The Use of Legal Violence by State and Non-State Actors in Mexico along the U.S.-Mexico Border

• In Event: 199 - Regular Session. Latinos

Abstract

The regime of illegality, created by the U.S. to produce undocumented migrants as illegal and outside the parameters of the law, is used along the U.S.-Mexico border as the basis for the mistreatment and abuse of migrants crossing unauthorized into the U.S. Moreover, this regime of illegality becomes extra-territorial, as it not only shapes how Mexican nationals unauthorized in the U.S. are treated within the U.S. territory, but also how they are treated in Mexico, where they are citizens. I argue that the extra-territorial reaches of this illegality regime render these poor- and working-class migrants vulnerable to violence both at the hands of state and non-state actors, in Mexico as much as in the U.S. This paper draws from qualitative data collected along the U.S.-Mexico border from June 2009 to August 2010 in the border city of Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico.

Author

• Heidy Sarabia, University of California-Berkeley