Permeable Borders: History, Theory, Policy, and Practice in the United States 9781789204438

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Permeable Borders

Permeable Borders History, Theory, Policy, and Practice in the United States

Edited by

Paul Otto and Susanne Berthier-Foglar

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2020 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com

© 2020 Paul Otto and Susanne Berthier-Foglar

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2020006115

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78920-442-1 hardback ISBN 978-1-78920-443-8 ebook

Contents

List of Figures

vii

Acknowledgments

viii

Introduction Paul Otto and Susanne Berthier-Foglar

1

Part I. Historical Border Crossing: National, Ethnic, and Theoretical Chapter 1. American Indians and US-Canada Transborder Migration: Opportunity and Refuge Roger L. Nichols

19

Chapter 2. Warped Mirrors: Shifting Representations and Asymmetrical Constructs on the Border(s) of the American Southwest Jeffrey Swartwood

37

Chapter 3. “Dare to Dance Your Own Dance”: Transgressing Aesthetic Borders in Early Twentieth-Century American Theatrical Dance Claudie Servian

57

Chapter 4. Border Work: The Migration of Los Angeles Japanese Americans from the Manzanar Relocation Center to Father Flanagan’s Boys Town during World War II Heather Fryer Chapter 5. From Geographic to Virtual Borders in New York City: From Little Italy to Chinatown Marie-Christine Michaud

77

96

Part II. Permeability in Border and Migration Policy Chapter 6. Realizing Government Ambitions: Policing Insiders and Outsiders Jon Wiebel

117

vi | Contents

Chapter 7. Detention for Deterrence? The Strategic Role of Private Facilities and Offshore Resources in US Migration Management Marietta Messmer

136

Part III. National Borders, Liminal Spaces, and Permeation Chapter 8. Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora: Cross-Border Relationships and Security Issues Cléa Fortuné

159

Chapter 9. (Dis)Continuities of the Border Spectacle: An Analysis of a Binational Park in San Diego, California Marko Tocilovac

177

Chapter 10. A Durable Permeation: Imagination, Motion, and Differentiation at the Border between Canada and the United States Victor Konrad

194

Afterword. Permeability and the Making and Unmaking of Borders David C. Atkinson

213

Index

220

Figures

Figure 5.1. The Italian American population in New York City in 2000. Source: New York City Department of City Planning, The Newest New Yorkers, 2001.

101

Figure 5.2. The front wall of Saint Joseph Church. Photo by Marie-Christine Michaud.

105

Figure 5.3. The Chinese population in New York City in 2000. Source: New York City Department of City Planning, The Newest New Yorkers, 2001.

106

Figures 5.4 and 5.5. The streets of Little Italy in October 2016. Photos by Marie-Christine Michaud.

107

Figure 9.1. Diagram of Friendship Park, by Marko Tocilovac.

178

Figure 9.2. The secondary border fence at Friendship Park, June 2011; also the shorter fence visible between it and the bullring on the left. Photo by Marko Tocilovac.

180

Figure 9.3. Inside Friendship Park, June 2011. Boundary Monument No. 258 can be seen in the upper right. Photo by Marko Tocilovac.

183

Acknowledgments

This volume emerged from the research project Migrations and Borders in the United States: Discourses, Representations, Imaginary Contexts, which was initiated by the Institute of Languages and Cultures of Europe, America, Asia, and Australia at the Université Grenoble Alpes, France. As a result of its support and encouragement, this study has born rich fruit, and we are greatly indebted to the Institute. To our ten chapter contributors, we express supreme appreciation: first, for submitting your initial ideas that invited interdisciplinary discourse on the topic of migration and borders; second, for working with us to develop these ideas into substantive essays on the theme of permeable borders; and, finally, for faithfully responding to all our editorial requests and demands completely, graciously, and in a timely fashion. It was a great pleasure to work with each of you. Very late in the process we invited David Atkinson to read and respond to all ten contributions, and we are very glad we did. His synthesis—a thematic exploration of these diverse essays—has increased the value and significance of this volume severalfold. At various stages of this project we received the able assistance of four undergraduate students: Erin Brudi, Maya Burgess, Jordan Lockwood, and Emma Reid. Details matter, and they demonstrated how well they understood that! We especially appreciate the eleventh-hour assistance of Lynn Otto, who helped us finalize the manuscript and meet our publisher’s deadline. It is no exaggeration to say that without her keen mind, sharp editorial hand, and generous spirit, this book’s publication would have been delayed and its final shape found wanting.

Introduction Paul Otto and Susanne Berthier-Foglar

Since we first envisioned this collection of essays, the United States elected a new president, Donald Trump, and the issues related to migration and borders took on far greater salience. Trump’s “America first” campaign, which emphasized a secure American border, among other things, helped put him in the White House in 2017. By late 2018, “the wall” he proposed to build along the southern US border had become a centerpiece of President Trump’s agenda. Just before the 2018 winter holidays, he staked all his political clout on a battle with Congress, forcing a shutdown of a significant portion of the government (ironically threatening weakened border control because of the withholding of government funds) while he demanded $5.6 billion to build a wall to create an absolute separation between the United States and Mexico. In one of his innumerable tweets, the president proclaimed, “People want to stop drugs and criminals at the Border. Want Border Security! . . . The wait is costly and dangerous!” (Trump 2019). Meanwhile, immigration issues have also drawn the focused attention of the president. Not content to address the issue of illegal or undocumented immigration, in August 2019 he announced changes to the application of the “public charge” law that would prevent the authorized immigration of any individual who might qualify for minimal social services, and those already legally residing in the United States and utilizing such services might be prevented from advancing toward full citizenship. Symbolic of this attitude, Ken Cuccinell, acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, suggested on 13 August 2019 that the Statue of Liberty’s epitaph, long a symbol of hope and promise to would-be immigrants to the United States, would be better worded, “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge” (quoted in Itkowitz and Sonmez 2019). Unsurprisingly, many of our authors introduce their essays with reference to Trump or to his policies. But the currency of the border and immigration issues that helped fuel a presidential campaign and guide his administration should not obscure the fact that Americans have long been preoccupied with

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questions of national borders and migration across and within them. Nor have discussions of migration and borders been limited to national political boundaries. The American story has always included the experience of crossing or challenging cultural borders, questioning the existence of lines dividing ethnicities, genders, and religious groups, transgressing aesthetic and intellectual boundaries, and defying regulations or customs demarcating proper behavior. This volume brings together essays that explore permeability or liminality of American borders.1 Many of these are case studies in how individuals or groups crossed geographic borders, but as will become abundantly clear, the concept of permeability is ripe with possibilities for exploring and better understanding the role of all sorts of borders in the United States today and in years, decades, and centuries past. Our authors explore the crossing of national borders, the creation of notional borders, the transgressing of aesthetic expectations and traditions, the challenging of racially based policies, the adoption of virtual borders to extend ethnic identity beyond former geographic boundaries, the blurring of policy divisions and the conflating of immigration and criminal law, the flow of economic, social, and cultural relationships despite heightened security concerns, the continuities and discontinuities across national borders, and the creation of imaginaries that uphold outmoded border structures or that embrace new global realities. We have grouped these essays under three categories: “Historical Border Crossing: National, Ethnic, and Theoretical,” “Permeability in Border and Migration Policy,” and “National Borders, Liminal Spaces, and Permeation.” While wide ranging in disciplinary approach, in scope and content, and in definition of borders, all of the chapters bring greater understanding to the permeability of borders in and surrounding the United States. What do we mean by permeable borders? In the first place, we are challenging the popular idea that borders are necessarily impassable, that boundaries should represent obstacles. Indeed, while the public perception may be that a border, by definition, is or should be a barrier, there is nothing in the definition of either “border” or “boundary” to imply such a thing. They are edges, margins, frontiers, demarcations of particular spaces or regions. They are not impenetrable nor unbridgeable; they are permeable. So to focus attention on permeable borders is to begin with a reminder that borders can be, and maybe should be, crossed. The borders in our study must be understood broadly. As alluded to at the beginning of this introduction, much of the public American discourse at the time of this writing is on national borders, how secure (that is, impassable) they should be, and who has the right to cross them. But our multidisciplinary volume pushes readers to consider all kinds of borders. Boundaries between nations draw the attention of several of our contributors, but the essays included here take us to conceptual, intellectual, and aesthetic divides. They

Introduction | 3

explore the ways people—by social classes, or by ethnic groups, or as political actors, or of other possible categorization—can be grouped together or separated from one another. They compare geographic boundaries to virtual boundaries. They consider divisions between those people defined as worthy and those defined as unworthy, and what makes it so. Sometimes they help us see borders where we had not perceived them before. So, too, do the essays here help us see the breadth of permeability. Is it traversing a national boundary? Is it transgressing a cultural ideal or practice? Is it the definition of borders themselves that is permeable? How is a border defined? Who defines it? To what purpose is the symbol of a border put? Does permeability mean more than just moving through or across borders, perhaps also moving borders themselves? The essays in this volume raise and answer these and other thought-provoking questions.

Historical Border Crossing: National, Ethnic, and Theoretical Five historical case studies, ranging from the founding of the nation to nearly the present day, comprise part 1. Historian Roger L. Nichols leads off the work exploring Native American transgressions of the border with Canada in pursuit of various interests. Beginning in the 1780s, and for a hundred years following, Native American groups crossed the northern US border to find new lands to call their own, to gain access to British support and encouragement, or to flee from American military offensives. On the one hand, native motivations can be understood in terms of the British threat to American sovereignty, since Native Americans found inspiration in their border crossings from earlier established relations with British traders or military leaders. But it should not be forgotten that Native American groups were sovereign in their own right, often recognized as such by the US government, which signed treaties with them. Further, the practical reality of America’s borders in the nineteenth century is that they were more conceptual than real. Yes, maps were drawn and boundaries surveyed, but there were no effective fences or border guards, nor any effort as we would understand it today to control the border. Native people themselves clearly did not accept the imposition of national boundaries even when they acknowledged their existence by embracing the benefit of crossing them. In the first case Nichols recounts, Joseph Brant and the Mohawks, faced with the threat of US hegemony to their sovereignty, sought new homes in Quebec following the American Revolution, taking up the British on their earlier promises of support and aid. Confronted with the prospect of forced removal after passage of the 1830 Indian Removal Act, the Potawatomi similarly migrated from parts of Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin to an uncer-

