The Right to Escape in We Are Not from Here

Abstract: This article examines the intersection between migration studies and prison abolition studies through a narrative of unaccompanied migration of Central American youth in We Are Not from Here (2020) by Jenny Torres Sanchez. I build on recent conversations at the intersection of these fields to show how the novel represents a legacy of US imperialism and carcerality in the extreme production of death and harm along the Central American migrant trail through Mexico, specifically on the freight train routes known as La Bestia. I argue that the three main protagonists of Sanchez’s novel, named Chico, Pulga, and Pequeña, together articulate what Sandro Mezzadra and other border abolitionist thinkers have called the “right to escape,” a concept that refigures the antipolitical category of escape into a critique of the material conditions propelling migrant mobility and the affirmation of marginalized life. Through close readings of We Are Not from Here , I argue that Pequeña offers an expression of the right to escape, in particular its emancipatory possibilities through feminist collectivity and care.