Learning through Transit Migration in Mexico City

A group of migrants huddles together near the entrance to a shelter on the outskirts of Mexico City, passing a single smartphone back and forth. The screen glows faintly under the shadow of the building, showing the interface of the CBP One app. A man, perhaps in his mid-thirties, taps at the screen with calloused fingers. He frowns, pauses, then asks in a mix of Spanish and Haitian Creole if anyone remembers how to clear an error message that keeps popping up. A young woman with a baby strapped to her chest steps forward and explains the process. Other migrants lean in to watch and listen. Now everyone is chiming in. Everyone has an anecdote to share about the application—except for a young man from Ecuador, who has recently arrived at the shelter. He asks many questions. Some are met with yes or no responses, others with long-winded explanations. Having heard enough of the exchange, one of the older men puts out his five-peso cigarette and walks inside. 

As I observed this scene, I was struck by the subtle, informal education unfolding in real time. No one here had a formal instructor or a reference guide. Yet they had become adept at troubleshooting the app’s quirks and overcoming language barriers to access the needed information. From 2022 to 2024, I conducted ethnographic and participatory research in migrant shelters and camps throughout Mexico City. During my fieldwork, I witnessed different iterations of this scene. I came to see this kind of learning—born of necessity and shaped by circumstance—as central to the migrant experience. After admission for food and protection, guidance and training on the CBP One application were the most sought-after aid migrants requested in shelters. 

For these migrants, the app is more than a bureaucratic tool; it’s a portal to a new future. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. government introduced CBP One as a technological solution for border management. The app allows migrants to schedule citas (appointments) at US ports of entry, a prerequisite for asylum eligibility. Daily, at 10 a.m., when the portal in the application opens, migrants across the sprawl of Mexico City take out their phones and say a prayer.

The CBP One Conundrum

CBP One has become an essential yet opaque element of the migration journey. For one thing, its implementation has been rife with challenges. Technical glitches, language barriers, and the requirement for reliable internet access have become a source of frustration and inequity.

In one shelter I frequented, a Salvadoran woman named Maritza showed me the app’s interface on her phone. “Es complicado” (It’s complicated), she said, shaking her head. The app required her to upload a photo, but its facial recognition software struggled to process darker skin tones, a problem I had heard echoed by Haitian migrants. When she finally succeeded, the app crashed. “Intentaré de nuevo mañana” (I’ll try again tomorrow), she said, her voice tinged with exhaustion and resignation.

The hurdles posed by CBP One are not merely technical—the app’s reliance on digital literacy and stable internet access privileges those who already possess such resources. For many migrants, mastering the app becomes yet another form of informal education, learned through trial, error, and collective problem-solving.

In addition to learning how to use the application, the app’s requirements dictate other types of informal learning for migrants. To request the cita, migrants were required to be in Central or Northern Mexico.  (This requirement changed in August 2024, allowing migrants to also seek appointments from Mexico’s southern states bordering Guatemala.) Many migrants preferred to settle in Mexico City, viewing it as a safer destination than cartel-run border towns. This application relocated the border to Mexico City. In essence, I found that what migrants learn is mediated through border externalization, a series of practices that governments use to control migration and enforce immigration policies beyond their borders.

Learning to Survive

Migrants who are not able to access the limited and overcrowded shelters in the city often resort to living in makeshift camps. Such was the case for Julia, a migrant woman originally from Maracaibo. On her way to COMAR, the refugee assistance agency, she spotted a Venezuelan family she had met earlier while entering through the southern border. The family was settling in a nearby plaza. Since Julia could not afford a hotel room, she repurposed the tents they used while crossing the Darien Gap to shelter her three-year-old daughter. Her family settled in this space while she waited for relatives to send money. In the meantime, the growing number of migrant families would circle around anafres, portable stoves, where they would make a quick meal from shared ingredients and also keep warm. Many parents would rotate child-care shifts, allowing a caretaker to work for a few hours while another watched over the children. Most of the migrants in this camp were from Haiti and Venezuela. However, many had already traversed through and resided in various countries in Latin America, accumulating survival strategies along the way.

Often, families must make difficult decisions and prioritize some human needs over others. Pierre faced this dilemma. A Haitian migrant who had arrived in Mexico from Brazil, Pierre was offered shelter at a newly created government institution in Tláhuac, on the outskirts of the city. While his family was seeking regularization with COMAR, he had found a job in the city center that paid him $300 pesos a day, $50 pesos more than the minimum wage. It would be impossible to arrive on time and meet his employer’s demands if he were residing at such a distance. He worried about his wife’s and two young children’s safety during his absence, as cartel members and immigration officials would regularly extort migrants. Haitians were perceived as having more resources and were extorted for more money. He ultimately decided to forgo the coveted job opportunity. Unfortunately, in a matter of weeks, the local government-operated shelter exceeded capacity and shut down. Pierre and his family were back at square one, but through social networks they found a space in one of the migrant camps. Here, survival depends not just on material resources but on acquiring specific knowledge: how to find or make a safe shelter, endure bureaucratic systems, and avoid the gaze of predatory actors, both official and unofficial.

