THE BODY MIGRANT:

How an Anti-Immigration Pact Between the US and Mexico Is Changing the Migrant Body (and How Migrants Are Fighting Back)

My book THE BODY MIGRANT (forthcoming) focuses on a discrete, anti-immigration pact between the US and Mexico known as the Southern Border Program (Programa Frontera Sur).

Utilizing ethnographic data collected over nearly a decade of fieldwork with Central American migrants, I argue that the Program endeavors not simply to externalize or militarize the US-Mexico border, but to actually render migrant bodies incapable of migrating full stop (both physically and legally), thereby ending the category of “migrant” as such.

In the process, I trace: how the Southern Border Program has become the 21st century blueprint for wealthy countries to externalize their borders around the world; the dismantling of 20th century international asylum law; the cultural and political history of how the Program was able to take root so successfully in Mexico; how migrant bodies are being changed both materially and symbolically by the Program; and how migrants organize to demand certain rights or privileges from the state and international watchdog organizations.

For more information on my anthropological work, please visit my academic profile.