Liquid Borders: Migration as Resistance

339 Pages·2021·15.551 MB·English

by  Mabel Moraña (editor)

Liquid Borders
Liquid Borders provides a timely and critical analysis of the large-scale migration
of people across borders, which has sent shockwaves through the global world
order in recent years.
In this book, internationally recognized scholars and activists from a vari-
ety of fields analyze key issues related to diasporic movements, displacements,
exiles, “illegal” migrants, border crossings, deportations, maritime ventures, and
the militarization of borders from political, economic, and cultural perspectives.
Ambitious in scope, with cases stretching from the Mediterranean to Australia,
the US/Mexico border, Venezuela, and deterritorialized sectors in Colombia and
Central America, the various contributions are unified around the notion of free-
dom of movement, and the recognition of the need to think differently about ideas
of citizenship and sovereignty around the world.
Liquid Borders will be of interest to policy makers and to researchers across
the humanities, sociology, area studies, politics, international relations, geogra-
phy, and of course migration and border studies.
Mabel Moraña is Willliam H. Gass Professor of Arts and Sciences at Washington
University in St. Louis, where she is Director of the Latin American Studies
Program. She has been Director of Publications of IILI (Instituto Internacional
de Literatura Iberoamericana) and has published extensively on Latin American
literature from the colonial period to the present, including topics of cultural the-
ory, literary and cultural criticism, and narrative and philosophy. She has edited
more than 30 collective volumes and published 16 authored books, including
Arguedas/Vargas Llosa: Debates and Assemblages (awarded with the Singer
Kovacts Award, MLA, and the Premio Iberoamericano, LASA); The Monster as
War Machine; and Philosophy and Criticism in Latin America: From Mariategui
to Sloterdijk. Her book on migratory studies Líneas de fuga. Migración, frontera
y sujeto migrante is forthcoming.
Routledge Research on the Global Politics of Migration
Globalisation, Migration, and the Future of Europe
Insiders and Outsiders
Leila Simona Talani
Rethinking Security in the Age of Migration
Trust and Emancipation in Europe
Ali Bilgic
Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement
Peter Nyers and Kim Rygiel
Migration and Insecurity
Citizenship and Social Inclusion in a Transnational Era
Niklaus Steiner, Robert Mason, and Anna Hayes
Migrants, Borders and Global Capitalism
West African Labour Mobility and EU Borders
Hannah Cross
International Political Theory and the Refugee Problem
Natasha Saunders
Calais and its Border Politics
From Control to Demolition
Yasmin Ibrahim and Anita Howarth
Liquid Borders
Migration as Resistance
Edited by Mabel Moraña
Liquid Borders
Migration as Resistance
Edited by Mabel Moraña
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Mabel Moraña; individual chapters,
the contributors
The right of Mabel Moraña to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Moraña, Mabel, editor.
Title: Liquid borders: migration as resistance / [edited by] Mabel Moraña.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020044554 (print) | LCCN 2020044555 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367696900 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367696924 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Emigration and immigration–Social aspects–Case studies. |
Emigration and immigration–Political aspects–Case studies. |
Immigrants–Social conditions–Case studies. | Immigrants–Political
activity–Case studies. | Boundaries. | Transnationalism.
Classification: LCC JV6225 .L57 2021 (print) | LCC JV6225 (ebook) |
DDC 304.8–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020044554
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020044555
ISBN: 978-0-367-69690-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-14291-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
List of figures ix
List of contributors x
Introduction 1
MABEL MORAÑA
PART I
