violence at home. Forty-eight per cent of the sample reported personally experiencing effects of violence brought by organised criminal groups including cartel, gangs, or police, and 21% reported experiencing abuse and violence in their homes (UNHCR 2014).

Among the 100 Guatemalan children interviewed regarding reasons for migrating, 29% reported deprivation, 23% reported abuse at home, and 20% reported violence in society (UNHCR 2014). Forty-eight per cent of the Guatemalan children were indigenous (Mayan), and they represented 55% of those that cited economic deprivation for their migration, 30% who cited abuse at home, and 25% who cited violence in society (UNHCR 2014).

In the Honduran sample of 98 children, 54% were threatened by, or were victims of, violence by organised criminal groups, 24% cited abuse at home for their migration, and 21% cited economic deprivation (UNHCR 2014). Eleven per cent cited both violence in society and abuse at home. Forty-three per cent did not cite serious harm. Eighty per cent of the Honduran children hoped to reunite with families in the United States, work or study, and find ways to help their families (UNHCR 2014).

The findings of the UNHCR study indicate that the reasons for the migration of unaccompanied migrant youth are multiple and vary across social factors with children sometimes reporting more than one reason. Differences by country, and by regions within the countries, emerged in the responses of the children, but they also shared important similarities. All the nationalities in the study referred to violence by criminal groups or state actors, abuse at home, and economic deprivation as majorreasons for their migration. Yet, substantial percentages of the children reported never having experienced serious harm.

In contrast to the UNHCR study, which was conducted in the United States, the second report, conducted by Elizabeth Kennedy (2014), researched conditions spurring the unaccompanied migration of Central American children by interviewing over 300 unaccompanied migrant children in El Salvador who were deported by bus from southern Mexico after being apprehended on the US-bound migrant trail. In addition, Kennedy (2014) developed familiarisation with over 100 unaccompanied migrant minors in each of Guatemala and Honduras. The analysis in her study of Salvadoran unaccompanied minors was based on 322 interviews, which consisted of two-thirds males and one-third females, with about 80% of the children being between the ages of 13 and 17 (Kennedy 2014). Similar to the findings of the UNHCR study, Kennedy (2014) found violence, extreme poverty, and family reunification to be major factors spurring the migration of Salvadoran children. Fifty-nine per cent of boys and 61% of girls cited gang threats or violence as the reason for emigrating. However, extreme poverty was the most important reason for adolescent males in some areas of El Salvador, as the youth hoped to study and work in order to send financial support to their families. While 90% of the sample reported having a family member in the United States, only 35% listed family reunification is a reason for migrating (Kennedy 2014).

Based on familiarisation with youth in Guatemala and Honduras, Kennedy (2014) characterises conditions spurring youth emigration from these two countries as similar to the Salvadoran findings. Thus, Kennedy (2014) finds poverty and family reunification to be common reasons for the emigration of youth in the three countries of the northern Central American region, with the most frequent reason being gang and cartel violence.

In a discussion of structural factors that promote the migration of unaccompanied minors, as well as families, from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to the United States, Stinchcomb and Hershberg (2014) go beyond specific incidences of crime, violence, and poverty and point to the accumulation of these factors into structural social forces that create atmospheres of stress, tension, and conflict. Stinchcomb and Hershberg (2014) analyse the structural forces as social exclusion, societal violence, household violence, institutional incapacity, and US engagement in the northern countries of Central America. From this analysis, the deeper cause of economic deprivation that drives many youth and families to migrate is the control by business elites of the vastly unequal distribution of wealth. Unemployment, subemployment, and extreme poverty are symptoms of a controlled social system of inequality that produces vast wealth for elites and economic scarcity with very negative consequences for large sectors of the working populations.