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tain welcome in Canada. During the same decades, other tribes traversed the border seeking British support and military aid (and the British sometimes entered US territory to provide it). Finally, in the second half of the nineteenth century, different bands of the Sioux—one led by the famous Sitting Bull—and some of the Nez Perce found temporary refuge in Canada from the US military. Thus, with mixed results, for over a century Native Americans “used the international border to gain options that they lacked without it.” Using a starting point in the nineteenth century, this time in the West, particularly California, interdisciplinary scholar Jeffrey Swartwood, in chapter 2, brings a much more theoretical approach to America’s borders, challenging the Manifest Destiny perspective perpetuated by many contemporaries and by historians since, whether they embraced or abhorred the ideology. For Nichols, the existence and location of the national border is essentially undisputed; the degree to which it formed a boundary, however, is demonstrated to be insignificant when the sovereignty of Native Americans was challenged. Looking first at the US-Mexico border, Swartwood explores a crossing of AngloAmericans from the United States to Mexico, a crossing in which they apparently shed their national and even cultural identity to integrate with Mexican society. But at the transition of California from Mexican to American territory, Swartwood observes such people moving back into an American identity. What he reveals is not the straightforward story of Manifest Destiny that is often told, but the story of a kind of conceptual (and unintended) ability to move the US border with Mexico in order to conquer new territory. As Swartwood puts it, “The early settlers and soldiers, in this narrative, may have technically crossed an international boundary upon leaving the United States, but they perhaps in no meaningful way crossed a collective national cultural boundary as they were, in a sense, trespassing on land that was already notionally, if not yet legally, theirs.” Swartwood highlights the examples of several individuals, but his focus on settlers is of particular concern here. None of the three exemplars of American immigration to Mexican California seem particularly driven by the creed of Manifest Destiny, nor espouse in their words or actions an expansionistic American nationalism. They represent, in fact, a counternarrative. But despite having integrated into the Spanish-Mexican culture of California before its conquest, they are “welcomed back into the national fold.” Such a situation “reveals a porosity and a flexibility that is both notional and pragmatic. . . . it reveals that the social borders, like the national territorial borders, were porous constructs that could be bent to the perceived needs of a given context.” But while these Americans were crossing national borders, Swartwood avers, they were ultimately not leaving behind something essential of being American. Swartwood’s essay reveals the nuances of this situation far better than can be readily done in this introduction. But a key element of the argument

Introduction | 5

is his revelation that the pursuit of the American dream challenges the national borders themselves. This can be seen nowhere better than in the iconic western protagonists of twentieth-century popular culture who “seek a more profoundly traditional ‘American experience’ south of the border in Mexico,” where some retired Americans who have moved to Mexico in recent years feel “a lot freer” there than in the United States. The implications are significant. As some Americans contemplate a less porous and more impenetrable border that “has been closed to unwanted ingression, will they also find themselves deprived of the possibility to egress?” While Swartwood helps us see ways that people “notionally” crossed and extended physical national borders, dance and fine arts historian Claudie Servian examines Americans whose border crossing was entirely notional. In chapter 3, “‘Dare to Dance Your Own Dance’: Transgressing Aesthetic Borders in Early Twentieth-Century American Theatrical Dance,” she describes how prominent American choreographies both crossed and broke, or transgressed, aesthetic borders in creating a new, and American, form of choreography. Loïe Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn all found ways of throwing off the shackles of dance forms imposed on them by European traditions, such as traditional European ballet. Contravening such expectations was a way of crossing borders that violated the long-respected and held-to practices of choreography. In looking for new dance forms, these artists then crossed borders again, both national and chronological, seeking inspiration from beyond the United States in ancient Greece, India, and Egypt. In doing so, Servian draws on the work of scholar Homi Bhabha, who talks of the “borderline work of culture.” Art created in this way “does not merely recall the past as aesthetic precedent; it renews the past, refiguring it as a contingent ‘in-between’ space, that innovates and interrupts the performance of the present.” Using this process of hybridization, these early twentieth-century American choreographers were able to create something new. Yes, the old forms, especially from Europe, had been stifling, but by allowing themselves to adjust old forms in ways that introduced other national and cultural aesthetic expressions, they could create something that had not been seen before. Fuller, Duncan, and St. Denis blended emotion and movement in their dance composition and sought a closer relationship between nature and movement in dance. They looked for universal values in dance, eclectically and syncretically bringing together disparate forms and movements that led to new forms in their wake. Servian shows us, then, that this was an expression of American nationalism itself: “A revolutionary American dance was born.” Seeing themselves as creating forms unique to the American experience—indeed, seeing that American dance must be its own thing and not simply a continuation of

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forms brought from Europe—these artists were exhibiting an aesthetic form of American exceptionalism, even as other, nativist, Americans sought to define their nationalism from a stance of anti-immigration. “The spirit of the early twentieth-century choreographic art,” writes Servian, “was born thanks to American dancers breaking old habits, setting out far from known paths, and pioneering, inventing, discovering, and combining novelty and change.” In chapter 4, historian Heather Fryer takes us to a little-known part of a well-known story—the migration of a group of Japanese internees from the Manzanar Relocation Camp in Owens Valley, California, to Omaha, Nebraska. This internal migration was only possible because several Catholic priests, government employees opposed to relocation, and the incarcerated Japanese themselves “played indispensable roles in the border work that made the government’s wartime racial boundaries permeable enough to channel a significant migration stream to Omaha.” Like Servian, Fryer draws on the scholarship of Homi Bhabha to employ the concept of “border work,” the work undertaken by these various actors to challenge the “race-based incarceration” of Japanese Americans. Following Bhabha, Fryer sees “borders as interstitial zones of productive encounter between state and society.” So, borders are really borderlands where “selves and societies are asserted, contested, negotiated, and creatively invented (or reinvented).” Borders only become barriers when the collective actions of the various players make it so. Conversely, a border is permeable to “the extent to which people can work a way around it, or through it, or can convince enough people that the border does not serve its intended purpose.” New borders were created when, through the War Relocation Authority (WRA), Japanese Americans on the West Coast were quickly rounded up after the attack on Pearl Harbor and confined to concentration camps throughout the West. But the WRA quickly saw that they had created a new problem due to the “overcrowding, unrest, and unprecedented government dependency” that the incarcerated Japanese Americans were now subjected to. Into this situation stepped the various “border work” actors identified by Fryer. Father Edward J. Flanagan, famous for his Boys Town orphanage outside Omaha, Nebraska, and also an opponent of racial division, first reached out offering housing and employment for fifty of the interned Japanese Americans to come to Boys Town as “teachers, caretakers, and even counselors.” Two other Catholic priests, both Maryknoll missionaries, also transcended racial divisions and American prejudices to aid imprisoned Japanese. Father Hugh Lavery served in the Japanese mission in Los Angeles for thirty years, while Father Leo Steinbach had been a missionary to Korea before being arrested by the Japanese after their invasion of that country. Both Lavery and Steinbach worked with Buddhists as well as Catholics, and when the relocation camp was established in Manzanar, both priests went there to serve the Japanese and help create a

Introduction | 7

conduit with Father Flanagan fifteen hundred miles away for some of the Nikkei to move to Omaha. Government workers E. J. England and Caroline Trask, also uncomfortable with the racially based policy of Japanese internment, undertook small-scale bureaucratic steps to get some young men transferred from California to Omaha, while Japanese migrants to Omaha themselves, like Patrick Okura and his wife, facilitated the transfer of additional Japanese through hospitality and transition centers. Thus, “this group of nonassimilationist priests, incarcerated racial outsiders, and softly dissenting government workers, through their resistance to the mass incarceration, provided the WRA the way out of its own predicament. Their work allowed the federal government to breach its own border by allowing structured and civiliansupervised resettlements . . . to take place in a manner that disrupted the logic of the militarized state in some respects, while conforming to it in others.” In chapter 5, American studies expert Marie-Christine Michaud examines the physical and virtual boundaries of New York City’s Italian and Italian American community. Once a prominent neighborhood in which generations of Italian immigrants passed from their native land into the United States, Little Italy provided a safe enclave in which to connect with fellow Italians while becoming integrated into American society. A distinct boundary could be observed between Little Italy and that of the neighboring communities, but it was a passable border that allowed passage in both directions. Over time, however, the successive generations of Italians chose the suburbs, leaving Little Italy for the outer boroughs. Attracted by more desirable housing and easier integration into mainstream American society, the Italian residents and property owners in Manhattan began selling and moving away. Meanwhile, other immigrant communities also emerged, particularly Chinatown. As Little Italy shrank, Chinatown grew, encroaching on the streets and blocks once teeming with Italian immigrants. In an area where those of Italian background once made up nine-tenths of the population, only one in twenty remain, and the visible evidence of Little Italy is not much more than a few restaurants. Saddened by this profound transformation, film director Martin Scorsese has observed that “now that’s all Little Italy is, a façade.” But as Michaud demonstrates, the loss of Little Italy as a physical space has not meant the loss of Italian identity. Where geographic boundaries may have once been seen as necessary to protect, support, and encourage ethnic and cultural identity, Michaud argues that new technologies have taken the place of those old spatial markers. Italian Americans are now “scattered through suburbia” and “no longer associated with a well-defined territory with circumscribed borders.” But while those borders have so profoundly diminished, there exist still “ethno-territories,” as identified by Stéphane Dufoix and Valérie Foucher. Rather than having clearly delineated neighborhoods, the Italian Americans maintain connections through churches, schools, import stores, and restau-

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rants. Little Italy continues to serve as a touchstone to ethnic identity, providing a locale for the suburbanized descendants of the old immigrants to join in festivals, eat at traditional Italian restaurants, and celebrate weddings and baptisms at the Most Precious Blood Church. But most importantly, it is through information and communication technologies (ICTs) that Italian Americans sustain their ethnic connections. Websites and social media connect Italian Americans with one another and with goods and services of traditional import to their community. Thus, the community no longer coheres through distinct geographic territories, but through virtual connections that facilitate education, ethnic associations, Italian (both in Italian and English) newspapers, and the continuation of various features of Italian American culture.

