This article argues that US migration governance between 2017 and 2025 has progressed from coercive securitization to a hegemonic form of control. This shift refers to routinizing measures once justified as exceptional until they became regular features in legal, administrative, technological, and regional governance. This analysis traces this transformation through Trump’s first presidency, the Biden administration, and the beginning of Trump’s second presidency to show how deterrence was preserved, spread, and intensified through externalization, executive orders, digital infrastructures, and combining different types of enforcement. The article identifies four indicators of hegemonic migration governance: normalization, territorial expansion, the convergence of control mechanisms, and the downgrading of legal protections on deterrence. The article views Mexico as a migration control lab where the dynamics of militarization, bureaucracy, euphemized control measures, and organized abandonment are especially visible. The article concludes that protection rules formally persist, but deterrence-oriented governance increasingly reworks them.
This article argues that US migration governance between 2017 and 2025 has progressed from coercive securitization to a hegemonic form of control. This shift refers to routinizing measures once justified as exceptional until they became regular features in legal, administrative, technological, and regional governance. This analysis traces this transformation through Trump’s first presidency, the Biden administration, and the beginning of Trump’s second presidency to show how deterrence was preserved, spread, and intensified through externalization, executive orders, digital infrastructures, and combining different types of enforcement. The article identifies four indicators of hegemonic migration governance: normalization, territorial expansion, the convergence of control mechanisms, and the downgrading of legal protections on deterrence. The article views Mexico as a migration control lab where the dynamics of militarization, bureaucracy, euphemized control measures, and organized abandonment are especially visible. The article concludes that protection rules formally persist, but deterrence-oriented governance increasingly reworks them. Read More