According to Stinchcomb and Hershberg (2014), violence too must be considered in its generalised form to understand how an atmosphere of violence emerges that is larger than the number of specific violent acts. While many migrants can point to specific violent acts that incited their migration (e.g. the gang killing of a family member or friend), many migrants also point to violent social environments where danger and harm are constantly present, and life becomes precarious in an ambiance of fear. Conditions of economic exclusion can lead to frustration and aggression among male heads of household that in turn leads to violence in the home, which is cited by unaccompanied minors as a reason for migrating (Stinchcomb and Hershberg 2014). Moreover, governmental institutional incapacity in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in the face of rising violent offenses committed with impunity, and of collaboration by officials with criminal groups, reduces public confidence that conditions will improve in the future (Stinchcomb and Hershberg 2014).

In the following section, we describe the findings of an early study conducted in Texas in 1990 of unaccompanied minors from Central America. We present the section to demonstrate the larger experience of the unaccompanied migration to the United States by Central American minors, and to provide findings that can be compared later in the discussion with recent research of unauthorised migration from the northern Central American countries.

Earlier migration to the United States of unaccompanied minors from Central America

A 1990 study of Central American unaccompanied minors in Texas detention centers found substantial differentials in the sociodemographic and national-origin characteristics of the minors, as well as in the reasons for migrating (Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez 1990). Data were collected in the study through a random selection of 260 intake records out of 1265 records of unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua that were held in four detention centers in 1989 (Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez 1990). The random sample indicated similarities in the distributions of gender by Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran nationalities, with a slightly lower percentage of females from Nicaragua, and similarities in the distribution of age by nationality. As Table 2 indicates, significant differences of 10% or more, however, were found for reasons for migrating, by gender and country of origin. Males were more likely to cite political conflict and economic reasons, while females were more likely to report economic and family reunification reasons. The minors from El Salvador and Nicaragua were more likely to cite political conflict reasons, while minors from Guatemala and Honduras were more likely to give economic reasons (Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez 1990).

Table 2.

Detained unaccompanied Central American minors: reasons for migrating to the US, 1989 (%).

	Political	Economic	Political and economic	Family reunification	Adventure	Education	Problems with family or neighbors	% Total (n)
El Salvador	44	32	13	3	0	6	3	101 (79)
Guatemala	24	44	11	4	2	10	4	99 (46)
Honduras	14	53	12	12	0	10	0	101 (51)
Nicaragua	44	23	6	13	0	15	0	101 (62)
Missing observations = 22
Female	15	44	3	24	3	9	3	101 (34)
Male	37	35	11	5	0	10	2	100 (204)
Missing observations = 22

Source: Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez (1990, tables 6, 7).

Table 3 demonstrates significant differences among the unaccompanied minors in the detained sample regarding whether the children had relatives in the United States awaiting their arrival. The absolute figures in Table 3 are robust enough to calculate chi-square, which indicates differences in the sample data that have a very low probability of occurring by chance. In terms of percentages, Salvadoran and Nicaraguan minors were more likely to have relatives waiting their arrival than Honduran and Guatemalan minors.

Table 3.

Unaccompanied minors with relatives in the US expecting their arrival, 1989.

	El Salvador	Guatemala	Honduras	Nicaragua	n
Yes	62 (86%)	15 (54%)	24 (62%)	50 (91%)	151 (78%)
No	10 (14%)	13 (47%)	15 (39%)	5 (9%)	43 (22%)
n	72 (100%)	28 (101%)	39 (101%)	55 (100%)	194 (100%)
Chi2 = 23.86638, p < .0000

Source: Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez (1990; table 10).

Table 4 presents findings of face-to-face interviews with 132 unaccompanied minors detained in the detention centers of the study (Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez 1997). The interviews sought to assess potentially traumatic events experienced by the minors in their home countries prior to, and during, their migration to the United States. After obtaining informed consent, researchers asked the unaccompanied minors to identify major events they experienced in their home country from a list of 15 potentially traumatic events selected from a literature review of potentially traumatic events. As Table 4 demonstrates, a substantial percentage of males reported having shot or killed someone as a consequence of being in a combatant group (the army or a guerrilla unit). Females did not report these two events. Moreover, forced recruitment into a combatant group was found to vary by country with statistical significance.

