Border monuments: memory, counter-memory, and (b)ordering practices along the US-Mexico border

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
JESSICA AUCHTER
Keyword(s):  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
The State ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Border Enforcement ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Us Mexico Border

AbstractImmigrant deaths have increased in recent years due to changes in border enforcement practices, yet less attention has been paid to the memorialisation of undocumented immigrants who die crossing the US-Mexico border. This article explores the ordering mechanisms of statecraft through an examination of how the dead bodies of undocumented migrants pose a resistance to these mechanisms. I first lay out my conception of statecraft and the bordering practices involved in this specific context, then address the memorialisation of undocumented immigrants who lost their lives crossing the border. The article embarks on a journey through anonymous desert gravesites and small desert cemeteries haunted by the spectres of immigration. It explores the contestation surrounding memorialisation of death through the monument, the narratives of anonymity surrounding the memorialisation of undocumented immigrants, and the counter-memory discourses that emerge in an effort to rewrite the meaning of these migrant deaths. These counter-memorial discourses, I argue, posit desert border monuments as a threat to statecraft because they cannot be situated within the (b)ordering mechanisms of the state.

California

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Social Cartography ◽  
Family Network ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Police Surveillance ◽  
Us Mexico Border

I utilize my situated position as anthropologist, academician, and citizen to argue not only that we should “think” California, but also that we should “rethink” our state—both its condition and its social cartography. To be clear, I see all my research and endeavors—my research on the US/Mexico border; my time among the markets and entrepreneurs I have worked and lived with; my focus on those places in which I was raised: Lemon Grove, Logan Heights; the family network and my community ethnographic work—as personal. I am in this academic game and the telling of our story because it is personal. When Lemon Grove was segregated, it was about my family; when Logan Heights was split by the construction of Interstate 5 and threatened by police surveillance, it was about our community; when the border was sanctioned and militarized it again was about the communities of which I am a part. A rethinking California is rooted in the experience of living California, of knowing and feeling the condition and the struggles we are experiencing and the crises we have gone through. We need to rethink California, especially the current failure of the state. This too is ultimately personal, because it affects each and every one of us, especially those historically unrepresented folks who have endured over the decades.

scholarly journals Reinforcing and contesting neoliberal citizenship: Legal advocates and the asylum interview at the US–Mexico border

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Riva ◽  
Erin Routon
Keyword(s):  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
The State ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Legal Representation ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Us Mexico Border

Abstract This article explores the mechanisms in which, through the US family detention asylum process, neoliberal ideas of citizenship are reinforced and contested. Through ethnographic research, and using a Foucauldian lens, we take a closer look at the neoliberal processes involved within so-called family detention. Specifically, we focus on legal advocates who are helping detained women prepare for their legal interviews. This paper argues that humanitarian aid work becomes knowable through attention to microlevel details and forms of practice—on the ground and at the margins. This affords a recognition of not only areas of functional solidarity or symbiosis with the state, but also those less visible forms of contestation. We claim that while legal advocates play a role within the neoliberal regimes at work inside these centres, they also contest this system in various critical ways, ensuring both access to legal representation for all detainees and their eventual release.

Absent and present: Biopolitics and the materiality of body counts on the US–Mexico border

2020 ◽  
pp. 135918352095939
Author(s):  
Gabriella Soto
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
The Us ◽  
Vital Records ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Us Mexico Border

As the deaths of undocumented migrants expose the violence of border security policies around the globe, a complicated politics emerges between bodily death and the ways in which the migrant association of decedents (dis)appears in vital records – even as many migrants physically disappear during their border crossings. What happens between death and bureaucratic disappearance after a migrant body is discovered? How does the overwhelming material presence of migrant death, someone who dies through an unnecessary and excruciating process like drowning or dehydration during a border crossing, become not-a-migrant? This article considers these questions by exploring the materiality of body counts at the nexus of biopolitics, forensic anthropology, and material culture studies. To probe the process behind migrants’ seemingly systematized bureaucratic postmortem disappearance, this ethnographic case study of local postmortem investigations of migrant deaths at the US–Mexico border examines practices around burial or cremation and body discovery.

