Discourses of identity and territoriality on the US‐Mexico border

Ackleson, Jason

doi:10.1080/14650049908407645

Cited by 24 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…For example, pre‐ and post‐9/11 US immigration policing strategies are underwritten by a comparably racialized and nationalist discourse of threat which typifies the Mexico–US border as a site where masses of immigrants from the global south are poised to overthrow the ethno‐cultural and economic “territorial sanctity” of the US (Purcell and Nevins 2005). But also in a more grounded sense, the Bush administration's war on terrorism, brought to bear in the US southwest, is but an augmentation of the immigration policing practices engineered and fine‐tuned under the former Clinton administration (Ackleson 1999; Andreas 2003; Coleman 2005). In this sense, the current expansion of immigration agents, fences, and surveillance technologies at the border—financed by the largest border enforcement budgets ever contemplated by Congress—replays the rigid either/or territorial logic of the immigration enforcement strategies initiated in the mid‐1990s under President Clinton's Operation Gatekeeper, well documented by Nevins (2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immigration Geopolitics Beyond the Mexico–US Border

2007

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Despite the centrality of Mexico–US border policing to pre‐ and post‐9/11 US immigration geopolitics, perhaps the most significant yet largely ignored immigration‐related fallout of the so‐called war on terrorism has been the extension of interior immigration policing practices away from the southwest border. As I outline in this paper, these interior spaces of immigration geopolitics—nominally said to be about fighting terrorism, but in practice concerned with undocumented labor migration across the Mexico–US border—have not emerged accidentally. Rather, the recent criminalization of immigration law, the sequestering of immigration enforcement from court oversight and the enrollment of proxy immigration officers at sub‐state scales have been actively pursued so as to make interior enforcement newly central to US immigration geopolitics. I argue here that these embryonic spaces of localized immigration geopolitics shed new light on the spatiality of US immigration governance, which has typically been thought of by geographers as active predominantly at the territorial margins of the state. I conclude the paper with some thoughts as to how geographers might rethink the what and where of contemporary US immigration geopolitics.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immigration Geopolitics Beyond the Mexico–US Border

2007

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“…Paasi has emphasised that borders are``social and political constructs which are established by human beings for human purposes and whose establishment is a manifestation of power and a social division of labour'' (Paasi, 2001, p. 17). Recognising the narrative, performative and representational dimensions of bounding has provided an analytical inroad into the implication of borders in the making of national identities, but also into the modes of the boundaries' political, national, social, cultural or aesthetic production and reproduction (Radcliffe, 1998;Ackleson, 1999). As an expression of state territoriality, the boundaries are de®ned by the notion of the separation that they embody spatially.…”

Section: Post-socialist Nationalism Nation and Its Territorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Republika Srpska and its Boundaries in Bosnian Serb Geographical Narratives in the Post‐Dayton Period

Kostovicova¹

2004

Space and Polity

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Territory has been a key physical and symbolic resource in postsocialist national mobilisation as well-de®ned nations have sought to con®rm or create nation-states and their boundaries. This paper analyses geographical narratives accompanying the Bosnian Serb attempt to impose and retain control over territory in Bosnia±Herzegovina. Bosnian Serb failure to create a sovereign nation-state was followed by a portrayal of the Dayton-based entity of the Republika Srpska as a state in Bosnian Serb geographical narratives and of its administrative boundary as a symbolic national border. The paper reaf®rms the continued relevance of the spatial analysis of the 1995 territorial arrangement of Bosnia±Herzegovina, instituted by the Dayton Peace Agreement. It explores the role of spatial narratives in the symbolic construction of nationhood, while emphasising the relevance of actual and lived expressions of the nation's territory and its boundaries.

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“…45 Of particular relevance to this paper, studies of the US-Mexico border have shown that policy debates in the US over how to police it were, from the Reagan period onwards, increasingly caught up in arguments about the racial/ethnic identity of the United States and the exclusion of Latinos. 46 The most detailed study has been Nevin's account of 'Operation Gatekeeper', a well-funded early Clinton-era boundary-enforcement programme in the San Diego area. Locating the programme in changing US attitudes to the southern borderland, Nevins contends that it is inadequate merely to say that an increase in migrant flows necessitated tightened boundary control.…”

Section: Theoretical Outlinementioning

confidence: 99%

Performance, Representation and the Economics of Border Control in Uzbekistan

Megoran

Raballand

Bouyjou³

2005

Geopolitics

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This article explores the contradictions and intersections between the performative and economic aspects of state boundary control.From 1999 onwards, Uzbekistan's formal trade with its neighbours declined dramatically, whilst cross-border smuggling mushroomed. This article examines these developments, using both an economic analysis, and a theoretical approach to the study of international boundaries derived from political geography, anthropology and 'borders theory'. Methodologically, it employs trade-flow analysis, discourse study and ethnography to construct an account of how an apparently economically counterproductive policy has symbolic and performative value to the state. The changes in trade patterns were largely due to the unilateral introduction of a new and highly disruptive border and customs control policy, which dramatically increased transportation costs, precipitating a growth in smuggling in which some state officials themselves colluded. Economically, whilst this policy would thus appear harmful to the state, the article suggests that border control policies also had a theatrical function related to the performance of national identity and the perpetuation of the incumbent regime. It concludes with policy recommendations addressed to both Central Asian states and international donors.

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Discourses of identity and territoriality on the US‐Mexico border

Cited by 24 publications

References 24 publications

Immigration Geopolitics Beyond the Mexico–US Border

Immigration Geopolitics Beyond the Mexico–US Border

Republika Srpska and its Boundaries in Bosnian Serb Geographical Narratives in the Post‐Dayton Period

Performance, Representation and the Economics of Border Control in Uzbekistan

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