Suspended Agency and the Habitus of Waiting in a Migrant Shelter in Tijuana

This thesis explores idea of suspended agency and the development of a habitus of waiting within a women and children’s migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico. Relying on ten days of participant observation and an interview with a shelter director, I examine the lived experiences of residents, workers, and myself as a researcher navigating humanitarian space. Shelters are designed to be short term spaces, but migrants are often forced into long-term, uncertain stays due to restrictive border policies and structural barriers, resulting in a social stasis defined by boredom, anxiety, and monotony within the shelter. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (1977), I argue that this prolonged waiting cultivates shared patterns of behavior and emotional responses that shape everyday life within the shelter. Children internalize shelter norms, adults exhibit signs of mental and emotional fatigue, and aid workers themselves are caught in a cycle of care that cannot resolve the underlying issue of immobility. The shelter’s radical feminist and community-oriented philosophy offers a meaningful break in this habitus, attempting to preserve resident agency through shared responsibility and mental health care. This thesis also critiques the limitations of humanitarianism, especially when aid work is disconnected from political realities. Ultimately, this research adds to critical humanitarian studies by grounding abstract theory in the specific social context of Tijuana and reflecting on my own role as the researcher, and my complicity and growth in that capacity. Ultimately, it calls for more reflexive, politically aware aid models that recognize and actively resist the immobilizing forces shaping modern migration.