The Borders of America examines the tension between human migration and the diverse formations of border control and immigration and asylum policy that have arisen across the Americas since the start of the twenty-first century. The collection develops a single analytical framework that is hemispheric in scope, encompassing the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and the full extent of Latin America. The contributors offer the concept of a “border regime” as an epistemological and methodological approach that comprehends borders not merely as physical demarcations between state territories and jurisdictions but rather as expansive, uneven, and heterogeneous spaces of constant encounter, exchange, dispute, tension, conflict, and contestation. Presenting detailed empirical research into contemporary intra-regional and transcontinental mobilities across the hemisphere, The Borders of America scrutinizes an array of critical nodes in the larger configuration of the trans-American border regime.
Introduction. The Borders of (Our) America / Soledad Ávarez Velasco, Nicholas De Genova, Eduardo Domenech, and Gustavo Dias 1
1. Latin American Refugeeship in Canada and the Hemispheric Border Regime / Patricia Landolt and Luin Goldring 33
2. Mobility Control Regime and Clandestine Practices in the US-Mexico Border / Laura Velasco Ortiz 61
3. Subverting International Bordering Practices: “Illegal Legality” in Southern Mexico / Tanya Basok and Martha Luz Rojas Wiesner 89
4. Migrant Caravans and the Border Control Regime in Mexico: The Case of the Fifty-Day Caravan During the COVID Pandemic / Margarita NÚÑez Chaim, Amarela Varela Huerta, and Valentina Glockner Fagetti 117
5. The Indeterminacy of Transit Through Latin America as Seen from the Colombia-Panama Border / Juan Thomas OrÓÑez and Jonathan Echeverri Zuluaga 143
6. Illegalized in the Country of “Universal Citizenship” / Soledad Ávarez Velasco 165
7. Border Control, COVID-19, and the Criminalization of Irregularized Migration in Chile / Daniel Quinteros, Romina Ramos, and Roberto Dufraix-Tapia 191
8. The Politics of Hostility in Argentina: Detention, Expulsion, and Border Rejection / Eduardo Domenech 221
9. Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: Transformation of Refuge Through the Protection-Control Relationship in the South American Space / Janneth Clavijo 249
10. Logistical Lives, Humanitarian Borders: Managing Populations in South-South Circulations / Carolina Moulin 277
11. “Europe" in ”Latin America": Illegalized Mobilities, Deportable Bodies, and Contested Sovereignties in the French-Brazilian Borderland / Fabio Santos 301
12. The Trans-American Border Regime: Toward a Genealogy / Nicholas De Genova, Soledad Ávarez Velasco, Eduardo Domenech, and Gustavo Dias 329
Contributors 369
Index
