The shifting boundaries of “best interest”: Sheltering unaccompanied Central American minors in transit through Mexico

How government agencies and non-governmental organizations address the significant increase in the number of unaccompanied minors arriving at the United-States Mexico border, mainly from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, has received significant attention among both popular and scholarly audiences. Less well-examined, however, is how such groups address the arduous processes of transit migration that these young people experience prior to reaching the US-Mexico border. While many child migrants suffer forms of violence that qualify them for international protection as refugees in Mexico, the growing number of unaccompanied minors detained by Mexican authorities are typically deported to the countries from which they flee after dubious best interest determinations. Drawing on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork within non-governmental migrant shelters across Mexico, including in-depth interviews with unaccompanied minors and social service providers, this paper examines the experiences of young people who seek formal humanitarian recognition yet avoid detention by government agencies while in transit. I explore how these dynamics reveal tensions in how the best interests of unaccompanied minors are assessed and determined by government agencies and non-governmental organizations. In doing so, I demonstrate how migrant shelters both support and subvert best interest standards and call for a more mobile approach to aiding unaccompanied minors and their families.