Permeability in Border and Migration Policy While the authors in part 1 broaden our historical understanding of borders in the United States while exploring the various ways that such borders have been traversed, transcended, and transgressed, the authors of part 2 bring our attention to recent America, especially US policies—informed by neoliberal commitments—regarding the national border and migration to the United States. In chapter 6, communication scholar Jon Wiebel concentrates on the discourse of immigration policy and its intersection with welfare policy, two areas of public concern that ostensibly relate to separate populations. Although historical in setting, addressing the permeability of concerns in the 1996 congressional debates over the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, his essay has immediate and ongoing implications for US border policy. “Realizing Government Ambitions: Policing Insiders and Outsiders” draws on the work of Merav Nakar-Sadi to explore the ways that immigration and welfare policies, as “worthiness regimes,” intersected in the mid-1990s, particularly as members of Congress debated the worthiness and unworthiness of both documented and undocumented immigrants. Wiebel draws particular attention to the discourse of “entrepreneurialism,” that is, “discourses that privilege defining individuals as enterprising agents who take risks and make decisions based on a desire to improve their economic lives.” In debates over immigration, members of the 104th Congress expressed their appreciation for (particularly undocumented) immigrants’ value as hard workers. In the first place, many representatives and senators recognized the difficulty of preventing unauthorized immigration because of the value of undocumented immigrants to the US economy, a “jobs magnet” that attracted worthy laborers. Second, their value as workers transcended what was seen as the criminality of their action in illegally entering the United States or over-

Introduction | 9

staying their visas. In fact, some of the politicians shifted the blame for illegal immigration to the employers who willingly subverted government attempts to prevent illegal immigration, thus focusing primarily on the undocumented immigrants’ virtue in seeking employment and self-sufficiency. The debates about immigration also involved debates about welfare. Often expressing neoliberal concerns, these deliberations raised the specter of “illegal” immigrants entering the United States and then exploiting and becoming dependent upon welfare programs. Clearly, this issue also related to the worthiness and unworthiness of individuals—the worthy being those who work hard and seek to support themselves, while the unworthy want nothing more than to have the government supply their needs. But in addition to the similarity of bifurcating both immigrant and resident populations into categories of enterprising and lazy, legislators blurred the lines between immigration policy and welfare policy. They sought to control abuses of the welfare system by limiting immigration to industrious and enterprising immigrants who would contribute to the economy rather than draw down government resources. To anyone following news of American politics as of early 2019, it is apparent that the lines between immigration and welfare policy continued to be blurred, as conservatives have abandoned their perception of illegal immigrants as enterprising individuals responding to the US work magnet, and now seek to build an impermeable wall along the southern US border. At the same time, immigration policy discourse connects welfare dependency with the status of documented immigrants and those seeking authorized entry into the United States Whereas Wiebel demonstrates the blurred lines between immigration and welfare policy, in chapter 7 Marietta Messmer, originally trained in literary studies, brings our attention to the “increasing interconnectedness between criminal law and immigration law,” also stemming from neoliberal influences. Specifically, she argues that since 9/11 a profound change in immigration policy has taken place, only to be expanded upon by the Trump administration. This change consists of “the outsourcing of migration management,” which is expressed in the privatization of immigration control and detention and the employment of neighboring Mexico in the processing of asylum seekers and other migrants. This in turn has led to the “circumvention of ‘basic human rights obligations.’” Seeking to make America’s borders less permeable, the US government has confused the boundaries between criminal and immigration law, has conflated the private sector and public sector in the exercise of government immigration policy, and has extended the legal border of the United States beyond the national border in ways reminiscent of the issues raised in chapter 2. Much of this has taken place in the context of changes in immigration itself in recent years. Even though the number of undocumented entries through the southern US border has decreased, the national makeup of those entries

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has substantially shifted. In the last ten years, the number of Mexicans has decreased by about half, while the number of those from Central America, notably Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, has steadily increased, collectively exceeding the number of Mexicans in 2014 and 2016. Since 1996 and the passing of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act discussed in chapter 6, undocumented entry into the United States has been criminalized, which in turn has led to the use of detention centers to deal with such transgressors of US immigration rules instead of deportation, as had been traditionally practiced. For example, nearly three-quarters of those imprisoned are held in private facilities run by forprofit companies. But even before reaching the US border and being detained, asylum seekers and others are being intercepted by Mexico and other Latin American nations. This stems from a policy instituted by President Bill Clinton that required government agencies to “interdict and hold smuggled aliens as far as possible from the U.S. border and to repatriate them when appropriate.” Under “Operation Global Reach” (1997), foreign governments have been enlisted to detain or help detain “suspicious travelers.” And since 9/11, Mexico has played a primary role in aiding US efforts at controlling and limiting immigration to the United States from Central America. The Southern Plan (2001) and the Southern Front Plan (2014) militarized Mexico’s southern border, placed responsibility for deportation of “irregular Central American and other migrants” on Mexico’s shoulders, and enlisted over five thousand Mexican police and members of the military to assist US immigration officers. And since Messmer completed her essay, Mexico and the United States reached a deal in June 2019 in which Mexico has agreed to increase border control enforcement and expand detention of asylum-seeking migrants across its territory. Blurring lines between public and private and extending the reach of US immigration actions beyond national borders, as well as enlisting other nations in those actions, have erased the distinction between migrants and criminals. Asylum seekers thus are seen by many as a threat to national security, and those detained under these new procedures and in private prisons are not protected in either civil rights or in human rights.

National Borders, Liminal Spaces, and Permeation Our part 3 authors directly consider the ongoing permeability of the US borders with Mexico and Canada. In chapter 8, American studies scholar Cléa Fortuné focuses our attention on Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora. Sister cities facing one another across the US-Mexico border, these two cities represent both increased efforts at making the border impenetrable and ongoing cultural, economic, and familial ties and exchanges. Adopting Timothy J.

Introduction | 11

Dunn’s broad definition of “militarization” as “use of military rhetoric and ideology, as well as military tactics, strategy, technology, equipment, and forces,” Fortuné argues that “despite the [military-like] buildup at its border, Douglas still maintains its relationship with its Mexican sister city Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico.” Historically and culturally, Douglas has deep Mexican roots. First a Spanish colonial settlement and later a Mexican territory, the Douglas area was still in Mexican possession even after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), only becoming part of the United States after the Gadsden Purchase was ratified in 1854. It developed as a mining and railroad town; 80 percent of its residents are of Mexican origin. It wasn’t until the 1990s that a fence was first erected between the two cities—using Vietnam-era corrugated steel landing mats. Over the years, this barrier has been repaired, replaced, and upgraded. Meanwhile, radars, cameras, thermal imaging, and various electronic sensors have been added to detect and track unauthorized movement. Further, the fence has been doubled in some places and supplemented with a moat and barbed wire. Many of these security improvements have been made by military contractors with experience with the Israel-Palestine border. Finally, the number of armed border patrol agents has significantly increased, and agents have established extra-constitutional checkpoints on the interstate highway, many miles from the border. Despite these aggressive efforts to monitor and control the border between Douglas and Agua Prieta, the history of the two cities demonstrates past and ongoing relationships. The economic one has been longstanding, as mining supplies and Mexican-mined copper flowed from Agua Prieta to Douglas. Labor has also flowed from south to north, first with agricultural workers (many encouraged to enter the United States without authorization) during World War II, and later with maquiladoras—factories built astride the border facilitating the transformation of raw materials into duty-free manufactured goods. Additionally, many Mexican residents of Agua Prieta have green cards and regularly work in Douglas, returning each night to their homes south of the border. In addition to workers, both shoppers, whose purchases contribute “80 percent of the town’s economy,” and students, who make up perhaps one-quarter of Douglas’s elementary school population, cross the border each day from Mexico to the United States. And while some locals call for increased security and tighter border controls, others seek to enhance the economic and cultural ties between the sister cities, such as the Café Justo Cooperative, which facilitates the purchase of Chiapas growers’ coffee, its roasting in Agua Prieta, and its sale in Douglas. Anthropologist Marko Tocilovac draws our attention to a similar point on the border, this time Friendship Park in San Diego, California. In chapter 9, “(Dis)continuities of the Border Spectacle: An Analysis of a Binational Park

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in San Diego, California,” Tocilovac sees this binational park as a microcosm of the border as a whole; it helps us “to understand the logics, mechanisms, and strategic objectives of the border infrastructure.” While the park was once created as a place “to celebrate Mexico–United States relations” (inaugurated by First Lady Pat Nixon in 1971), it has since “witnessed the evolution of US migration and border policies.” This is largely in the form of an initial fence created in the 1990s and then later in the establishment of a second fence in 2009 while heightening the oversight and control of the border at that point. The park is now so encompassed by the border structure, or wall, that it is even difficult to discern it as a distinct place. From the American side, access to the park is closed to traffic most of the year. Visitors must walk nearly two miles to reach the US side of the park. Visiting hours are limited to just 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, and visitors are only allowed thirty minutes in the area that communicates with the Mexican side. As the park has become engulfed in the border apparatus, so too has it become a site of political activism. But the activists don’t all share common concerns. Some oppose the construction of the border structure because they champion “freedom of movement and the protection of migrants,” while others promote “the rights of Mexican immigrants within US territory,” while a third group protests environmental degradation resulting from elaborate fence building. While borders are often understood in scholarly literature either in terms of dividing “physical territory and the people” or as openings “uniting the individuals separated” by a fence, Friendship Park, according to Tocilovac, represents both ideas at the same time. Activists of various sorts have drawn out these two meanings in their public actions and demonstrations at the park. One group created the “binational garden of native plants.” Located near the park, this garden lay astride the border fence with native plants on both sides. Although the introduction of a second fence in 2009 made access on the American side very difficult, the nature of the garden, with the intertwining of their root systems, symbolizes “cross-border interactions . . . and respect for the local ecosystem.” Similarly, the Methodist minister John Fanestil formally (before the 2009 fence addition) held Communion services linking participants on both sides of the fence, which produced two impressions: “a barrier that divides a community of believers but also a border transcended by faith and transnational communion.” In addition to these debordering narratives, however, other demonstrations have produced “control images,” such as a 2009 protest against the new fence structure that was juxtaposed with celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In chapter 10, we return to the northern border and hear from geographer Victor Konrad, who offers an expansive discussion of the ways the USCanadian border has been imagined and ways that it could be imagined that better align with the experience of those who live in the borderland zone. In

Introduction | 13

doing so, Konrad touches on many of the themes introduced by the previous authors. He begins with the premise that the “imaginaries” of the border between the United States and Canada are currently in flux, but that all recognize that the state and nature of the border are also in an ongoing state of “continual change.” At its essence, however, the international border is one of “durable permeation.” That is, “the border remains porous and allows mixture and passage as it prevails as a stable, continual, persevering, and preserved construct between the countries.” What makes it so? As Konrad puts it, the border “allows and enables a broad range of ‘imagination,’ . . . it is characterized by motion . . . , and it works to differentiate Canada and the United States in various ways at scale from the local to the national.” Despite the rhetoric and some actions of the Trump administration, the twenty-first-century border is shaped by the forces of globalization (in which the United States plays a major role but is not unilaterally its driving force), which demand borders designed to promote the flow of goods, ideas, and people, even while the security concerns of the United States since 9/11 have driven border policies toward greater control and restriction of movement. Instead of sharpening divisions between the two countries, however, cross-border culture, a manifestation of the expanding borderlands, has “re-emerged more sharply defined [and] has reinvented itself differentially in places along the border and spaces in the borderlands.” In the context of globalization, Konrad asserts, governance of the more extensive borderlands or cross-border dynamic and interactive zone is more important than governance of borderlines. For Konrad, border governance (border control and related activities) can no longer be considered in terms of an “aligned territorial control” that understands the border between the United States and Canada as “territorial demarcation.” Globalization and other aspects of twenty-first-century international life render such an outlook anachronistic. The term “cross-border cultural” provides a new and necessary outlook. In this context, Konrad raises the notion of the biopolitical border: “taking the border to every person everywhere whether people approach the borderline or not.” Biopolitical borders relate to all the ways that borders approach people even when people don’t approach borders—new technologies applied to various security measures, and border controls such as fingerprints, iris scans, and the digitization of personal information for identification purposes. Also of significance is the way borders in the twenty-first century have more to do with “the alignment and management of motion through systemic change” than they do with the limitation of the flow of goods and people. Billions of dollars have been spent not to create restrictions on flow but “to reorganize and expedite the border-crossing system between Canada and the United States.” Meanwhile, US security concerns have aggravated the hegemonic relationship of the United States to Canada. In a sense, the permeability of the border allows American security demands and

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a uni-cultural outlook to infiltrate and redirect Canadian security practices and multicultural social structures. But in all these border dynamics are the ways that American and Canadians create “imaginaries” of the border. These are rooted in past practices, current experience, hopes, and fears, and Konrad’s essay helps us understand the range of perspectives about the border held by actors in the borderlands and observers from greater distances. Konrad does not leave us merely with observation and analysis, however. He also encourages and admonishes: “Although many of the components of a new and better border have been imagined and developed, the components for a better border need to be reimagined in concert with each other to produce a multicultural, balanced, and efficient border. Foremost among the changes required is the need to move away from security primacy and align security with other border imperatives.” Recognizing the history of the durable permeation of the US-Canadian border and the twenty-first-century forces of globalization that transcend nationalist fears and benefit all actors is a necessary first step.