Table 4.

Percentages of unaccompanied minors who reported specific violent events, by minors’ gender and home country, 1989 (%).

Violent event	Female	Male	El Salvador	Guatemala	Honduras	Nicaragua
Family member killed	61*	36	41	36	38	53
Raid on one’s school	29	18	28	18	6	21
Having to shoot or kill someone	0**	20	14	0	22	26
Forced recruitment	0***	59	50	14	59	47**
(n)	(n = 29)	(n = 103)	(n = 57)	(n = 23)	(n = 33)	(n = 19)

Note: Percentages do not total to 100% because the violent events listed are not mutually exclusive. Source: Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez (1990, table 13).

^*p < .05.

^**p < .01.

^***p < .005.

The face-to-face interviews with the 132 detained children found that the sample had experienced a mean of 3.8 different violent events in their home countries prior to their migration and experienced a mean of 3.7 different violent events during their journey to the United States. These similar means indicated that on average unaccompanied migrant minors experienced the same level of encounters with different violent events in their migration as they did being back home in a war zone or other setting of considerable social turmoil and danger.

A recent study by Doctors without Borders (2017) of Central American migrants in Mexico demonstrates that the violent conditions that drove the migration of unaccompanied minors decades ago have persisted into the present, characterising the migration of Central American adults as well. The study of 467 randomly selected mostly adult Central Americans in Mexican migrant shelters found that in their home countries large percentages of the Central American migrants had experienced direct violent threats, lost a family member to violence, seen corpses on the streets of victims of violence, and had at least one violent event motivate their migration. Similar to findings of the 1990 study of unaccompanied minors, a large majority of Central Americans in the Doctors without Borders study had experienced violence during the journey, and almost 40% had experienced multiple violent events. Almost a third of the females in the Doctors without Borders study reported being victims of sexual assaults, which was about twice as much as reported by the female minors in the 1990 study. Finally, the Doctors without Borders study found that 12% of the interviewed Central Americans manifested symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which was lower than the 18% of the minors in the 1990 study that indicated having symptoms of PTSD. The two studies differed in the age distribution of the research populations and in the socio-historical context of the migration, but they demonstrate that the environments of the Central American migration maintain persistent violent effects for many who migrate without papers regardless of age.

Research in the Northern Central American countries

The knowledge for conceptualising in the next section an institutional model for further understanding the unaccompanied migration of Central American minors comes from the studies presented above and also from field research conducted by researchers and associates from the University of Texas at Austin in the northern countries of Central America. Fieldwork by the University of Texas researchers and associates consisted of community observations and interviews of return migrants, families, and members of community institutions mostly during 2011–2013 in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

In El Salvador and Honduras, the field research focused on institutional conditions (family stability, public safety, employment, etc.) in selected sending communities, and on conditions of return migration, mainly by deported migrants. The fieldwork in El Salvador gained information of conditions in Salvadoran society and among former migrants through 22 interviews of return migrants in San Salvador and through participant observations in a community organisation of mothers of disappeared migrants. In Honduras, the fieldwork was located in the medium-size city of El Progeso, which became a sending community after Hurricane Mitch struck the area in 1998. Twenty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted in the city with return migrants, family members, and members of community institutions.

The research in Guatemala was concentrated in a the western highland municipio of San Cristóbal Totonicapán. Artisans and peasants from the municipio began migrating to the United States in the early 1980s during the Guatemalan civil war. The municipio has been a prime focus of migration research since the late 1980s for one of the authors investigating institutional stability, economic conditions, and violent incidences in the area of the sending community (Jonas and Rodriguez 2014). Moreover, fieldwork was conducted in the municipio in 2015 to investigate community and institutional conditions that promote the unaccompanied migration of minors in the area. The research involved discussions with community members and 14 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with school teachers, family members, NGO members, social workers, and local government officials (Gonzalez 2016).

