Recognizing that archaeologies of the contemporary past are inherently political, this paper examines the ways in which the definition and classification of sites plays into archaeological praxis in the US-Mexico borderlands of southern Arizona. Fundamentally, our classification of contemporary archaeological sites seeks to organize spatial and material data collected by the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP) as a methodological step in creating knowledge about processes and experiences of undocumented migration across the Sonoran Desert. At the same time, we acknowledge that our classification exists within a highly contentious field of political discourse surrounding Latin American immigration into the United States. Insofar as naming and describing diverse types of sites helps to shape the objects of this discourse, we suggest that classification may further aid critique and political action.
Each year hundreds of thousands of people attempt to enter the United States from Mexico without authorization by crossing the Sonoran Desert on foot or using false identification at ports of entry. During this crossing process, people actively construct, contest, and obfuscate a multiplicity of identities through various forms of material culture including clothing, hygiene and cosmetic products, and identification paperwork. These identities include undocumented border crosser, false citizens of various countries (e.g., the US and Mexico), and people with no identification. Those charged with keeping non-citizens out of the US (i.e., Border Patrol) also rely on various forms of material culture that both reflect and construct perceptions of migrants as non-citizens with no federal rights or protections. In this article, we highlight the material correlates of different migrant and law enforcement behaviors and identities, and discuss the ways in which they impact the experiences of border crossers en route. Drawing on Agamben’s “state of exception,” we argue that the concepts of citizenship, sovereignty, and materiality are key to understanding how migrants both resist and succumb to the power of the state to exclude them.
This paper examines how mapping technology is central to the operation of the United States Border Patrol security apparatus on the US/Mexico Border, and explores how the very same mapping technology can be used in critique this security project. Drawing on the concept of counter-mapping, we use spatial data collected by the Undocumented Migration Project – a long-term anthropological project aimed at understanding various elements of the violent social process of clandestine migration between Latin America and the United States – to critique the spatial ideology of PTD and the technological conditions of its production.
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