Deportees in Transit Between Ecuador and the US: A Historical and Ethnographic Approach to Migrant Disobedience and its Spatial Impacts

Abstract

Abstract By focusing on the Ecuador−US postcolonial and transnational space and reconstructing trajectories of Ecuadoreans who migrated to the US, were deported and recommenced their undocumented transits to that same destination, this article analyses the migrant disobedience and its spatial impacts. The article proves how deportees in transits are not docile figures: their unruly mobilities re‐actualise historical disobedience against insurmountable colonial legacy that has produced indigenous people as second‐class racialised citizens confined to super‐exploitation and hyper‐precarity. Their migrant disobedience is thus twofold: against that historical legacy and current border regime. It also proves that the Ecuador−US postcolonial and transnational space configuration is incomprehensible without considering the US policy of interventionism across the Americas, including Ecuador, and the unequal geo‐political and geo‐economic relations between the two countries. Deportees’ unruly mobilities unsettle premises of territorial membership based upon nationalist premises while transforming Ecuador into a place of transit disputed by the country’s nationals.

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