Migration, (trans)borders, and the freedom of movement 15
1 Proliferating borders in the battlefield of migration: Rethinking
freedom of movement 17
SANDRO MEZZADRA
2 Fugitivos de la Vida imposible: Transborders, migrations, and
displacements 27
JOSÉ MANUEL VALENZUELA ARCE
PART II
Labor, politics, and the question of limits 41
3 Transmigrants as embodiment of biocapitalism 43
ABRIL TRIGO
4 Refuge and deportation: The future as property in the border regime 57
ANGELA NAIMOU
vi Contents
5 At the border of sight: States, the civil contract, and Bracero
Program photos 69
DEBORAH COHEN
6 Barbed wire: A history of cruelty 84
TABEA LINHARD
PART III
Gender, art, memory, and the migrant 97
7 Mobile reorientations: Trans-agency and the queering of the Italian
politics of migrant reception in Henrique Goldman’s Princesa 99
ELENA DALLA TORRE
8 Resilience beyond cruelty: Central American migrants pursuing the
American dream 107
ANA DEL SARTO
9 Border art for a border ecology 120
ILA NICOLE SHEREN
10 States of exile: Kracauer’s extraterritoriality, and the poetics of
memory in Cristina Peri Rossi’s Estado de exilio (2003) 131
IGNACIO INFANTE
PART IV
Colonial crossings/indigenous displacements 143
11 Early modern religious displacement and transnational
Catholic subjects 145
STEPHANIE KIRK
12 Andean and Amazonian displacements: Culture and the effects of
deforestation 157
JOSÉ ANTONIO MAZZOTTI
Contents vii
13 Language of space: Politics of indigenous people removal and the
ethnopolitics of resistance: The post-colonial diaspora 169
STEFANO VARESE
14 From genocide to Hieleras: The never-ending Maya genocide 183
ARTURO ARIAS
PART V
Translocalities in Latin America 197
15 Bordering the crisis: Race, migration, and political strategies in
anti-populist Ecuador 199
JORGE DANIEL VÁSQUEZ
16 From the “suffering stranger” to the IDP: The emergence of a new
problem area 212
JUAN RICARDO APARICIO
17 Dispossession by militarization: Forced displacements and the
neoliberal “Drug War” for energy in Mexico 224
OSWALDO ZAVALA
18 Migration and the aging body: Elderly war refugees in Brazil
between national borders and social boundaries 240
BAHIA M. MUNEM
PART VI
Global migration/Mediterranean crossings 255
19 Caribbean borderlands and traveling theories: Imperial frontier,
translocal nations, federation of diasporas, planetary archipelago 257
AGUSTÍN LAÓ-MONTES
20 Europe Otherwise: Lessons from the Caribbean 271
MANUELA BOATCĂ
viii C ontents
21 Visualizing the Black Mediterranean 289
MICHELLE MURRAY
22 “On behalf of vulnerable strangers”: Interpreting communities-to-come 303
MINA KARAVANTA
Index 315
Figures
5.1 Braceros being fumigated with DDT at US border 70
5.2 Aspiring braceros await selection, Mexico City 74
5.3 Wife/mother hugging husband/son as he goes off on the bracero
journey 74
5.4 Husbands/sons and wives/mothers saying good-bye as men head
off to the United States 75
5.5 Official scrutinizes aspiring bracero’s hands 76
5.6 Official checks future braceros for indications of physical
weakness. Leonard Nadel, 1956 77
6.1 Clément Moreau, “An der Grenze” 85
6.2 Clément Moreau “Ohne Titel” 86
17.1 Images circulated in social media about the killing of eight
alleged “sicarios” of the “Troop from Hell”, an armed group
link to the “Northeastern Cartel”, later identified as civilians
forced by state police agents to wear the military-style uniforms
attributed to the group 227
17.2 Map of alleged “influence” of “Los Zetas” 231
17.3 Official 2016 map of government extractive infrastructure of
natural gas 232
17.4 Message by President Donald Trump from his personal Twitter
account in response to the November 4, 2019, massacre of nine
members of the LeBaron family – a Mormon colony established
in the state of Chihuahua – blamed on “drug cartels” 236
20.1 EU’s colonies on Euro banknotes 275
20.2 Map of EU overseas countries and territories and outermost
regions 2015 276
20.3 Map of the Caribbean with its European and U.S.-American
colonial possessions 278
20.4 Anguilla’s European borders 281
20.5 Map of Europe with current Western Borders in the South
America and the Caribbean 283
21.1 Diallo protest at the plaza 294