Permeable Borders? After working with each of our authors and facilitating their exchanges among themselves, we decided to invite an eleventh scholar—historian David C. Atkinson—to offer a thematic discussion of the whole. In addition to reflecting on the main thrust of our volume, “that borders in all their forms are always more porous than we might assume,” Atkinson pushes on another underlying theme: “Borders and the ideas that sustain them are constructions of the human imagination.” They are both physical and notional creations. They “are not only historically constructed” but “also historically contingent.” They represent efforts of state agents and the efforts of those who “live on and around them” to define, challenge, and redefine them. Additionally, Atkinson signals the ways these essays bring together discussions of both the northern US and southern US borders, effectively erasing an analytical boundary that has tended to construe Canadian and Mexican border discussions as distinct analytical exercises.

Conclusion In current popular discourse, many Americans assume—indeed, increasingly demand—that (national) borders can and should be demarcated and walled in impenetrable ways. Most obvious is Donald Trump’s promotion of his border wall to separate Mexico from the United States, an initiative that many of

Introduction | 15

his followers support. But apparently impenetrable borders can also be found elsewhere. Government affairs in the United States are increasingly characterized as the era of divided government, with reference to the deep division and supposed inability for cooperation between Republicans and Democrats. Americans often talk about ethnicity and race as though individuals can be easily categorized in such terms and then separated or segregated (by law, custom, or practice). Culture, too, is often defined ethnically or nationally as though cultural differences must be maintained, and groups who see their values under attack engage in the so-called culture wars. Our intellectual and aesthetic pursuits are often classified as “schools” of thought or practice. Their adherents engage in turf protection, while their detractors use labels to castigate the other and disparage their work. The rigid division of humans into male and female without respect for those who are intersexed or for the broad spectrum of gender expressions and identity is another example of the ways that some Americans imagine unpassable boundaries. Yet our authors have demonstrated that impenetrable borders are far more imagined than real and always have been. Borders are more conceptual than physical, and if the concept of the particular border is not shared by all involved, then that border is less a division between people, religions, and ideas than it is a hope that they might be kept separate and avoid the messy collusion when they are crossed. In reality, and despite a lot of talk to the contrary, the practice in the United States has been to cross borders, to blur divisions, and to seek opportunities and fulfillment wherever they may be found. Americans would do well to reimagine borders as they really are—permeable, liminal, and fluid. This does not mean that there is no need for national border control, nor is it necessary to erase all distinctions between people, ideas, and places. But if we embrace the nuances and complexities of the places in between, we can better learn how to respect those boundaries and how to best cross those borders. Paul Otto is a professor of history at George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon. He has been the recipient of several grants and fellowships, including support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Humanities Center. His research focuses on European–Native American relations in early America and is currently examining the evolution of wampum in the colonial Northeast. He has published several articles, and his book, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley, won the Hendricks Award for the best volume in colonial Dutch studies. Susanne Berthier-Foglar is a full professor of American studies and Native American studies at University Grenoble Alpes (France); she is the director adjunct of ILCEA4, a research group focusing on world languages and cul-

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tures. Her research interests and publications are centered on the history and culture of the Southwest of the United States, on indigenous affairs, and on the use and allocation of natural resources.

Note 1. Several other papers focusing on other aspects of our research project have already been published as Migrations and Borders in the United States: Discourses, Representations, Imaginary Contexts, coedited by Susanne Foglar-Berthier and Paul Otto, published online as an issue of Représentations dans le monde Anglophone (September 2018).

References Itkowitz, Colby, and Felicia Sonmez. 2019. “‘Who Can Stand on Their Own Two Feet’: Ken Cuccinelli Edits Famous Statue of Liberty Poem.” Washington Post, 13 August. Accessed 14 August 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/who-can-standon-their-own-two-feet-ken-cuccinelli-edits-famous-statue-of-liberty-poem/2019/ 08/13/4cdddf62-bdcc-11e9-a5c6-1e74f7ec4a93_story.html. Trump, Donald J. 2019. @realDonaldTrump tweet on Twitter, 5 January, 5:47 p.m. Accessed 14 August 2019. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1081729046277509121.

PART

I Historical Border Crossing National, Ethnic, and Theoretical

chapter

1 American Indians and US-Canada Transborder Migration Opportunity and Refuge Roger L. Nichols

For much of the nation’s history, its continental borders existed as little more than lines on paper or as lakes and rivers, rather than the well-defined and policed boundaries of today. For generations, Europeans, Euro-Americans, and Indigenous people all crossed those lines and waterways repeatedly, moving into or out of the United States whenever they chose. Long before meeting the invading whites, Native people in North America recognized and used geographic borders of their own. Their actions grew out of long-standing competition and conflict over home areas and hunting territories with other Native groups. Many villagers tried to keep strangers from moving farther inland by claiming that little of value or interest lay beyond them. Others claimed the right to regulate who traveled through their country, often charging tolls on whites who did so. Those who refused Indian demands faced direct action. For example, in 1650 when a Huron fur trade brigade bringing a Jesuit priest west tried to force its way past an Algonquin village without paying the customary toll, the enraged local chief seized the priest. He ordered his men to hang the Jesuit “from a tree by the arm-pits,” and extracted payment from the visiting Hurons. He told the unfortunate priest “that the French were not the masters of his country” and that as chief he decided who could move through it (quoted in Miller 2000: 37). Secure in their own sense of borders, Indians learned about the invading settlers’ ideas about borders quickly as they participated in the colonial wars between the English, French, and Spanish that preceded the American Revolution. Once that conflict ended, Indians faced a new aggressive, militaristic, and expanding society, the United States. From the Native perspective, the United States in the South and the British in the North represented invasive forces.

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But while not abandoning their own claims to sovereignty, Native people had to find practical responses to the pressures bought to bear by an expansive United States, which only tacitly recognized Indian claims of national sovereignty. From 1783 through the late nineteenth century, Native Americans repeatedly used their knowledge to exploit the nation’s presumed paper and natural borders. During that era Native groups took advantage of the formally claimed boundaries to move into and out of the United States. Borderlands scholars have written extensively about Indigenous people moving north from Mexico or south from the United States, so that activity needs no comment here. But the northern border between the United States and Canada remained as porous as the southern boundary, and Native groups there moved across the line in both directions, as others did in the Southwest. Recent accounts of their actions in the North focus mostly on the Great Lakes as a physical boundary or the implementation of the so-called Medicine Line from the lakes west to the Rocky Mountains. They offer new examples of Indian agency in approaching border permeability for their own purposes (Hogue 2015; Hele 2008; and D. Nichols 2018). During those actions, Indians used the borders in several related but distinct ways. First, they sought to gain permanent new homes by leaving the United States. Second, they drew inspiration, material supplies, and occasional leadership and military support from British officials in Canada. Third, they fled over the boundary line to escape pursuit by the US Army. Whichever of these reasons motivated them, nearly all of the Indians who crossed the border based their appeals for help on the earlier relationships they had with the British as trading partners, military allies, or both. Many chiefs, or their ancestors, had received flags and medals from British frontier officers or Indian agents. They displayed these to support their claims for assistance from officers in Canada during their disputes with the Americans. This chapter especially highlights how tribes used the physical and cartographical US-Canada borders to gain three central objectives: establish new homelands, receive material support and encouragement from Great Britain, or escape from pursuing American troops. There are two clear examples of tribal leaders choosing to escape American actions by moving north looking for new homes. Both of them happened in times of peace, but with heavy pressure on each of the Indigenous societies. The first came after a contentious 1784 council between Iroquois chiefs and American commissioners representing the victorious United States. As the tribal leaders tried to negotiate, the whites told them, “You are mistaken in supposing that . . . you are become a free and independent nation, and that you may make what terms you please. It is not so. You are a subdued people” (quoted in Horsman 1967: 19; see also Calloway 1995: 282–83). Then the commissioners pressured the chiefs to sign the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, which

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surrendered much of their land in New York. Later that same year, Mohawk leader Joseph Brant sought a new home for the villagers. Appealing for promised British help, he led some eighteen hundred Iroquois across the border from New York into Canada. This move set a pattern followed by many other Indian groups as they dealt with officials in Canada. Usually Indian leaders based their appeals for aid on their earlier service as British allies against the Americans. Their partners had given the chiefs medals and flags to symbolize the anti-American alliance, had promised support, and had provided food, clothing, weapons, and munitions. Indian leaders considered the wartime promises to be long-lasting commitments, and often based their later actions on that assumption. Brant’s decision to abandon Iroquois land in New York grew directly out of promises the British made to him in 1775 when he traveled to London to offer help against the Americans in the forthcoming war. As a result of that meeting, the troops he raised from the Six Nations Iroquois had fought the United States. Now, faced with American seizure of their property, like the pro-British loyalists in the new nation, the chief reminded officials in Canada of the Indians’ wartime alliance with them and asked for a new home in Canada. In 1784 Sir Frederick Haldimand, then governor of Quebec, responded by purchasing land for them. He chose a site along the Grand River at the eastern end of Lake Erie in what soon became the new province of Upper Canada, now Ontario. Originally the land grant consisted of a strip extending six miles wide on either side of the river from its source to its mouth near the eastern end of Lake Erie. It soon became known as the Haldimand Grant and was meant to give the immigrants an area with fertile, well-watered soil located far from angry American settlers or their government (Stanley 1950: 148–201; Johnson 1963: 267–82).1 From the start, this land grant failed to protect the Indians from the nearby Canadian settlers. Joseph Brant acted as if the grant had been given to him personally and began selling portions of it to whites he thought would help the Indians build their new villages. He also used ownership of the grant to support his claim that the land transfer demonstrated that the British recognized Iroquois independence. Both of these ideas raised immediate objections from local officials. Under the 1763 Royal Proclamation, Indians had a right only to use, not own, the land and could sell their claims only to the government. The dispute began in 1791 when John Graves Simcoe became the new lieutenant governor of Upper Canada. He rejected Brant’s claims of independence and his right to sell tribal property, and he threatened to take back half of the grant if Brant continued to sell land to incoming whites (Cruikshank 1923: 114–15). While the disagreement continued, members from each of the Six Nations drifted into the settlement, and British authorities provided farm implements, seeds, and other aid. Even with this help, the Indian migrants had a difficult time re-establishing

