Cruttenden, Peter

Structural Violence and Migration in the Americas: A Critical Security Studies Security Perspective  

The research examines the causal relationship between the presence of structural violence during the era of neoliberal globalisation in Mexico and Central America, human insecurity and migration by undocumented persons to the United States. By using Galtung's theory of structural violence as a point of departure and the utilization of critical realism and embedded ethnography as methodological approaches, the thesis strives to construct a structural violence/insecurity/migration nexus as alternative framework for understanding migration to the United States. The research will attempt to address the issue of inter-American migration by engaging both the critical security literature and contemporary migration literature. In addition to the migration research, the thesis will also examine and explore the prospects for popular strategies to confront structural violence within Mexico and Central America as a result of the United States' intensified and militarised border enforcement policies.

• Critical security studies;
• Latin American politics;
• global political economy;
• contemporary social movements;
• and U.S. Foreign Policy