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This paper delves into an analysis of illegality in migration, from a migrant perspective. To do this, established and assimilated historical practices in selected groups of Mexican migrants were analyzed according to immigration status and settlement area. The argument presented here is that illegality has a functional character for the reproduction of the migrant trajectory. This is demonstrated using a comparative analysis of the way migrants' decisions allow them to integrate their trajectories into two contexts which show unequal development. Such integration determines its functionality independently of the existence of restrictive migration policies in nation-state contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is based on ethnographic work about migration, which took place in the colony of Lechería in Mexico State. It seeks to understand the problems of discrimination, exclusion and violence that arise in the relations between the inhabitants of the colony and migrants on their way to U.S.A. Based on the tenets of psychoanalysis, the text discusses the notions of discrimination and violence in relation to language, as well as the discourses of science and capitalism as catalysts for the phenomena associated with mass segregation. This paper proposes a dialogue on the commonalities between the psychoanalyst and the social researcher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]