UC Berkeley

We live in an era of human mobility from which two different perspectives on borders have emerged. On the one hand, hyperglobalizers celebrate a borderless world where international borders are becoming obsolete. On the other hand, skeptics argue that nation-states continue to be powerful, regulating borders through the barricading and militarizing of international boundaries. I draw on data from 60 in-depth interviews with residents living in the border town of Mexicali, as well as ethnographic field data from 14 months of participant observation at a deportee center in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico, to argue that the U.S.-Mexico border simultaneously embodies contradictory perspectives, as it stands neither completely sealed (through its militarization) nor completely opened (through the process of globalization). My research shows that an important element that shapes whether people experience the U.S.-Mexico border as open or closed is determined by their ability to cross the border legally. Thus, by juxtaposing the experiences of Mexican nationals with different legal relationships to the U.S. (as tourists, unauthorized migrants, and deportees), I demonstrate how these legal categories differentiate people. The process of legal differentiation shapes whether Mexican nationals experience the U.S.-Mexico border as a borderless site of opportunity and privilege, or as a bordered site of hardship and stigmatization. Moreover, I argue that this process of differentiation creates divergent identities and experiences of policing and violence along the border. Legal differentiation obscures convergent underlying similarities of normalized border violence and racialized experiences of Mexican nationals in the U.S. Ultimately, I show that the border is more than the territorial boundary of the state, where citizenship and legality are enforced, determining who is or who is not allowed into the United States. The border is also a site where state power is exercised, and this power is exercised through legal classifications. While other scholars have shown how the state directly shapes violence and identity, among other aspects of life, my dissertation contributes by showing one mechanism by which the state exerts power, namely, by establishing and enforcing legal categories. I show four arenas that exemplify how the state exercises power through legal classifications: by exerting violence, (Ch 2); by influencing identity, (Ch 3); by shaping what is considered normal, (Ch 4); and by structuring racialization, (Ch 5).