Abstract
Following a sharp increase in the number of border arrivals from the violence-torn countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras in the spring and summer of 2014, the United States quickly implemented a strategy designed to prevent such surges by enhancing its detention and deportation efforts. In this article, we examine the emigration decision for citizens living in the high-crime contexts of northern Central America. First, through analysis of survey data across Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, we explore the role crime victimization plays in leading residents of these countries to consider emigration. Next, using survey data collected across twelve municipalities in Honduras, we evaluate the extent to which knowledge of heightened US immigration deterrence efforts influenced respondents’ emigration decision. Though a vast majority of these respondents were aware of the stricter US immigration policy regime, this awareness had no effect on their consideration of emigration as a viable strategy.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-28-2018
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25222/larr.147
Related Content
The additional files for this article can be found at: https://doi.org/10.25222/larr.147.s1
Repository Citation
Hiskey, Jonathan T.; Córdova, Abby; Malone, Mary Fran; and Orcés, Diana M., "Leaving the Devil You Know: Crime Victimization, US Deterrence Policy, and the Emigration Decision in Central America" (2018). Political Science Faculty Publications. 4.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/polsci_facpub/4
Additional Files: Table A1-A17.
Included in
Immigration Law Commons, International Relations Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Latin American Research Review, v. 53, issue 3, p. 429-447.
© 2018 The Author(s)
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/.