Towards a Political Ecology of the U.S.-Mexico Border: Border Zones, the Non-Human, and Abolitionist Visions

Abstract

The increase of crossings at the US-Mexico border over the past few years has garnered international attention, as images and reports of family separation, human rights abuse, and migrant death have abounded. This violence is neither accidental nor random; it is the result of decades-long policy and enforcement by the US government that has expanded rapidly over the past three decades, growing to include technology, surveillance, and the use of non-human nature. Examining these processes over space and time helps us to understand how the US government creates and maintains violence at/near the US-Mexico border, and the impact it has on both people and land across the globe. This practicum seeks to examine the ways in which US Border Patrol uses non-human actors/nature to control, detain, and punish migrants at the US-Mexico Border. Pulling together different theoretical frameworks – including political ecology, environmental justice, and abolition – it explores the various forms of violence migrants face both at/near the border and in detention centers, including the physical, spatial, and temporal. The paper then puts critical border and immigration literature in conversation with abolitionist ecologies, discussing how race, class, and other socially produced differences inform and shape these geographies. An exercise in both theory and practice, this practicum ultimately calls for radical reorganizations of political and social life in the US and the abolition of borders and immigration systems.