This article aims to highlight the conditions directly impacting the migrant population in specific sociohistorical contexts on the Colombia-Venezuela and Mexico-Central America borders. Here, a precarious situation worsens, aggravated by violence. These are conditions associated with problems of a political order, which highlight the role of persistent violence in the deterioration of a dignified life, precipitating the decision to migrate and turning mobility into the only strategy to preserve life. An examination of the particular circumstances shows that the changes in cross-border dynamics are related to state actions that favor border control, a persistent precariousness of the population in transit deepened by criminal activities and some social responses that oscillate between assistance and protection of the migrant population, alongside the hostility that accompanies stigmatization.