Wars and Migration Crises in Central America: On Missing Persons during Armed Conflict and International Migration

This chapter explores the notion of “migration crisis” through an analysis of the tangled histories of war and postconflict migration. The author sets out to juxtapose the accounts of missing persons produced in two seemingly disparate situations: those who are “disappeared” during or because of armed conflict, and the migrants and refugees who go missing as an effect of stricter border enforcement policies and practices. The aim is to understand and theorize both the political projects that produce disappearances in different situations and the initiatives—or lack of initiatives—that publicly address the structural factors behind their occurrence. Global concern for missing people is predominantly cast as responses to war, armed conflict, terrorism and natural disasters, or, when involving migrants, to trafficking.