Learning to Wait

According to CBP, citas are allocated through lottery and to those waiting the longest. As a result, migrants end up waiting indefinite periods, not knowing how long they will need to stretch out their limited resources, as they simultaneously prepare for the next leg of their journey. Waiting leads to increased vulnerability and a pervasive sense of precarity. In many ways, waiting becomes a form of structural violence, a means of controlling and disciplining migrant bodies. Yet, in this liminal space, migrants find ways to subvert the oppressive structures. In one shelter, older migrants took on the role of mentors, teaching newer arrivals how to avoid common pitfalls. “Es pasar la antorcha” (It’s like passing the torch), a Guatemalan man said, describing how he learned to navigate the city’s Metro system from a fellow migrant and how he now teaches others in turn. These intergenerational exchanges create a sense of continuity and community, even in the midst of chaos.

While the waiting period is fraught with uncertainty, it is not passive. It becomes a time of learning and adaptation, where migrants construct a shared toolkit that they carry with them as they continue their journeys. They exchange tips on how to navigate bureaucratic systems, pool funds to buy internet access, and strategize about which border crossings offer the best chances of success. These forms of knowledge are shared not in classrooms but in line for food, around communal charging stations, and during hours-long bus rides. During one of my visits to a shelter in Iztapalapa, I met a Honduran teenager named Jorge. At 19, he had already spent months in transit, during which he had learned to speak basic Portuguese from Haitian migrants and learned about the CBP One app from a Venezuelan man. Jorge’s most valuable lesson, however, was patience. “Esperas porque no hay de otra” (You wait because you have no choice), he told me. ”Mientras escuchas y apendes” (But while you wait, you listen, you learn). This ethos of learning-through-waiting extends beyond the app. Migrants become adept at interpreting the unspoken rules of transit spaces. In one plaza, a small circle of Central American women taught each other how to spot plainclothes immigration officers by their shoes. In another, a group of young men shared places with free WiFi, to access WhatsApp and CBP One. These tactics were born of necessity and honed through shared experience.

Even children participate in this culture of learning. In a camp outside a church, a group of young boys turned their play into practice for the journey ahead. They took turns pretending to be border agents and migrants, mimicking the questions they might face in interviews. “What is your name? Why did you leave your country?” one boy asked, his voice stern. The others giggled but answered seriously, practicing their responses with the same gravity as adults rehearsing an important speech. These moments of informal education are not merely about survival; they are acts of resilience and resistance. Waiting becomes a form of active engagement, a way to prepare for the next step in their journey.

The notion of waiting as an active state challenges Western assumptions that equate productivity with forward movement. In the case of migrants in Mexico City’s camps, waiting becomes a productive, albeit fraught, period of learning. Through shared experiences of hardship, they build communities of support. While in camps, migrants not only rest, but they exchange food and resources, communicate with relatives ahead of the journey, and learn how to protect themselves. The informal education that happens in and through these spaces, from navigating immigration policies to resisting dehumanizing labels, equips migrants with skills that are not only essential for survival but also for asserting their agency in a system that constantly seeks to undermine it. It is essential to realize that, in the context of transit migration, learning is not confined to formal institutions; learning vital to survival often occurs in the informal social interstices of quotidian interaction. It requires us to understand transit migration as more than the physical displacement of communities, already impacted by intersecting forms of structural violence, and to rethink concepts like education and survival.

Postscript

On January 20, 2025, during his inauguration, President Trump ended CBP One, terminating existing and future appointments. Migrants with citas on that day, were turned away at the border, denied the deeply longed-for opportunity to lawfully enter the country. In its place, the new administration is re-instating the “Migrant Protection Protocols”, commonly referred to as Remain in Mexico program. While the exact details are yet unknown, it is clear that policies based on deterrence, criminalization, and immobility cause more vulnerabilities for people who have already endured widespread violence. Beyond an increasingly contested human and international right, seeking asylum is a lifeline for people fleeing violence—a lifeline migrants will always reach for. As long as we contend with a bordered world, we must envision protection beyond bureaucracy and territoriality. Scholars across fields should strive to make asylum one of the many forms of protection available to people seeking safety. Thus, it is essential to make visible the processes of resistance, adaptation and reconstruction in contexts of forced mobility, while promoting structures that enable migrant justice.

Tricia Niesz is the section contributing editor for the Council on Anthropology and Education.