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their village society as whites continued to filter into the area. Yet the early settlement laid the foundation for what is now the largest Six Nations reserve in Canada, even though disputes over their title remain (“Lands/Membership Department” n.d.). The experience of the Potawatomi tribe during the 1830–50 era offers a second example of villagers peacefully crossing the border seeking new homes. During the early nineteenth century, many of the ties resulting from the long-established fur trade, as well as diplomatic and military experiences that had united the tribes and Canadian officials, faded away. At the same time, the exploding US population surged west into the region between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River. Greedy pioneers and their representatives in Washington demanded that Indian land be opened up for white settlement. In 1830 Congress responded by passing the Indian Removal Act, designed to force Indigenous people west. Shortly after its passage, American negotiators swarmed into Indian country to extract signatures from reluctant chiefs on removal treaties. In the next few years, government agents forced many of the Potawatomi, then living in Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin, to migrate west to new areas beyond the Mississippi. However, many of them refused to move west. In fact, some of them chose to migrate north into Canada, where, along with the Ojibwe and the Odawa, they had been part of the earlier Three Fires Confederacy, with villages scattered across southern Ontario and around the Great Lakes. These tribes had long been British trading partners and military allies, and during the War of 1812 they had joined other midwestern Indians to fight against the Americans. After that conflict, they joined other tribal groups making annual visits to British posts in southwestern Ontario. When American negotiators persuaded many Potawatomi chiefs to sign removal agreements, some of the villagers objected. Between 1835 and the late 1840s, at least three thousand of them crossed the border into Canada. There, British officials welcomed them with mixed feelings. The newly arrived Native leaders stressed their role as allies in the fight against the Americans decades earlier, but, to their surprise, during the interim the Canadian situation and policies had changed. Previously the government had seen the Indians as valuable fur-trade partners and potential military allies against threats from the United States. Now, after just over two decades of peace, that view changed. The new tribal immigrants represented an unwanted cost for local policy makers. Nevertheless, some officials felt obligated to honor the past promises made to the Indians and encouraged the Potawatomi to establish new villages. However, the newcomers soon learned that their status north of the border had changed. No longer welcomed as autonomous allies, they faced concerted efforts by Indian Office personnel to establish an acculturation program for them. This meant accepting sedentary agriculture, schools,

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and missionaries as parts of their new settlements (Clifton 1975: 31–50). Those demands differed little from what they had tried to avoid by leaving the United States, but despite their objections to them, Potawatomi migrants settled mostly in western Ontario along the shores of Lake Huron, where their descendants occupy six reserves today (Indigenous and Northern Affairs n.d.).

Seeking Cross-Border Support The peaceful migrations of the Mohawk and Potawatomi contrasted sharply with tribal actions in the Ohio country. There, in the 1780s and 1790s, the Miami and the Shawnee demonstrated a second way to use the border. They crossed north into Canada to get supplies in order to defend their homelands from violent American settlers then pouring north across the Ohio River. In this instance, while they did not move to Canada, they benefited directly from the weapons, leadership, and general encouragement of British officials and traders there. That should not have surprised anyone because, like the Iroquois, the Miami and the Shawnee had supported the British during the American Revolution. To them, the American settlers invading their country from Pittsburgh and Kentucky during the 1770s posed the biggest threat to their independence. The arrogant and violent settlers and the demanding negotiators from the new federal government frightened and angered many village leaders. Responding to this threat, chiefs in present Ohio and Indiana agreed on two related tactics to counter the invaders. First, they worked to create a multi-tribal confederacy; second, they turned to their British allies for help. By the mid1780s Miami chief Little Turtle and Shawnee leaders Blue Jacket and Black Hoof joined Mohawk leader Joseph Brant as they sought a multi-tribal alliance to halt the settler encroachment on their lands. Meeting repeatedly at Sandusky, Detroit, their own villages, or British frontier outposts, they tried to reach an agreement on how to defend themselves against the advancing Euro-Americans. Some demanded that they agree on the Ohio River as the line separating Indian country from the United States. Others accepted earlier cessions of land in southeastern Ohio. Despite the immediate American threat, the chiefs failed to agree on a unified approach. Villages nearest the settlers tolerated the earlier treaties, while those farther away called for continuing the raids against the invading whites. These disputes split Indian ranks within each village, with the civil chiefs often choosing to negotiate, while the war leaders and young men demanded military actions (Calloway 2007: 790– 84; White 1991: 413–16). Despite those divisions, at a meeting at Detroit in 1786, tribal-alliance leaders repudiated the land cessions they had made earlier. They insisted that the

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Ohio River remained the boundary between their land and that of the United States. Joseph Brant, although he had moved north into Canada, helped shape the tribal demands. He tried to persuade the other chiefs that the land belonged to all of them and insisted that any treaty talks with the United States include representatives of each tribe. When many of his listeners agreed, in December 1786 he sent an address to Congress stating the Indian ideas. It demanded a renegotiation of the borders and asked Congress to stop “your surveyors and other people from coming upon our side [of] the Ohio River” (Brant 1832–34: 8–9; Sugden 2000: 66–67; Horsman 1967: 23). Congress, beset by the settlers’ bitter complaints about Indian raids and its need to sell Ohio Valley land for revenue, ignored Brant’s call to stay out of Indian country, inadvertently driving them into the arms of the British. As a result, raids between invaders and tribesmen continued, and when George Washington became president in 1789, he faced repeated calls for war. A year later, General Josiah Harmer led a motley force of fourteen hundred men north from present Cincinnati, which the Indians crushed. At that point tribal leaders realized that they needed continuing help from the British, and they reached across the border and asked for weapons, ammunition, and help in rebuilding their destroyed villages. Shawnee leader Blue Jacket, assisted by British agent Alexander McKee, reminded officials in Canada that the tribe had fought alongside the redcoats against the Americans during the Revolution. He warned that without help from north of the border, the Indians could not resist the “Big Knives,” as they called the invaders, and many Indians would have to flee west beyond the Mississippi River. Such a migration would disrupt the fur trade and ruin many Canadian traders (Sugden 2000: 107). This appeal for military assistance brought mixed responses from British officials. Frontier agents and army officers such as Major John Smith, who commanded Fort Miami in northwestern Ohio, tried to encourage Indian resistance, giving them food and munitions. Imperial officers, on the other hand, reminded their subordinates that Britain and the United States were at peace. Sir Guy Carleton (Lord Dorchester), then the top official in Quebec, advised Major Smith to give the Indians enough munitions to defend themselves. At the same time he reminded Smith that “we are at peace with the United States and wish to remain so.” He warned his subordinate that unless the Americans attacked British military posts along the border, the major needed to tell the Indians to avoid raids or other provocative actions (quoted in Sword 1985: 122). When the chiefs realized that officials across the border would not help, they moved many of their villages north out of the Ohio Valley to escape danger from the threatening settlers. In the territory contested by Indians and Euro-Americans, the situation remained chaotic, as British agents Matthew Elliott and Alexander McKee ignored their orders to keep peace. Instead each of them gave their tribal al-

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lies much-needed munitions, weapons, and repeated encouragement, keeping alive Native hope for ongoing cross-border support. British forces even built a new army post, Fort Miami, south of the border in northwestern Ohio to support the Indians there. In 1791, with British support and supplies, the allied tribes crushed Governor Arthur St. Clair’s invading frontier army and gave the United States one of its worst military defeats. The Indians’ success convinced many Americans that high-ranking officers in Canada had incited the tribal attacks. That had not happened. Rather, fearing a retaliatory American effort to capture Detroit, British officers there offered to mediate the ongoing border warfare. US officials ignored this proposal, and General Anthony Wayne’s 1794 victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers destroyed the multi-tribal confederacy and brought temporary peace.2 In this instance, the tribes had not moved across the border into Canada, but their easy access to military supplies and weapons there dictated many of their actions in the region. Despite their defeat and the land cession they accepted when they signed the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, the long-established diplomatic and economic links between the tribes south of the Great Lakes and British Indian agents operating across the border remained strong. In 1805, a decade after Wayne’s victory, the Shawnee shaman Tenskwatawa (known as the Prophet) began his spiritual and diplomatic efforts to block the American advance into Ohio and Indiana. After falling into a trance and dreaming of going to the spirit land and meeting the Maker of Life, he arose with a new religious message. He urged his listeners to stop using alcohol, to refrain from participation in the fur trade, and to work toward family stability and unity in village life. He taught that Indian survival depended on a complete rejection of all dealings with the Americans. If they followed his teachings, he promised that peace and contentment would follow (Edmunds 1983: 32–41). The Prophet encouraged his followers to bring his teachings to other tribes, and eventually he gathered supporters throughout much of the upper Midwest. But such a multi-tribal association would need external support. His success in attracting adherents led him to establish Prophetstown, a community consisting of members from many different tribes, in northeastern Indiana. When food shortages threatened the community, he sent his half-brother Tecumseh north to Canada asking for help. Tecumseh told his host William Claus that the Indians hoped to stay at peace if war between Britain and the United States broke out, but he promised that the tribes of the Ohio Valley would join the British against the white invaders (Edmunds 1983: 70–71). Appealing to their earlier military ties, Tecumseh tried to negotiate, but without much success. Although they welcomed the Indian visitors, Canadian officers reminded the visitors that the United States and Britain remained at peace and warned them not to attack the Americans. Later when the War of 1812 broke out, many of the tribes in the area sent fighting men to join the British. The ties between the

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Ohio Valley Indians and their allies that drew them into the conflict faded after the US victory over the British in October 1813 at the Battle of the Thames in Ontario and the death of Tecumseh.3 For the second time, the tribes living in the Ohio Valley and south of the Great Lakes had used their cross-border connections as a basis for their defensive actions toward the United States. Both times their efforts failed when the United States won. Farther west, tribes in the upper Mississippi Valley also enjoyed close economic and diplomatic ties to British traders for at least the first three decades of the nineteenth century. A fraudulent 1804 treaty that surrendered their entire home territory east of the Mississippi left the Sauk and Mesquaki living in Illinois and Iowa angry and strongly anti-American. Like their close neighbors the Ho Chunk (Winnebago), Potawatomi, and Menominee, they traded almost entirely with Canadian merchants. During the War of 1812 many of the young men from each of these tribes joined the British at Detroit and fought alongside their forces in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. They also conducted raids in the Mississippi Valley and defeated several American forces sent against them. Later, during the 1820s and 1830s, their earlier wartime experiences induced many of the villagers to trek north and east to Malden, just across the river from Detroit, each summer to continue their earlier relationship and to receive modest presents and diplomatic praise from their hosts. So many made the annual trip that the pioneers called their route the Great Sauk Trail (Hagan 1958). Regardless of what the British might have thought about these relationships, those visits kept alive Native peoples’ belief that they could depend on a warm welcome and the continuing support and friendship of officers in Canada. In the early 1830s, that mistaken idea helped lead to the tragic Black Hawk War. During the decade after the War of 1812, the tribes in the upper Mississippi Valley experienced a catastrophic decline in the fur trade. Overhunting and competition for pelts among the area tribes nearly exterminated many species. That, coupled with American insistence that the Indians stop dealing with Canadian traders, brought real hardship to many villages. The US-operated trading posts of the factory system offered neither alcohol nor credit, but the Indians depended on getting both to continue their trade networks. Unlike the US system, Canadian-based traders continued to offer Indian hunters both essential credit, which strengthened tribal economic life, and alcohol, which kept alive their diplomatic connections with the British. In 1831 US troops forced the remaining Sauk and Mesquaki west into Iowa, setting off a series of events that led to war the next summer and again leading Native people to seek aid across the border. After suffering through a cold winter, in early 1832 Sauk women reported that they could not break the tough Iowa sod to plant their usual crops and begged to return to their well-tilled fields in Illinois. While some tribal leaders debated, they received an invitation

