(Converted as ePoster, See Poster Gallery) Analyzing the Experience of Guatemalan Deportees and Their Intentions to Remigrate to the U.S. to Address the Current Immigration Challenges in the U.S

Background and Purpose: Migration from Central American Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) to the United States has significantly captured the attention of policymakers, service providers, and the media. Migration scholars have analyzed the migration experience from various interdisciplinary perspectives, and examined a wide range of root causes of migration. Some of the most accepted analytical frameworks include: push and pull factors of immigration and subsequent chain migration; transnationalism, which establishes and maintain multi-strands social relations between the countries of origin and destination; and “convergence” and “gap” hypotheses, which respectively predict the converging and diverging nature of the migration policies trends (Rosenblum & Tichenor, 2012). Critical race theory (CRT) in migration studies pays more attention to issues concerning racial discrimination, border militarization, and the human cost of border migration (Romero, 2008). Migration scholarship has been focused on immigration to the U.S. Lacking in the literature have been rigorous studies on deportees from the Northern Triangle and the intentions of deportees to remigrate following formal removal from the U.S.

Method: Data was collected and analyzed as part of the Guatemala Repatriation Longitudinal Survey RTI International conducted from 2019 to 2021. Each of them will respectively discuss aspects of design and methods used in the study, and preliminary results. The study included initial surveys from 1,359 Guatemalan returned migrants, selected at random, upon their arrival to the Air Force Base Airport in Guatemala City. Subsequently, the research team conducted follow-up telephone interviews with 309 consenting participants at 3-, 6-, and 12-months following deportation. After the survey was collected, a critical examination of the relevant literature, and an in-depth disaggregated analysis of the survey data collected was conducted.

Results: Preliminary report on their respective contributions to this study (Danny, et, al) suggest that embedded conjoint and list experiments in the survey instrument facilitated greater understanding of the obstacles to deportee reintegration and the factors influencing their intentions to remigrate. Deportees were found to have been impacted by a myriad of complex decisions including security concerns, the availability of jobs, and the strengths of their social networks during the initial months of repatriation. Greater insights on the factors driving the increasing intent for deportees to remigrate over time have been examined.

Conclusions and Implications: Implications drawn inform future reintegration policies and practices in Guatemala as well as U.S. immigration policy and humanitarian aid to the region. The Guatemala study has the potential of replication in Honduras and El Salvador to produce more comprehensive understanding of the potential for prevention of migration and remigration from the Northern Triangle. Similar studies can help address the migration challenges at the border by engaging in the development of policies and practices addressing the roots of migration based on empirical research. The study has uncovered the need to examine more systematically the policy environment, programmatic lending and multi-stakeholder collaboration on the prevention of crime and migration patterns in Guatemala.