Shifting Trends in Central American Migration: A Demographic Examination of Increasing Honduran-U.S. Immigration and Deportation

SHIFTING TRENDS IN CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRATION: A DEMOGRAPHIC EXAMINATION OF INCREASING HONDURAN-U.S. IMMIGRATION AND DEPORTATION Sarah Blanchard Department of Sociology The University of Texas at Austin Erin R. Hamilton Department of Sociology University of California, Davis Nestor Rodríguez Department of Sociology The University of Texas at Austin Hirotoshi Yoshioka Department of Sociology The University of Texas at Austin INTRODUCTION Research on Central American migration to the United States since the 1980s has generally focused on Salvadorans and Guatemalans (e.g., Bailey and Hane 1995; Coutin 1998; Fink 2003; Funkhouser 1992; Hagan 1994; Hagan, Eschbach, and Rodríguez 2008; Hamilton and Chincilla 2001; Jones 1989; Menjívar 2000, 2006; Morrison and May 1994). Interest in these flows is in large part due to their origins in revolutionary and counterinsurgency conflicts occurring in those countries in the 1980s (Toussaint 2011; Woodward 2009). The resulting streams of migration within Central America and to the United States created a unique context for studying the causes of emigration, settlement experiences, and transnational practices of migrants, contrasted against the dominant, and largely economicallydriven , migration flow from Mexico. This research was supported by grants 5 R24 HD042849 and 5 T32 HD041019, awarded to the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Health and Child Development, and by the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Washington Office on Latin America and the Centro de Atención al Migrante Retornado, Honduras. Opinions reflect those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the granting agencies. C  2011 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 61 The Latin Americanist, December 2011 However, compared to Salvadorans and Guatemalans, we know relatively little about Honduran migration processes, an oversight that is increasingly problematic in the face of changing Central American migration flows. By 2000 Hondurans were the third largest Central American immigrant group in the United States, and in the 1990s and 2000s they experienced the fastest growth in their immigrant population (see Table 1). Perhaps more importantly, more Hondurans have been deported by the U.S. government to Central America since 1980 than any other Central American group (U.S. DHS 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010; U.S. INS 1997, 2000, 2002). This trend holds despite the fact that many Hondurans were granted temporary protective status following Hurricane Mitch in 1998 (U.S. INS 1997: Table 59). These escalating patterns over the past several decades raise a number of unanswered questions about Honduran immigration to the United States. Are Honduran migrants different from migrants from other Central American countries, given that Honduras did not experience a political conflict similar to Guatemala, El Salvador, or Nicaragua?1 Why are Hondurans deported at higher rates than other Central American migrants ? Most importantly, how can the increasing immigration and deportation flows between Honduras and the United States inform our understanding of contemporary Central American migration more generally? To address these questions, we make use of three sets of descriptive comparisons between Honduras and other prominent sending countries. First, we describe flows of immigration and deportation from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua over the past three decades using immigration data from federal statistical yearbooks. Next, we compare noncitizen immigrants from these countries living in the United States using 2000 Census data. Finally, we compare deported Hondurans to deported Salvadorans using recent data collected by a non-profit relief organization in Honduras and data from a recent paper reporting the characteristics of Salvadoran deportees (Hagan, Eschbach, and Rodríguez 2008). These three comparisons allow us to gauge the increasing prominence of Hondurans, understand characteristics of this population which may make them uniquely vulnerable to deportation, and speculate about the significance of descriptive differences for Central American migration. Our analysis suggests that high rates of deportation among Hondurans reflect the particular timing of Honduran migration to the United States. Honduran migration has been steadily increasing for decades, which likely reflects the same set of factors driving other economic migration flows in the North American system, such as uneven development and market changes in Honduras accompanied...