Embodied Borders: Navigating Transit Migration Through Darién, Panama

ABSTRACT The Darién Province separating Panama and Colombia has experienced unprecedented movement of people across its border since the easing of COVID‐19 border restrictions in 2021. Panama established the “controlled flow” migration strategy in 2016 to manage “irregular” migration within its national borders as this flow rapidly increased in Darién Province. This policy provided basic services while containing people in reception centers after their journey across the Darién Forest. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Darién Province, we elucidate how the Panama‐Colombia border transcends its geopolitical boundaries and shapes embodied borders based on the experiences of people excluded from legal migration pathways to North America. We examine how the “controlled flow” infrastructure in Panama constructs new systems of control and surveillance, embodied health impacts, and regimes of agency and migrant refusal after crossing one of the most treacherous borders in the world.