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Rumors, Encounters, Collaborations, and Survival: The Migrant Smuggling–Drug Trafficking Nexus in the U.S. Southwest

The violence afflicting the Mexican migration corridor has often been explained as resulting from the brutal takeover of migrant smuggling markets by organized crime, specifically Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs). Through the testimonies of twenty-eight migrants who traveled with smuggling facilitators on their journeys into the United States and who interacted with drug traffickers during their transit, we argue that the metamorphosis taking place may be even more radical, involving the proliferation of actors with little or no criminal intent to operate along the migration trails. Far from market coalescence, the increasing flattening of criminal markets along the migration trail and the proliferation of individuals struggling to survive is the result of increasingly limited paths toward mobility and is not attributable to feared cartels or traficantes alone. The interactions among clandestine actors are not only likely to become more common but also to reflect flexibility and adaptation that hierarchical DTOs cannot explain.