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to move to the village of the Winnebago Prophet, near their original home village. Rumors of support from nearby tribes circulated, and a small delegation traveled northeast to Malden seeking British help. Officials there warned that they were at peace with the United States and could not give their visitors any assistance. Ignoring that refusal, when the Indians returned home, the delegation’s leader lied. He told his listeners that the British would send munitions and possibly even troops to help. His remarks fed the dissident chiefs’ fantasy, persuaded them to return east into Illinois, and brought utter destruction during the Black Hawk War. In this instance their long-held allegiance with the British and wishful thinking that this would bring them crucial help from the north brought disaster.4

Retreat and Refuge A generation later, American efforts to direct Indian affairs west of the Mississippi River led to major violence and involved a third kind of effort to use the international border, this time as a means of direct escape from American troops. The 1862 Dakota Sioux War in Minnesota offers the first example. There the Dakotas had lived peacefully alongside the growing white population for several generations. The 1862 conflict resulted from settler encroachment, the depletion of game the Indians needed, outrage caused by near starvation, and suspicion that they had been cheated out of their promised annuities. The unexpected war began on 17 August 1862, when one of four young Dakota hunters took some eggs they found near a farmer’s house. The men argued; one taunted a companion, calling him a coward. Responding, that man killed the farm family and some neighbors to prove his bravery. Returning to their village, the hunters demanded that the chiefs lead them to war, and vicious fighting began near the Dakota reservation along the Minnesota River and at nearby New Ulm (Anderson 1984; R. Nichols 2013: 100–22). In early December 1862, after the whites had defeated and scattered the Sioux bands, Little Crow, leader of the war faction among the Dakotas, tried to gather nearby tribes and other Sioux bands into a defensive alliance against the Americans. This effort failed. Meanwhile, in later December 1862, Sioux leader Standing Buffalo led some eighty people to Fort Garry in Canada to ask for help. This was different from earlier cross-border forays in which only a handful of delegates sought British aid. There they met with William McTavish, then governor of the Red River Colony, and Alexander Dallas, governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Tribal leaders had hoped that their military ties dating back to the time when Little Crow’s grandfather had fought alongside the British would make their hosts sympathetic to their plight. In the council that resulted, the refugees asked for little except protection in Canada from

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the Americans and from their tribal enemies, the Cree and the Ojibwe. Several months later, Standing Buffalo asked Governor Dallas to negotiate a peace with US General Henry Sibley, who was then leading troops against the Sioux in Dakota Territory. Unfortunately for the Indians, the general had no interest in negotiating. Fearing that the Dakota “invasion” might bring a war between Canada and the United States or that the newcomers might even attack the nearly defenseless settlers near Fort Garry, local Canadian officials hesitated to offer much help (Anderson 1986: 170–71). Then, in February 1863, fifteen lodges of Little Crow’s followers crowded north across the border just west of Pembina, and by spring several hundred Sioux had settled there. A month later, the chief led another eighty people to Fort Garry. There they asked for refuge. In May 1863 when Little Crow met local officials, he showed the flags and medals the British had given to the Dakota decades earlier, and he reminded his hosts of promises they had given while seeking Indian allies during the War of 1812. Little Crow hinted that he expected to ask Canadian officials to grant his followers asylum. However, during the talks at Fort Garry, local officials worried about keeping peace between the refugees and local Cree and Ojibwe bands as well as the nearby Métis, all of whom considered the Dakota as dangerous enemies. Settlement leaders also had to find food for their unwelcome visitors to prevent raids or pillaging. Pledging to remain at peace with those groups, Little Crow asked for weapons and ammunition to use in cross-border raids against the Americans, reminiscent of earlier requests by Shawnees and others. When his hosts refused any military help, the chief asked Governor Dallas to intercede with General Sibley about his treatment of the Sioux prisoners south of the border. In this instance the Sioux saw Canada as a safe haven and as a place from which they could launch new attacks on the Americans or possibly find new homes (Anderson 1986: 172–73). The Indians’ presence in the Red River settlements offered them some temporary escape from their pursuers. Little Crow continued to ask for British support, supplies, and ammunition. At the same time, he bragged openly about wanting to launch raids into the United States from Canada and pledged continuing warfare against the Americans. Governor Dallas worried that any Dakota cross-border attacks might endanger Canada’s hold on its small western settlements. Just before the war, American expansionists in Minnesota had talked about seizing the land controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company, and even some settlers in the Red River colony had called openly for that to happen (Lass 1980: 76–78). Having received little food or encouragement by spring 1863, many of Little Crow’s followers had abandoned him, slipping back south of the border into Minnesota or Dakota. At that point Little Crow hesitated. While he continued to talk openly about raiding into Minnesota, he also asked Governor Dallas to negotiate an end to the conflict. Dallas encouraged the

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Dakota to return home and not come back, and, once hostilities ended, most of these people returned to the United States. Yet for others the move into Canada became permanent. Today their descendants live on four small reserves in Manitoba and four others in neighboring Saskatchewan (Anderson 1984; Bleuk 1955: 317–24).5 The so-called Great Sioux War of 1876–77 offers a second example of how Indians used the border to escape military pursuit. That conflict began when the American government demanded that the Sioux surrender the Black Hills to the United States and move onto newly created reservations. It brought several thousand American troops into Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne lands and led to the heaviest fighting of the Plains Wars. After a Sioux-Cheyenne alliance crushed General Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn, the Sioux bands dispersed, scattering to hunt and prepare for winter. Urged on by a public eager for revenge, US Army units attacked the villagers repeatedly during the late autumn and winter. Those raids destroyed much of the Indians’ food, winter shelter, and clothing, as well as many of their horses. As early as December 1876, the soldiers’ attacks forced Sioux chiefs Black Moon and Little Knife to lead 109 lodges of their followers to Wood Mountain in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The next spring, Chief Four Horns brought another fifty-seven lodges to the Canadian prairies. In May 1877, Sitting Bull, the major figure in this drama, followed, crossing the border with 135 more lodges of refugees (Utley 1993: 181–85; Hadlow 2001: 25–42). For the bands who fled north to escape the repeated army raids and to continue their buffalo hunting, the border represented safety. A boy who lived with the Indians later described the Lakota’s motivations. “They believe things are different when you cross from one side [of the line] to another,” he reported. “On one side you are perfectly free to do as you please. On the other you are in danger” (quoted in Utley 1993: 182). Clearly that was not true, and just a few days after their arrival Major James M. Walsh of the North-West Mounted Police met the Sioux chiefs. He told the newcomers that they were in the land of the Great White Mother—the Queen—and that they had to obey her laws. That meant they could not cross the border south into the United States to raid. If they cooperated, however, Welsh told them they would enjoy peace and protection. If not, he threatened that the government would force them to leave Canada. Walsh reported that Sitting Bull promised to remain peaceful in Canada. The chief told him that “he had buried his arms on the American side of the line before crossing into the country of the White Mother . . . and that he would not return” there (quoted in Utley 1993: 188; see also Joyner 1974: 6–18; Morton 1977: 27–37). From the start, the Sioux presence in Canada became a diplomatic sore point in the country’s relations with the United States. Although the Mounties had welcomed the Sioux, their superiors in Ottawa wanted them to persuade

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the Indians to return to the United States. They feared that clashes between the refugees and the native Cree, Blackfoot, and Métis people who lived and hunted in the region would disrupt peace there. They also objected to the expense of feeding the refugees. While frontier officials tried to persuade the Indians to return south of the border, Canadian leaders urged the United States to modify its demands. Those included unconditional surrender, giving up their horses and guns, and moving to assigned reservations. At first the Americans did not respond, but in late May 1877 they sent a three-man delegation, including the Standing Rock Agency interpreter and one of Colonel Nelson Miles’s scouts, to Canada. They brought a letter from the commissioner of Indian Affairs asking that Sitting Bull consider making peace. The Lakota leader refused to meet the delegation. He asked, “What would I return [to the United States] for? To have my horses and arms taken away? What have the Americans given me? . . . I have come to remain with the Grandmother’s children” (quoted in Manzione 1994: 188). With promises of protection against American incursions from the Mounties, plenty of buffalo available nearby, and a solid trade with French Canadian merchants, the Native refugees settled into their new location. While the Indians lived up to their promise to remain at peace, nervous London authorities feared trouble with the United States and wanted them to leave Canada. To achieve that, the British minister in Washington, DC, urged the United States to drop its demand for unconditional surrender, allow the Indians to retain their horses and weapons, and persuade them to return peacefully to their agencies. American officials countered with demands that Canada intern their unwelcome guests and guarantee that Sitting Bull’s people would never return south of the border. This would have meant giving the refugees reservations and accepting them as Canadian Indians, something officials there refused to consider (Utley 1993: 191). General William Sherman threatened that if the Sioux raided across the border into the United States from their Canadian sanctuary, it would be considered an act of war by Canada. Clearly at this point neither society wanted to have to deal with the Sioux (Utley 1993: 192). Yet both governments moved to resolve the situation. US authorities decided to act as if it wanted the refugees to return south of the border, and in August the cabinet established the Sitting Bull Commission, headed by General Alfred Terry. Hoping to settle the issue in October 1877, Canada invited them to Fort Walsh to meet Sioux leaders. On 17 October, the commissioners, Sioux chiefs, and Mounties met. The council began without the traditional Indian ceremonies, as General Terry stood abruptly and read his statement. He reported that the president wanted peace, and urged his listeners to return home. Promising the refugees that they would be treated kindly, he repeated earlier American demands that they surrender their horses and guns. Those, he promised, would be sold and the money used to buy livestock for

