Unlike the one-directional migration described by many Chinese scholars, frequent border crossings between the countries were not only a reality of life for many of these women but also a strategy for survival and development.
There are only four legal crossings between the countries, but hundreds of illegal ones, the ombudsman for the border in the La Guajira province, Lina Murgas, told VICE News.
MBDS established 16 functioning cross-border sites at major crossings between the six countries.
Environmental groups in Argentina with the blessing of the government again threatened to blockade important international crossings between the two countries.
There are no legal border crossings between the two countries which means instead of hopping along the coast, overland travellers have to embark on a lengthy schlep via Brazil.
Junaid Arshad Khan from the International Organisation of Migration says the government only publishes daily figures for border crossings between the two countries – around 40,000 to 50,000 each day – but points out that many are daily migrants.
But the migrants, the smugglers and the coast guard officers are protagonists in a daily drama played out in this seven-kilometer-wide strait separating the island of Lesbos from the Turkish coast, one of the narrowest sea crossings between the two countries and a favored route for smuggling.
In 2006, he changed his name to David Headley, apparently to make border crossings between the United States and other countries easier, court documents say.
Evidently, "border crossings are not driven solely by the pragmatic attractions of the price differences prevailing between countries: when considered as cultural practices, these border crossing movements can be interpreted ethnographically as transgressive and affirming practices" (Askew 2009 180).
Standards vary between countries.
