Trans-Mexican Migration: The role of agency, collectivity and solidarity within irregular journeys across Mexico Bernardo López Marín & Gianmaria Lenti 1) INTRODUCTION The present investigation attempts to examine the journeys undertaken by Central American citizens primarily from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Caribbean island of Cuba. Despite being legislatively forced to travel through Mexico without authorization, these individuals look forward to reaching and crossing the US-Mexican border, while nourishing a strong hope of approaching an objective, centered on the intention of residing and working, or fleeing to the USA. Concomitantly, the complex panorama of illegal migration and the prevalent restrictions of movement through Mexico confine these migrants to travel under conditions of marginality and exclusion, forcing them to employ precarious means of mobility that compromise their integrity, as a result of undertaking life-threatening journeys characterized by violence, robbery, extortion, sexual abuse, kidnapping and murder. This paper suggests that this reality came into view, as a corollary emerging from the hardening of migratory legislations at the international level, bringing forth the construction and legitimization of the condition of illegality, which formally endeavors to restrict international mobility by imposing unequal visa eligibility criteria and rigorous travel requirements to citizens of certain nations (Neumayer 2006: 72, 75-76, 78). Importantly, regardless of the widespread misuse of the expression illegal migrant, this notion will be employed herein, solely to criticize the paradox intrinsic to its utilization and meaning. In this context, the International Council for Human Rights states that: “an act can be juridically illegal, but an individual itself cannot be defined as such, solely on the grounds of entering a country without authorization” (International Council for Human Rights 2010: 16). The present study considers that this definition is open to criticism, as it is extensively utilized by governments to justify an alleged protection of national sovereignty and immigration control, considering that illegality has been imputed to irregular migrants in order to enable the criminalization of undesired migration on the basis of nationality, eligibility and exclusion. Furthermore, this concept represents an open form of stigmatization and illegalization of