Jeremy Slack

The Geography of Border Militarization: Violence, Death and Health in Mexico and the United States

Despite proposed increases in spending on personnel and equipment for border enforcement, the complex geography of border militarization and the violence it produces require further examination. We take a geographical perspective to determine the role of violence in both its official forms, such as the incarceration and punishments experienced by undocumented migrants, as well as through abuses and violence perpetrated by agents in shaping border and immigration enforcement. By drawing on the Migrant Border Crossing Study (MBCS), which is a unique data source based on 1,110 surveys of a random sample of deportees, as well as research with family members and return migrants in Puebla, Mexico, we provide an innovative and robust account of the geography of violence and migration. Identifying regional variation allows us to see the priorities and strategic use of violence in certain areas as part of enforcement practice. We assert that understanding the role of violence allows us to explain the prevalence of various forms of abuse, as well as the role of abuse in border enforcement strategies, not as a side effect, but as elemental to the current militarized strategies.

Illicit Economies and State(less) Geographies: The Politics of Illegality

This special issue of Territory, Politics, Governance brings together emerging scholarship that explores relationships between clandestine economies and the political geographies of law enforcement. Such relationships demand greater critical attention by scholars. To give just one example, the 2011 United Nations’ World Drug Report estimated that the global illegal drug market is worth between US

The Migrant Border Crossing Study: A methodological overview of research along the Sonora–Arizona border

300 and US

Repeat Migration in the Age of the “Unauthorized Permanent Resident”: A Quantitative Assessment of Migration Intentions Postdeportation

500 billion every year. Given this volume and scope, the drug trade and the prohibitions that structure it have come to dramatically influence the behaviour of states and national economies. Yet, figures like those of the United Nations are little more than conjecture, for there are no reliable sources or metrics by which to gauge the scale of illicit economies. The figures are thus consistently disputed, and the study of illicit phenomena continues to present profound challenges. By their very nature, the drug trade and other illicit activities evade monitoring and documentation; they operate beyond the reach of the typical information-gathering methods of researchers working within and outside of government. The drug trade and related black markets therefore present tremendous methodological and epistemological problems. We know they exist and to a certain extent we can study their effects, but we can rarely grasp them directly; often, we face considerable challenges in our attempts to do so (cf. TUNNEL, 1998; NORDSTROM, 2004). Illicit economies of course are not limited to drugs. From petroleum to ‘pirated’music to basic services like electricity, sanitation, and water, people across the planet depend upon and are tied into shadow markets of all kinds. The formal distinction between states and ‘illegal’ or ‘illicit’ activity therefore must also be troubled. This is so not only because ‘illegality’ is itself largely a state construct, but because, as HEYMAN and SMART (1999) argue, state actors actively participate in nearly every aspect of illegal markets, blurring the lines that would otherwise separate law and authority on the one hand, and criminal or illegitimate practices on the other. This participation may be authorized but secret, as in the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm’s secret trafficking of weapons into Mexico as part of an alleged intelligence-gathering operation (CONROY, 2012); it may involve complicity through lax or permissive oversight, as in the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2012 decision not to criminally prosecute administrators and executives of banks like HSBC for laundering billions of dollars in illegal drug profits (GREENWALD, 2012). Or, it may involve taking kickbacks and

What Makes a Good Human Smuggler? The Differences between Satisfaction with and Recommendation of Coyotes on the U.S.-Mexico Border:

Increased border enforcement efforts have redistributed unauthorized Mexican migration to the United States (US) away from traditional points of crossing, such as San Diego and El Paso, and into more remote areas along the US–Mexico border, including southern Arizona. Yet relatively little quantitative scholarly work exists examining Mexican migrants’ crossing, apprehension, and repatriation experiences in southern Arizona. We contend that if scholars truly want to understand the experiences of unauthorized migrants in transit, such migrants should be interviewed either at the border after being removed from the US, or during their trajectories across the border, or both. This paper provides a methodological overview of the Migrant Border Crossing Study (MBCS), a unique data source on Mexican migrants who attempted an unauthorized crossing along the Sonora–Arizona border, were apprehended, and repatriated to Nogales, Sonora in 2007–09. We also discuss substantive and theoretical contributions of the MBCS.

Mexican Immigrants, Anthropology, and United States Law: Pragmatics, Dilemmas, and Ethics of Expert Witness Testimony

Drawing on postdeportation surveys (N = 1,109) with Mexican migrants, we examine the impact of immigration enforcement programs and various social factors on repeat migration intentions. Our multivariate analyses suggest immigrants with strong personal ties to the United States have higher relative odds of intending to cross the border again, even when controlling modes of removal from the United States. Our findings highlight the inevitable failure of immigration policy and enforcement programs when placed against the powerful pull of family and home. These findings shed greater insight on the complex nature of unauthorized migration in an era of increased securitization and deportation.

Collaborative Research on the United States-Mexico Border: Social Media, Activism, and the Impact of Scholarship

This article draws on a unique dataset of more than eleven hundred postdeportation surveys to examine migrants’ experiences with coyotes (human smugglers) along the U.S.-Mexico border. Our focus is on migrants’ satisfaction with the services provided by their most recent smuggler and whether they would be willing to put family or friends in contact with that person. We find a distinct difference between people’s expectations for their own migratory experience compared to what they would be willing to subject loved ones to. Expectations of comfort and safety are decidedly low for oneself; but for loved ones, a more expressive, qualitative assessment shapes their willingness to recommend a coyote: qualities such as trustworthiness, honesty, comportment, and treatment come to the fore. News coverage focusing on the deaths of smuggled migrants often portrays coyotes as nefarious and exploitative, but the migrant-smuggler relationship is much more complex than suggested by these media accounts. We provide empirical insight into the factors associated with successful, satisfactory, and safe relationships between migrants and their guides.

Violence and Migration on the Arizona Sonora Border

This article examines the use of anthropological research by expert witnesses in legal cases involving Mexican immigrants and the intellectual strategies employed to defend them as well as the obstacles such efforts confront. Expert witness research and writing in more than one hundred immigration and criminal cases is the basis for a discussion of the political and legal constraints that often lead to a particular characterization of Mexico, one which lies in contradiction to conventional anthropological approaches to the “cultures” anthropologists study. We consider these matters in terms of several issues about which the expert witness develops arguments and sometimes wins asylum and criminal cases: Mexican cultural “practices,” drug trafficking activities, and the Mexican political system. We conclude that given the great dangers faced by immigrant defendants, academic experts should make “good enough” arguments in order to pragmatically defend such clients in immigration and criminal courts, even if ...

In Harm's Way: Family Separation, Immigration Enforcement Programs and Security on the US-Mexico Border

For several decades, pundits and critics have predicted the end of borders, envisioning a globalized world that ushers in a new era of collaboration and cooperation (Friedman 2005). Yet despite these proclamations and significant advancements in communication technology, as well as the explosion of social media, we have not seen significantly greater collaboration, even between partners as close as those along the United States-Mexico border. This is especially true in academic research. Perhaps communication technologies have taken more time to be fully integrated into the often age-restricted fields of academia. Maybe the very nature of academic collaboration needs far greater contact than is achievable through online and technological resources. Whatever the cause, intense debates in recent years about the safety of working in northern Mexico have complicated research efforts and created a huge divide between Mexican and US colleagues, as many institutions have banned official travel to Mexico.1