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the Indians. Responding angrily, Sitting Bull charged that the Americans had “come here to tell us lies, but we don’t want to hear them” (quoted in Utley 1993: 196; see also Manzione 1994: 101–4). Clearly, the commissioners’ visit failed to change the situation. They offered nothing new but continued earlier American insistence on total Indian surrender, which the chiefs rejected. In the meantime, overhunting had destroyed the buffalo herds, making it necessary for the Ottawa government to supply their unwelcome guests with additional food and supplies. In this circumstance, the authorities made no effort to reach a permanent solution. They allowed the refugees to retain their weapons but provided no permanent home nor much food for them. During the next several years, Sitting Bull and other chiefs tried to make new alliances with other tribes, hoping to get enough fighting men to reopen their war with the Americans. In late 1877, joining the newly arrived Nez Perce chief White Bird, he sent messages to Crow tribe leaders asking for a new alliance, only to be rebuffed. Meanwhile, Major James Walsh, Mountie commander, urged the Sioux leaders to return home. Sitting Bull refused. He said that the Americans wanted his people to become farmers, something they rejected. “I am a hunter, and will hunt as long as there is wild game on the prairie. When the buffalo are gone I will send my children on the prairie to hunt mice,” he swore (quoted in Utley 1993: 206). Despite this defiant talk, during the next several years the other Sioux chiefs led their bands back into the United States, and in 1881 Sitting Bull and his last few hundred followers who remained left their Canadian refuge for reservation life in the United States (Manzione 1994: 49–55; Pennanen 1970: 123–40; Turner 1973). The spectacular but mostly unsuccessful flight of the Nez Perce from northeastern Oregon toward the southern border of present Alberta in 1877 provides the third example of Indian ideas about finding sanctuary in Canada. Their 1,170-mile-long trek began in June 1877 after a decade and a half of tension between several Nez Perce bands and American authorities. During the early 1860s, gold miners and would-be ranchers overran much of Nez Perce land, and tribal leaders objected. In response, the United States sent Calvin Hale, superintendent of Indian Affairs in Washington Territory, to negotiate a settlement. After some talks, he proposed a new reservation that included only a small part of traditional Nez Perce land. His ideas divided the tribe. Several partly acculturated bands accepted the new homeland, while leaders of several more traditional bands rejected it. They refused to acknowledge the treaty because they had not signed it and refused to move to the new reservation. For the next decade or more, they continued to live on their traditional land despite growing tensions between them and the invasive settlers. Those led directly to war when, on 14 June 1877, several young Indian men murdered a nearby settler, Richard Divine (McWorter 1952: 191–93, 206–26; Josephy 2007: 2–3; West 1998: 124–25).

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When news of the murder reached camp, the young men launched a series of unexpected attacks on local whites. Their actions left few options open to band leaders. They could remain and suffer the consequences at the hands of the US government, or they could try to escape. The chiefs chose the latter tactic. Led by Chief Joseph, Looking Glass, and Toohoolhoolzote, they slipped away through the northern Rockies, with militiamen and US regulars in pursuit. During their trek to the Canadian border, the Nez Perce were frequently overtaken and attacked by the army, but each time, desperate to protect their families, they repulsed the pursuing troops. The fugitives resolutely headed toward Montana, hoping to cross the border from there into southern Alberta. Unlike Sitting Bull’s followers, however, their luck ran out in October 1877 about fifty miles south of the international boundary when troops under Colonel Nelson Miles surrounded their camp. After a bitter fight at the Battle of Bear Paw, most of the chiefs surrendered. The war brought the near destruction of the traditional Nez Perce bands, and the government sent four hundred of the survivors south to Indian Territory (present Oklahoma).6 The survivors’ escape into Canada came with great hardship. About two hundred of the fugitives escaped during the early stages of the Battle of Bear Paw and followed Chief White Bird north into Canada. Escaping during a blizzard, one woman recalled the scene as being “stormy and snowing.” She recounted their misery: “The sun shut from sight and no stars at night, we could not know which way to go. Hungry, half naked and freezing, without matches, we had no fires at night” (quoted in West 1998: 297). Some friendly Cree gave the refugees some food and clothes on their flight north, while some Assiniboine and Gros Ventre, coaxed by Colonel Miles, attacked the stragglers, killing more than a dozen of them. Once in Canada, they hurried to Sitting Bull’s camp, where he and other Lakota leaders welcomed them as fellow victims of American aggression to the land of the Great Mother. During the summer of 1878, Colonel Miles sent north one of his officers with three Nez Perce, hoping to persuade White Bird to lead his followers back into the United States. The chief replied that he might agree if the Americans released their Nez Perce prisoners then held at Fort Leavenworth and allow them to return to Oregon. When Miles’s envoy rejected that, White Bird ended the talks. The chief died several years later, having never returned to the United States (Utley 1993: 204–5; West 1998: 298; Dempsey 1953: 23–29). The survivors remained on the Canadian plains for several years, but they faced the same issues that persuaded Sitting Bull to lead the last of his followers back into the United States. During the early 1880s, the destruction of the Canadian buffalo herds and lack of food from local officials, as well as the Mounties’ arguments about leaving Canada, convinced this latest set of refugees to return home. Small groups of Nez Perce drifted south across the border, and a few dozen managed to return to the Nez Perce reservation, while

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those Colonel Miles had captured in 1877 never returned to their homeland. Unlike their fellow Sioux exiles, the Nez Perce’s desperate flight to Canada and repeated victories over the soldiers who attacked their camps attracted widespread favorable attention in the United States, and Chief Joseph consequently became a minor celebrity.

Conclusion These incidents demonstrate how Indian leaders saw the international border as offering a variety of options for dealing with the invasion of settlers and the assault by their government on Indian lives and sovereignty. Rejecting American demands that they surrender their homelands, both the Iroquois and the Potawatomi moved north seeking new lands promised them in Canada. Even having achieved that, the Iroquois faced generations of legal challenges to their land title and now occupy only part of their original grant. The Indians of the Ohio Valley gained military support and encouragement from officials in Canada as they defended their land from invasive settlers, but they lost the wars. In the West, the Dakota, Sitting Bull’s followers, and the Nez Perce all hoped to escape pursuing US troops by crossing the border. Both of the Sioux groups succeeded briefly but had to return to the United States later. All but about two hundred of the Nez Perce failed to reach the border, and this small number drifted back into the country as well. In every case except the Nez Perce, tribal leaders tried to use previous military or economic ties to the Canada-based traders or military officers to justify their request for land, assistance, or refuge. Even though the Nez Perce had no such clear traditional connections, they had heard of Sitting Bull’s escape from the army and the refuge Canadians had offered his people (Greene (2010: 24–46). The Indians hoped that the northern border might give them some flexibility in their dealings with the Americans. They could and did choose actions based on their knowledge that a different situation might exist across the line. As a result, they expected to benefit from their physical movement and anticipated peaceful opportunities in Canada. However, as these examples demonstrate, often the easy border crossing achieved only some of their goals. As immigrants everywhere discover, their new circumstances did not always meet their expectations. The peaceful border crossers did acquire new homelands in Canada. Others who used their diplomatic connections to get military support received it, but only in the short run. By choosing to ally with the British and then remaining in the United States, their position became untenable when the hostilities ended. The desperate survivors of later wars in the West had few options. British Canadian authorities not only failed to welcome them, they actively worked to move them back south of the border into

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the United States. In each case, Indigenous leaders recognized and used the international border to gain options that they lacked without it. Roger L. Nichols received a PhD in US history at the University of Wisconsin. His teaching and research focused on western America and Indians in American history. He taught at the Universities of Wisconsin, Maryland, Georgia, and Arizona, as well as four universities in Germany. He has held four Fulbright appointments, received three National Endowment for the Humanities awards, and published twelve books. The two most recent are Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge City: Re-creating the Frontier West (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018) and Indians in the United States and Canada: A Comparative History, 2nd ed. (University of Nebraska Press, 2018).

Notes 1. For a broad perspective, see Taylor 2006. 2. For British-US-Indian relations during the era, see Calloway 1986 and R. Nichols 2013: 13–36. The military campaigns are dealt with in Gaff 2004; Jortner 2012; and Sword 1985. For biographies of Indian leaders, see Carter 1987 and Thompson Kelsay 1984. 3. See also Edmunds 1983; Sugden 1997 and 1985; and Owens 2007. For the military aspects of the war, see Prucha 1969. 4. For a thorough analysis of the British connections, see R. Nichols 2013: 77–99. See also R. Nichols 2017: 110–31; and Jung 2007. 5. For a readable narrative, see Turner 1973; Elias 1990 gives an unfocused discussion. 6. West (1998: 152–282) follows the conflict in detail.

References Anderson, Gary C. 1984. Kinsmen of Another Kind: Dakota-White Relations in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1650–1862. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ———. 1986. Little Crow: Spokesman for the Sioux. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press. Bleuk, Alvin C., Jr. 1955. “The Sioux Uprising: A Problem in International Relations.” Minnesota History 30(4): 317–24. Brant, Joseph. 1832–34. “Speech of the United Indian Nations, December 18, 1786.” In American State Papers: Indian Affairs, 1:8–9. Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton. Calloway, Colin G. 1986. Crown and Calumet: British Indian Relations, 1783–1815. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ———. 1995. The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007. Shawnees and the War for America. New York: Penguin Library of American Indian History. Carter, Harvey Lewis. 1987. The Life and Times of Little Turtle: First Sagamore of the Wabash. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

American Indians and US-Canada Transborder Migration | 35 Clifton, James A. 1975. A Place of Refuge for All Time: Migration of the American Potawatomi into Upper Canada 1830 to 1850. Ottawa: National Museum of Canada. Cruikshank, E. A., ed. 1923. Correspondence of Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, vol. 2. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society. Dempsey, Hugh. 1953. “The Tragedy of White Bird: An Indian’s Death in Exile.” Beaver 73 (February–March): 23–29. Edmunds, R. David. 1983. The Shawnee Prophet. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Elias, Peter Douglas. 1990. The Dakota of the Canadian Northwest. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Gaff, Alan D. 2004. Bayonets in the Wilderness: Anthony Wayne’s Legion in the Old Northwest. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Greene, Jerome A. 2010 Beyond Bear’s Paw: The Nez Perce Indians in Canada. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Hadlow, Beth. 2001. “Sanctuary: Native Border Crossings in the North American West.” American Review of Canadian Studies 31 (Spring/Summer): 25–42. Hagan, William T. 1958. The Sac and Fox Indians. Norman: University Oklahoma Press. Hele, Karl S., ed. 2008. Lines Drawn Upon the Watwere: First Nations and the Great Lakes Borders and Borderlands. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Hogue, Michael. 2015. Metis and the Medicine Line: Creating a Border and Dividing a People. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Horsman, Reginald. 1967. Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783–1812. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Indigenous and Northern Affairs, Canada. n.d. “First Nations Profiles.” Accessed 15 November 2017. http://fnp-ppn.aandc-aadnc.gc.ca/fnp/Main/index.aspx?lang=eng. Johnson, Charles M. 1963. “Joseph Brant, the Grand River Lands and the Northwest Crisis.” Ontario History 55 (December): 267–82. Jortner, Adam. 2012. The Gods of Prophetstown: The Battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American Frontier. New York: Oxford University Press. Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. 2007. Nez Perce Country. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Joyner, Christopher C. 1974. “The Hegira of Sitting Bull to Canada: Diplomatic Realpolitik.” Journal of the West 13 (April): 6–18. Jung, Patrick J. 2007. The Black Hawk War of 1832. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. “Lands/Membership Department.” n.d. Six Nations of the Grand River. Accessed 18 November 2017. www.sixnations./ca/MembershipDept.htm. Lass, William E. 1980. Minnesota’s Boundary with Canada: Its Evolution since 1783. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press. Manzione, Joseph. 1994. I Am Looking North for My Life: Sitting Bull 1876–1881. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 188. McWorter, L. V. 1952. Hear Me, My Chiefs! Nez Perce History and Legend. Caldwell, ID: Caxton Press. Miller, J. R. 2000. Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada, 3rd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Morton, Desmond. 1977. “Cavalry or Police: Keeping Peace on Two Adjacent Frontiers, 1870–1900.” Journal of Canadian Studies 12 (Spring): 27–37. Nichols, David Andrew. 2018. Peoples of the Inland Sea: Native Americans and Newcomers in the Great Lakes Region, 1600–1870. Athens: Ohio University Press. Nichols, Roger L. 2013. Warrior Nations: The United States and Indian Peoples. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ———. 2017. Black Hawk and the Warrior’s Path, 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.