Liberal Policies, Punitive Effects: The Politics of Enforcement Discretion on the US-Mexico Border

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Patrisia Macías-Rojas
Keyword(s):  
Crime Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bill Clinton ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Border Enforcement ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Liberal Reform ◽  
Legal Immigrants ◽  
Us Mexico Border

This article examines why deportation and imprisonment for immigration offenses rose under presidential administrations that claimed to favor more “humane” approaches to immigration enforcement. I examine the politics of enforcement discretion on the US-Mexico border during the administrations of Bill Clinton (1993–2001) and Barack Obama (2009–17). Drawing on historical and ethnographic research, I argue that the Clinton and Obama administrations took a punitive humanitarian approach to enforcement discretion aimed at punishing “illegal immigration” at the border while protecting “legal immigrants” with long-standing ties to the United States from deportation. The findings show that such an approach extended crime control to US-Mexico border enforcement. This blend of humanitarian and punitive approaches systematized criminal enforcement priorities and expanded the discretion of border agents to deport and imprison. Just as other scholars have shown how liberal reform contributed to the rise of the carceral state, this article shows how immigration policies that blended humanitarianism and security punished the very people such policies were designed to protect.

Marginalization and health: children's asthma on the Texas‐Mexico border

2009 ◽  
Vol 29 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 287-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara E. Grineski
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Negative Binomial ◽  
The State ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Social Predictors ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Us Mexico Border

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate children's vulnerability to asthma and its relationship with marginalized locations. More specifically, the effects of zip code level social predictors on children's asthma and their conditionality on location in the Texas‐Mexico border region are explored. The border region is perhaps the most marginalized in the USA.Design/methodology/approachData for analysis comes from the State of Texas and the US Bureau of the Census. Negative binomial regression models are used to predict asthma hospitalizations using a set of social predictors. Then, interaction effects are used to test if social predictors are conditional on border location.FindingsWithin the state of Texas, location in a metropolitan area, location along the US‐Mexico border, percent Hispanic, percent African American and percent Native American are positive and significant predictors of asthma hospitalizations; social class is negative and significant. The effects of proportion of Hispanics who were foreign born, median year of home construction, and percent of homes with inadequate heating are conditional on a zip code's location relative to the US‐Mexico border, with the slopes being steeper in border locations. Findings in general suggest that locational and social factors intersect in marginalized places (i.e. border regions of Texas) to create vulnerability to asthma hospitalizations.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is conducted solely in the USA.Originality/valueAs sociologists continue to consider space as a factor in health inequalities, this paper demonstrates the utility of considering space as operating at more than one scale.

Close encounters of the deadly kind: Gender, migration, and border (in)security

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Ochoa O'Leary
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Women ◽  
Border Enforcement ◽  
Humanitarian Crisis ◽  
Close Encounters ◽  
Transnational Mobility ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Us Mexico Border

In this paper, I discuss several findings of my study of migrant women, temporarily suspended in the “intersection” of diametrically opposed processes: those posed by border enforcement measures and those posed by transnational mobility. A pressing issue that emerged from this research was how close women come to encountering death as they side-step the border wall to cross without authorization into the US. Their testimonies shed light on how the intersection of contradictory processes contributes to a humanitarian crisis on the US-Mexico border in which the likelihood of death is increasingly present.

scholarly journals The Power Struggle along the US-Mexico Border: A Space of Dehumanization and of Assertion of Justice

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-206
Author(s):  
Mónica Socorro Romero Meza
Keyword(s):  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Human Value ◽  
Peace And Justice ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Faith Based Organizations ◽  
High Level ◽  
Normal Perception ◽  
Us Mexico Border

The article explores the power relations between the US immigration policy and the practices of faith-based organizations at the US-Mexico border through qualitative methods. It studies how high-level technologies implemented at the border reduce migrants to mere targets, stripping them out from their human value. It also analyzes the experiences of three faith-based organizations located at Tijuana and San Diego to understand how their humanitarian work changes the normal perception of the border as a space that only serves the purpose of the State. I argue that despite of the violence lived almost every day at the border-heightened by the implementation of military techniques- undocumented migrants can momentarily find moments of peace and justice.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document