The Beast, Óscar Martínez’s searing account of the journey made by migrants from South America heading through Mexico to the United States, is now out in paperback (Verso). I heartily recommend it (and you can read an extract on Deskbound Traveller).

Increasingly, young children, sent for by parents already in the States, are making that journey on their own. The New York Times reported recently that one of them, a 12-year-old girl from Ecuador, was found hanged in a children’s shelter in Mexico.

Radio 4, in its “Crossing Continents” strand, had a powerful programme recently on the Missing Migrants project in Tucson, Arizona. Its staff try to identify the bodies of migrants found in the desert, and return them to the families.