The findings of the research in the northern countries of Central America by the University of Texas researchers and associates have been previously reported (Gonzalez 2016; Roberts, Menjívar, and Rodriguez 2017), and they parallel other research findings of the association between conditions of economic poverty and violence with the migration of unaccompanied minors. However, Mayan communities in Guatemala appear to have greater control against youth violence than in other Central American areas given the Mayan normative structures of local community control. Rather than repeat the specific research findings, we advance their significance in the next section in a conceptualisation of institutional inter-dynamics that frame the social forces affecting the unaccompanied migration of minors. All patterns of violence and economic decline that generate migration are ultimately grounded on institutions (established arrangements of behavior) that are losing the capacity to sustain destabilising effects.

Institutional context

Based on the field research in the countries of the northern countries of Central America (Gonzalez 2016; Roberts, Menjívar, and Rodriguez 2017), and on the long-term research in the Totonicapán sending community (Jonas and Rodriguez 2014), we generalise from the findings as follows. Weak economic institutions can cause family economic decline and the subsequent emigration of family members abroad in search of better economic opportunity. Conversely, large-scale emigration can lower economic production in a sending community by reducing the availability of labour and by raising the cost of labour as the labour supply is reduced. Emigration can later stimulate local economic institutions (agricultural, manufacturing, and service industries) with the arrival of migrant remittances, which increase the consumer demand of migrant families. Over time, family and other social institutions that serve as sources of social capital (places of worship, sports clubs, etc.) in receiving communities abroad can begin to play a major role in the decisions of sending-community members to migrate as these institutions increasingly provide job information and other forms of social capital to support the migration.

The support from families and other immigrant social institutions abroad, however, is not distributed evenly across sending communities. Some families in sending communities are closely connected to transnational migrant networks but other families are not. The difference can be manifested in families who have monetary remittances to pay for secure smuggling, including the smuggling of minors, and families who do not have this resource and whose underage children thus undertake unaccompanied migration. As the Guatemalan research found, even in a well-established sending community with many strong network links to migrants abroad, there exist nearby villages and hamlets of poor peasants who have no connections to migrant streams, and from where people, including minors, attempt to migrate individually without network support.

Some of the findings in El Salvador and Honduras, and in Guatemala, indicate that in the absence of effective police protection the threat of imminent lethal violence can hasten the decision of minors to migrate, giving priority to a quick exodus rather than to trying to access established migration channels (Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez 1997; Rodriguez 2007; Jonas and Rodriguez 2014). That is to say, when faced with imminent personal danger, there may not be time to plan a journey, and thus flight becomes the primary response.

Borrowing from the long-term research in Guatemala and the recent research in El Salvador and Honduras (Jonas and Rodriguez 2014; Roberts, Menjívar, and Rodriguez 2017), Figure 1 presents a conceptual model to consider how institutional interplay at the macro and micro levels can affect migration. The model includes four institutional sectors, i.e. the economy, public security, the family, and established migration networks that the research literature has identified as affecting the unaccompanied migration of minors from the northern Central American countries and that have been a focus of field research in that region, especially in Guatemala. For illustration, two arrows of institutional interplay have been added to the model, one arrow illustrating macro–micro interplay and the second illustrating micro–micro interplay. The first interplay depicted in the model is the traditional cause–effect dynamics of how poor local or regional economies can lead to migration in search of better economic opportunities within the home country, or in a foreign labour market (e.g. see Balán, Browning, and Jelin 1973; Jonas and Rodriguez 2014). The second arrow in the model depicts how an individual or family facing threats of violence can seek survival by migrating internally or abroad through legal or unauthorised migration.

Figure 1.

Conceptual model of institutional interplay.

