This article draws on recent work from the Central America Research Alliance (CARA), including Preparing for the Shift: Reintegration Challenges in Northern Central America Amidst a Changing Migration Landscape by CARA co-directors María Estela Rivero Fuentes and Tom Hare, and El Retorno de la Migración a Guatemala: Reflexión, Futuro y Propuesta from the Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Sociales y Desarrollo (INCEDES). This work was funded in part by Notre Dame's Poverty Initiative.
Migration to the United States from Central America has generally been understood as an outward departure towards a perceived new beginning—financially, socially and personally. That paradigm is shifting.
Deportations from the United States now outpace new arrivals, transforming migration into a condition defined increasingly by forced return. Such change presents new challenges for individuals, communities and institutions in the countries where poverty, ineffective governance and stymied local capacity exist in tandem.
The Pulte Institute, in collaboration with the Central America Research Alliance (CARA) and the Institute for Development and Economic Studies (INCEDES) in Guatemala, is advancing a study focused on reintegration in Guatemala. Previous investigations by CARA partners focused on Honduras and El Salvador—the two other northernmost countries in Central America with the largest historical migration to the U.S.—and the well-being of individuals who have returned to their home countries over the past decade.
Tom Hare, the project’s lead researcher and associate director with the Pulte Institute, said his team chose to focus on Guatemala based on the establishing work in Honduras and El Salvador in order to inform and guide their process and to serve as a benchmark against which they can compare new findings. The research in Guatemala focuses on what happens after return or deportation: specifically, how returnees attempt to rebuild their lives in these new communities, how municipalities respond and how national policy frameworks need to change in order to translate into effective local action.
Supported by the on-the-ground expertise of Irene Palma and colleagues at INCEDES, a working group of CARA member researchers led by Hare developed a framework to evaluate present conditions for reintegration across more than 200 municipalities in Guatemala. Sites were then selected for case studies. Palma notes that the municipal approach to reintegration is being addressed in only a small portion of the country’s 340 towns, underscoring the need to create dialogue and raise awareness to position the issue more broadly.
Examining each case study location and its realities and community leadership closely, Hare and his colleagues moved beyond national averages to understand reintegration as place-specific, a process shaped by local social dynamics, governance and economic opportunity.
Key to understanding both the process of deportation and the experience of returnees in the current moment is the difference in the collective identity of members of the new population of migrants. Traditionally, migrants crossing into the U.S. were encountered at the border, detained for a few weeks and then sent back. Now, a majority of those being deported have lived in the United States for years or decades, if not most of their lives. Hare explains, “It is both the experience of coming back to a place that many thought they would never return to and all the challenges of integrating into that place, coupled with the trauma of leaving the only home that many of them knew, or one that they had established with a lot of work over the decades.”
This shift contradicts the prevailing understanding that a focus on the economic aspect of reintegration is enough to provide individuals with stability, he notes. Reintegration, in this context, has more to do with one’s integral human development; how one is able to flourish holistically as a human being, navigating relational ties, social barriers and mismatched expectations.
At the community level, reintegration is further complicated by social dynamics and long-standing migration patterns. Many rural and remote communities in Guatemala are receiving a large number of returnees, adding to competition for employment and already-scarce resources. Remittances, or the sending of cash earnings or goods as support to one’s family, have contributed to social stratification and resentment between those who left and those who stayed. Governance gaps have compounded these challenges. While national frameworks acknowledge reintegration as a policy concern, municipalities often lack the resources, clarity or authority to respond effectively.
These findings align with the poverty research agenda of the Pulte Institute, emphasising how systems and structures can either mitigate or exacerbate poverty. Pulte Institute Director Tracy Kijewski-Correa explains, “Migration is one response when a society’s structures and systems are inadequate to provide economic opportunity and security.”
While poverty has historically been a primary driver for migration, the abrupt return of deportees to home countries from which they have been removed for years risks deepening poverty and social disparity for both returnees and the communities that receive them. From this perspective, reintegration is not a peripheral migration issue, but a core development challenge. The Institute’s emphasis on place-based research is central to addressing this challenge.
“Policies can have unintended consequences when they fail to truly understand an issue,” Kijewski-Correa notes, underscoring the importance of combining rigorous research with local knowledge. Grounding inquiry in community realities, she maintains, ensures interventions address the right problems and avoid institutional blind spots.
This emphasis is echoed by practitioners working directly with communities in Guatemala. Palma’s work reinforces the reality that municipalities face deeply constrained conditions: limited budgets, fragmented governance structures and high youth migration aspirations all put significant pressure on policy effectiveness. In her assessment, the root causes that promote human mobility—and especially migration to the United States—have not changed and continue to act as a force of expulsion, particularly among recent returnees.
The question of perceived opportunity is especially acute for younger returnees. Under current conditions, Palma observes that the youth population in Guatemala largely views the future with great uncertainty. Young people do not yet perceive conditions that objectively allow them to assess whether opportunities exist to meet basic needs without relying on resources derived from migration—whether that is work for themselves or remittances from someone else. Until communities are equipped to generate income-producing employment that allows for the satisfaction of basic needs and the development of viable life plans, re-migration will remain a rational calculation rather than a failure of individual resolve.
Research suggests economic programs alone are insufficient in approaching migration, deportation and poverty reduction. Fostering rootedness, according to Hare, is dependent on the ability of people to imagine a future for themselves.
“We have found in past studies that when an individual feels like they have no voice, and they have no agency to help shape their reality, that is when they are less rooted,” he says.
As return migration poses an issue, reshaping countries in Central America and beyond, this research underscores the need to rethink reintegration as a priority of development, a challenge demanding locally grounded evidence, institutional coordination and policies that center dignity, agency and long-term poverty reduction.
For a fuller treatment of these findings and concrete policy recommendations across Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, see the related policy brief by Fuentes and Hare.