UCLA Center for the Study of Women

The border is as much as performance staging national boundaries and state authority, as it is a material boundary.i The anti-immigration groups that I collectively refer to as the Minutemen (MM) have also publicly described their sensationalist monitoring of the border and labor sites as a form of political theater. When the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, led by Chris Simcox, constructs a border fence on private land, or the San Diego Minutemen inspired by director Jim GilChrist “observe” labor sites, they claim that they are “shocking” us into attention about the illegal immigration “state of emergency”ii and the inadequacies of national policy.iii This paper examines how these groups use a sensational, theatrical repertoire of tactics to update abstracted ideals of citizenship with more emotional and political purchase.