Settings that have established migration networks that reach into the United States would seem to present an advantageous resource for residents, including minors, who want to seek protection or economic opportunities abroad. Established migration networks contain social capital that provides information about jobs in receiving communities and funds to pay for the migration (Menjívar 2000; Flores-Yeffal 2013). Moreover, as the Guatemalan research found (Jonas and Rodriguez 2014), the networks make distant foreign places sound familiar in local settings of sending communities, which helps to diminish perceptions of cultural barriers in foreign travel. Yet, for the migration of minors the advantages of migrant networks should not be overstated. Some youth operate in different social circles than adults, and it can be the subcultural norms and motivations among youth that gird their unaccompanied migration (Chavez and Menjívar 2010), although unaccompanied minors share routes and shelters with adults in the migrant trails northward.

The particularities of institutional sectors in actual sending communities will vary from the presentation of the model in Figure 1, but the institutional arenas of the economy, public security, and the family remain prominent across communities. One can project that when these institutional spheres are in equilibrium through mutually reinforcing effects (e.g. when there is sufficient employment to sustain families and people feel safe) the likelihood of emigration by community residents will decrease, since the social and material resources for a favorable quality of life can be obtained at home. Yet, this projection has less validity today concerning the northern countries of Central America than it did decades ago when population centers in the region had fewer social ties to the United States (e.g. see Jonas and Rodriguez 2014). The large-scale migration since the late 1970s and 1980s from the northern Central American countries to the United States has produced strong connections between the two regions, making many US areas attractive alternatives for work and social life (Menjívar 2000; Jonas and Rodriguez 2014). This may be especially true for the young who have not become firmly established in local labour markets in the northern Central American countries. And, as research findings indicate, the failing of just one of the three institutional sectors in Figure 1 can spur unaccompanied migration by minors (Kennedy 2014; UNHCR 2014). For example, the failure of the economic sector to sustain communities such as through high levels of employment and wages often leads to the failure of the other two sectors through family instability and weak tax revenues to support an effective criminal justice system to maintain public security. Hence, institutional interplay can create a major stimulus of emigration for minors who face limited economic opportunities, family instability, and violence.

It is important to consider the time dimension in the institutional interplay. According to Clemens (2017), the initial effect of violence that stimulates the migration of unaccompanied minors may take time to materialise as minors search for social resources to migrate. But once initiated, unaccompanied migration by minors may gain momentum and produce waves of unaccompanied minors that last beyond the time when the violent stimulus of the migration expires.

Finally, a host of sociodemographic variables should be taken into account regarding the effects of institutional conditions on unaccompanied minors. Research indicates that the key variables to consider include age, gender, ethnicity, and social class (Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez 1990; Kennedy 2014; Krogstad, Gonzalez-Barrera, and Lopez 2014). The prominence of each variable will depend on the circumstances propelling specific migration patterns. For example, data of the 1990 study of Central American children in detention in Texas demonstrated that in settings of civil war males were more likely to cite political violence as the reason for their unaccompanied migration, while females cited economic reasons more frequently (Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez 1990). For many of the males, the purpose for their migration was to avoid forced recruitment by the military or guerrillas, or to escape from forced military service, while for some of the females the related reasons were to flee from the devastation of communities brought about by political conflict. In Guatemala, the civil war also created a special effect on male youth of Mayan ethnicity as they were the principal forced recruits of the Guatemalan military. The social class effects of conflict in the political sphere included the military forced recruitment of mainly poor youth from peasant towns and villages in the countryside.

In the recent era of unaccompanied migration of Central American minors, males still predominate partly as an effect of threats or attempted recruitment by violent gangs, but females, more than males, cite a greater variety of violent sources, e.g. gangs targeting their families and neighborhoods, espousal violence, sexual predators, and so on. The sources of personal or family harm have changed from the earlier years of civil wars and political repression, but the presence of violence remains the same.

