padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
feelings-wise I'm pro-both, generally. ningún ser humano es ilegal, after all. but talking in practical IR/political/& especially economic terms. don't intend this to be solely U.S./Mexico, but in general. after all it perhaps even a bigger/more contentious issue in Europe, even if you guys can't match us for sheer militarization & solipsistic callousness. & obv the issue will only become more pressing as resources decline, economic inequities widen, etc.
flows of human traffic, how states & other actors attempt, with or without success, to control or direct those flows. the paradox of ever "freer" trade w/ever more tightly policed borders. the interrelations between legal & illegal flows of humans, goods, capital, etc. & so on.
Saskia Sassen article from 2006 - scathing takedown of the ineptitude of U.S. border policy & how it relates to the EU
plus loads of other cogent points
pdf from 1999 (but still relevant, perhaps even moreso) cited in the article - The Escalation of U.S. Immigration Control in the Post-NAFTA Era
on a personal note:
when I was teaching (or trying to anyway) English to migrant laborers in Oakland back in 2004-6 or so nearly everyone I'd meet was from southern Mexico - Chiapas, Oaxaca, Yucatan, Tabasco, Veracruz - or Guatamala, El Salvador, Nicaragua. the ripple effects of NAFTA.
the U.S./Mexico border is a truly grim place, tho of course some spots (Juarez/El Paso, for example) are grimmer than others. it is one thing to read about & another to see it first hand - the white Border Patrol (or DHS now I guess) SUVs patrolling in the desert, arrays of cameras, abysmal poverty, the gross specter of American tourists, the fabricas & their female workforces & paramilitarized security. the whole thing is lunacy, really.
once had a friend nicked while we were trying to cross the border legally (him in a car w/us Americans). it was bloody awful. had a few other mates nicked. thankfully haven't known anyone who died trying to cross. also in the States, living w/folks w/o papers - the constant paranoia (ironically, as most of them hated the U.S. & would have liked nothing more than to go back were it not for $ issues).
flows of human traffic, how states & other actors attempt, with or without success, to control or direct those flows. the paradox of ever "freer" trade w/ever more tightly policed borders. the interrelations between legal & illegal flows of humans, goods, capital, etc. & so on.
Saskia Sassen article from 2006 - scathing takedown of the ineptitude of U.S. border policy & how it relates to the EU
But the difference is actually not where the limits of walls make themselves visible. The wall and the weaponised border function in a vaster ecology. That larger ecology helps explain the failures of government attempts to stop unauthorised migration via border controls.
Before 1992, the cost of making one arrest along the US-Mexico border stood at $300; by 2002, that cost had grown by 467% to $1,700 and the probability of apprehension had fallen to a forty-year low. In the 1980s, the probability that an undocumented migrant would be detained while crossing was 33%; by 2000 it was 10%, despite massive increases in spending on border enforcement.
The winners include arms manufacturers; large corporate employers in particular sectors of the economy that tend to employ significant numbers of undocumented workers; various lobbies; employers of undocumented immigrants generally...and the growing numbers of smugglers whose fees and business have expanded as government policies make border-crossing more difficult and risky....The losers include citizens whose taxes are paying for a far larger and costlier border-control operation that is not even reducing illegal crossings (the intended policy outcome); the migrants themselves whose crossings have become far more difficult, dangerous, and sometimes deadly (as well as costly, given the greater need to use a smuggler)...
plus loads of other cogent points
pdf from 1999 (but still relevant, perhaps even moreso) cited in the article - The Escalation of U.S. Immigration Control in the Post-NAFTA Era
Enhanced border policing, I argue, has less to do with actual deterrence
and more to do with managing the image of the border and coping with the
deepening contradictions of economic integration.
on a personal note:
when I was teaching (or trying to anyway) English to migrant laborers in Oakland back in 2004-6 or so nearly everyone I'd meet was from southern Mexico - Chiapas, Oaxaca, Yucatan, Tabasco, Veracruz - or Guatamala, El Salvador, Nicaragua. the ripple effects of NAFTA.
the U.S./Mexico border is a truly grim place, tho of course some spots (Juarez/El Paso, for example) are grimmer than others. it is one thing to read about & another to see it first hand - the white Border Patrol (or DHS now I guess) SUVs patrolling in the desert, arrays of cameras, abysmal poverty, the gross specter of American tourists, the fabricas & their female workforces & paramilitarized security. the whole thing is lunacy, really.
once had a friend nicked while we were trying to cross the border legally (him in a car w/us Americans). it was bloody awful. had a few other mates nicked. thankfully haven't known anyone who died trying to cross. also in the States, living w/folks w/o papers - the constant paranoia (ironically, as most of them hated the U.S. & would have liked nothing more than to go back were it not for $ issues).
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