This chapter introduces the book’s focus on African migration through Mexico, a phenomenon that has grown in significance yet remains underexplored. It situates these trajectories within broader patterns of global displacement, highlighting how routes across Latin America toward the U.S. are shaped by violence, chance, and shifting geographies of control. The chapter frames migration not as linear movement but as a process of waiting, improvisation, and negotiation, in which migrants encounter state agents, smugglers, NGOs, researchers, and communities. It also reflects on the author’s own entry into the field during the COVID-19 pandemic, when global immobility intersected with forced mobility, and questions of displacement and survival acquired renewed urgency. By centering African voices and experiences in Mexico, the chapter challenges North-Atlantic-centric perspectives and underscores the importance of South-South migration for understanding contemporary mobility. It outlines the book’s aims: documenting African migrants’ lived experiences, analyzing the multi-actor dynamics shaping their journeys, and interrogating the categories that structure migration governance and scholarship. Ultimately, the chapter positions African migration through Mexico as both an empirical reality and an entry point for rethinking displacement, agency, and care in an unequal world.