Prospects for continuing unaccompanied migration by minors from the Northern Central American Countries

Early signs indicate that the new US administration led by President Trump will be less accepting of refugees and asylum seekers than the previous administration. The signs include the new administration’s decision to ban certain immigrant and refugee nationalities (Diamond 2017) and to appoint a former chief of the US Southern Command at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security, which houses the immigration enforcement agencies. In earlier years, Central American unaccompanied minors migrated clandestinely to the United States to look for work, reunite with families, or to escape war violence back home (Urrutia-Rojas and Rodriguez 1997), but in the most recent years many unaccompanied minors look for Border Patrol agents as soon as they arrive at the US border to ask for asylum to escape poverty and violence in their home countries (Isacson 2015). The new administration’s early proposals to greatly strengthen enforcement at the southwestern border suggest that the administration will be less considerate of the humanitarian welfare of unaccompanied minors, than the previous administration. Moreover, high-ranking members of the new US administration have stressed the need to restrict US-bound migrants without visas within the northern Central American region to prevent their arrival at the US border (Stargardter 2017). Nothing has come out of the new administration to indicate that it wants to increase resources to support unaccompanied minors from Central America who arrive at the US border seeking humanitarian relief.

Regardless of US developments, the emigration of unaccompanied from the northern countries of Central America is sure to continue given the absence of concrete policies in the countries to substantially strengthen economic institutions and the agencies charged with maintaining public security. Given the expectation of continuing migration of unaccompanied minors, research is needed to investigate when minors select emigration as the option for survival within the range of possible options (e.g. internal migration, succumbing to gang membership, etc.). Moreover, the research finding (e.g. UNHCR 2014) that many unaccompanied minors from the northern Central American countries have family members in the United States raises a question of how unaccompanied migration of minors may in some cases represent family step-migration, even if the heads of family households do not approve of their children migrating. Given that in recent years many unaccompanied minors ask for asylum when they meet Border Patrol agents at the border, it is not clear how having family members already present in the United States would affect an asylum application if the family members have unauthorised residential status. The Central American Minors programme organised by the previous administration in 2014 to offer Central American minors refugee status required that parents already in the United States had to be legally present to file for refugee status for their children back home (US CIS 2016). However, the recent change by the Trump administration to a stringent immigration enforcement approach makes it difficult or impossible to project future immigration policy based on the record of the previous administration.

What will happen to arriving unaccompanied minors from the northern Central American countries if the Trump administration scales down, or terminates, the policy of the previous administration to explore ways to provide humanitarian assistance to minors who seek protection from persecution in their home countries (Zezima and O’Keefe 2014)? A possible alternative is that a third country could step in to provide relief for the unaccompanied minors. One possibility is Costa Rica, since it expressed interest in helping the United States resettle Central American refugee children through the Central American Minor Program implemented in 2014 (US DHS 2016). Another possibility is Canada, which over the years has admitted Central American migrants (García 2006), but Mexico is the most practical relief. Mexico already provides asylum to a few thousand refugees each year, mostly from Central America, including a few hundred unaccompanied minors (Agren 2016; Sherman 2016). Mexico is a practical choice because it is adjacent to the northern Central American region and thus would reduce the travel risks of unaccompanied minors and also keep them close to their home countries in case they could return in the future. Also, by re-taking the role of a country that accepts refugee, as it has done in the past, Mexico could emerge as a new leader in Latin America, perhaps occupying the principal Latin American leadership position that the United States has long held, but which it may soon abandon given the nationalist values of the Trump administration.

We conclude by restating our emphasis on exploring the sociodemographic diversity of the flow of unaccompanied minors from the northern Central American countries to the United States, and on focusing on institutional change in communities of origin from where the children emigrate. While migration produces many common experiences that may make unaccompanied minors appear as a homogenous population, significant variations by gender, age, ethnicity, and so on, exist among these underage migrants that are associated with their movement and the challenges they encounter in the journey. Investigating institutional change in communities of origin helps to understand how children younger than 18 become susceptible to migration as established family systems, economies, public security, and so on, lose power at macro and micro levels to sustain and protect children in communities, and as transnational networks may attract the youth to opportunities abroad.