Border Embodiment: Gender, Race, and Biopolitics

• In Event: The American Empire’s Favorite Line: Ports of Entry and Everyday Violence at the US-Mexico Border

Abstract

Ports of entry function as third spaces of contradiction, where social, racial, temporal, and legal hierarchies converge, normalizing violence against transborder commuters. Although Prevention Through Deterrence (PDT) has been examined from the lens of the lethal consequences of border enforcement, the case of transborder commuters reveals how PDT extends beyond formal immigration and border enforcement. Anticipatory threat and actual coercion often serve as impediments for claiming rights and denouncing mistreatment from both Mexican and U.S. state authorities. CBP officers at the border. As PDT expands the power of the border through interior enforcement, external border controls, and surveillance through state structures, this paper explores how PDT is a key strategy to understand the immediate and long-lasting consequences of the U.S. (border) empire. Based on interviews with transborder young adults, this paper explores how empire is reproduced through state ideologies and imprinted on the body. Utilizing James Scott’s theory of resistance (infrapolitics) and feminist perspectives on embodiment, I analyze how transborder youth both resist and reproduce the oppressive structures that regulate their mobility and livelihoods. Additionally, I highlight the coping mechanisms and forms of resistance they employ as they navigate and adapt to the state's expectations of their acquiescence.

Author

• Estefania Castaneda Perez