36 | Roger L. Nichols Owens, Robert M. 2007. Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Pennanen, Gary. 1970. “Sitting Bull: Indian without a Country.” Canadian Historical Review 51 (June): 123–40. Prucha, Francis Paul. 1969. The Sword of the Republic: The United States Army on the Frontier, 1783–1846. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Stanley, George F. G. 1950. “The First Indian “Reserves” in Canada.” Revue d’historie de Amerique Francaise 4 (September):148–201. Sugden, John. 1985. Tecumseh’s Last Stand. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ———. 1997. Tecumseh: A Life. New York: Henry Holt. ———. 2000. Blue Jacket: Warrior of the Shawnees. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Sword, Wiley. 1985. President Washington’s Indian War: The Struggle for the Old Northwest. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Taylor, Alan. 2006. The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Thompson Kelsay, Isabel. 1984. Joseph Brant, 1743–1807. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Turner, C. Frank. 1973. Across the Medicine Line. Toronto: McCelland and Stewart. Utley, Robert M. 1993. The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull. New York: Henry Holt. West, Elliott. 1998. The Last Indian War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. White, Richard. 1991. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. New York: Cambridge University Press.

chapter

2 Warped Mirrors Shifting Representations and Asymmetrical Constructs on the Border(s) of the American Southwest Jeffrey Swartwood

There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places, places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society which are something like countersites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. —Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias”

In this period of increasingly constructed and amplified borders, physical or in the realm of policy, the role of the border in the American identity remains surprisingly unsettled. There are multiple representations of national and cultural borders, with complex and sometimes contradictory aspects. This is certainly true throughout the US-Mexican borderlands of the American Southwest. This chapter intends to examine specific aspects of border representations related to the paradoxes of an “American” identity whose historical codes include crossing borders, both territorial and cultural. To this end an examination can be made of the emigrant narrative, notably that of Americans leaving the United States behind only to then be reintegrated by circumstance within its boundaries. In this way, we can better address the asymmetrical notions of border and cultural porosity as they are incorporated in a broader national identity construction. While this analysis initially focuses on the historical examples of individual Americans in Southern California1 during the period leading up to the Mexican-American War, it is a step toward an examination of a broader cultural system in which multiple narratives indicate a continuous flow across cultural and political borders. This helps to perceive

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the border in its historical fluidity, as well as to perhaps view the transgressions by Americans of their own spatial and notional constructs as a continuous process central to the American popular identity. The choice of California as a reference point from which to examine the role of the border in the national identity construction process is based on two primary factors. The importance of California in the popular imagination is the first of these. From the Gold Rush of 1849 to the emergence of the California lifestyle as a national reference in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, representations of California have been formative. As historian Kevin Starr (1973) stated in his preface to Americans and the California Dream, “While barely a name on a map, it entered American awareness as a symbol.” More than an isolated construct, in many ways the California Dream can be perceived as one of the pillars of the American Dream. The importance of this state, both historically and in terms of contemporary influence whether demographic, sociocultural, or economic, is difficult to overstate. The second factor is that within the early immigration of American citizens to nineteenthcentury California, three principal categories of narrative can be perceived, which can then be compared to examples from other geographic or temporal spaces within the national sphere. In this analysis, emigrant narratives are divided into dominant, parallel, and counter-narrative examples. While overlapping and interacting, each type of narrative plays a role in the complex process of building both a nation and a national identity. The following selected examples are intended to demonstrate the complexity and potential variations of American border transgressions into Mexican California and to broaden the discussion of the perception and role of this border.2 Notably, these examples can serve as a reference point in establishing how border crossings by Americans, including emigration in various levels of permanence, form an important element in the American identity paradigm in which the perception of inclusion and exclusion along the national borders plays an important role. In many ways, the dominant narrative of the settling of California can be matched to that of the national narrative of Manifest Destiny and the settling of the West. In this telling, a combination of government-sponsored efforts and individual initiatives led to the settling of California as part of an inevitable national effort to expand and “transform any country, inhabited by any kind of population, into something like itself simply by extending over it the magic charm of its political institutions” (Schurz 1893: 737). This view of Anglo-American expansion is largely accepted not only by the popular classes but also by academics of various fields, who largely relate invaders who “expropriated the land, imposed a new body of law, a new language, a new economy, and a new culture” (Pitt 1966: 256). While acknowledging the vast scholarship surrounding the notion of Manifest Destiny as an explanation for American territorial expansion and domination, this analysis seeks to address how spe-

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cific regional examples of the movement of American citizens during the period of expansion and annexation compare with the myth. Historians such as David Weber (1982: 206) differentiate between different phases of American emigration and accurately note variations between those settlers attracted to the region during the first decades of the nineteenth century and those who arrived only at the brink of annexation. What may be lacking in the traditional analysis, however, is the recognition of the complex plurality of bordercrossing forms. It should be remembered that just as this text focuses primarily on the region of California, it also focuses primarily on individuals—the building blocks of the pioneer narrative—and the endeavors of the US government. Independent, larger scale, coordinated emigration also occurred, a perfect example being the Mormon exodus from Illinois to escape American social pressure and legislative control. This movement overlaps the temporal and geographic spaces here discussed but is outside the main geographic focus of our work.3 While the dynamics of those movements, including being caught up by an expanding United States and mixed feelings of appurtenance, largely parallel those explored here, the scope of this analysis here prohibits their full exploration.

Mechanisms and Actors of Expansion Within this general dynamic of expansion into the Southwest, two main categories of actors can be discerned—the individual emigrant and those representing in some manner the state. The first category is composed of settlers whose intent was not necessarily to participate in the conquest of Mexican California, but rather to settle “new” lands described in the popular reports of California’s naturally rich environment, to partake in the economic possibilities offered by coastal commerce, or to take advantage of exaggerated tales of an easier passage than that afforded by the trail to the Oregon territories to the north. In the tomes of Hubert Bancroft’s (1886) History of California covering the Mexican period of governance, the individual names of these parties are noted by year, along with their motivations if known to the author. Documents such as journals were at times conserved or even published, providing additional insight.4 In other cases, the passage of groups of American immigrants5 is noted without specification of individual identities. As in most simplified narratives, the details of individuals are frequently unknown or unreported and yet contribute to the collective sense of historical participation. This vague, anonymous-but-inclusive structure is one mechanism by which a broad narrative contributes to the construction of an accepted identity model that is, to an extent, historically accurate yet also ignores individual variations within the greater, popular mass.

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The other group of agents that forms the basis for the dominant narrative is that of state-sponsored individuals whose international border crossings are sanctioned by the nation. Perfect illustrations of this can be found in the various military forces that intervened in Mexican California in the mid1840s. Without our delving into the historical details of each figure, Robert F. Stockton, Stephen W. Kearny, and John C. Frémont are names well-known to Californian scholars for their roles in the conquest of California.6 While the motivations and roles of each of these figures vary, their participation in the conquest narrative can be briefly described as leaving the national territory, but at its government’s bequest and with the objective of its expansion. These soldier-settlers therefore penetrate into a foreign country as part of their military service, but subsequent to conquest they act in their own (albeit recently acquired) national territory. The interaction between the two groups forming the dominant narrative was complex in that it was a convergence of both calculated and chance interactions, including mutual support in response to both individual and national needs. While national policy under President James Polk7 sought the acquisition of California for reasons of national and ideological interest, individuals involved in the acquisition process participated for their own reasons as well. Land acquisition, social ascension, adventure—each of these can be found in period accounts and testimonies. Perhaps the most emblematic example of such convergence is that of John C. Frémont, whose actions in the military conquest involved not only an ambiguous national role but also personal ambition, including the creation of a provisional new nation during the Bear Flag Revolt (Harlow 1982: 97–114). This process, involving immigration, conquest, and establishing of new national and international boundaries, reveals how porous those boundaries were in the context of the nineteenth century and to what extent they overlapped. At the root lies the possibility that emigration and conquest, while requiring an exit from national territorial borders, were an extension of national cultural borders. In this sense, Frémont’s individual ambitions were culturally coherent while at times at odds with national directives. While such a positioning may appear contradictory to the modern reader, Robert E. May (1991: 61–65) convincingly argues that in the popular mind-set of the period, international transgressions, including filibustering expeditions, were a logical and acceptable extension of American virtues and history. Just as such conquests were a largely acceptable social mechanism in the mid-nineteenth century, their role in the expansion of the United States is largely unquestioned as part of a larger identity construction in the dominant expansionist narrative. Thus to canonical historians, their border crossings were part of a normalized social construct, a manifestation of what Bancroft (1886: 299) called “a wide-spread feeling that California belonged by some sort of natural right to the republic.” The early settlers and soldiers, in this nar-

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rative, may have technically crossed an international boundary upon leaving the United States, but they perhaps in no meaningful way crossed a collective national cultural boundary, as they were, in a sense, trespassing on land that was already notionally, if not yet legally, theirs. That such figures can be interpreted as profoundly and typically American in the popular ideal is supported by historian Neal Harlow (1982: xvi) in his estimation of their role: “Time and distance lend new perspectives, and alien ways seem as ever obscure, but anyone familiar with American character will recognize Larkin, Gillespie, Stockton, Kearny, and Riley (if not Frémont) at the first encounter.” If the dominant narrative of American emigration presents a picture of willing expansionism, there are several parallel narratives in which border transgressions occur and national expansion takes place, though personally unintended. There is an overlap with categories of actors in this narrative variation: as representatives of the US government, certain military officers not only through obligation but through personal conviction participated in the conquest of the Southwest. John C. Frémont and Robert Stockton sought to impose US governance on Mexico, for example. But there is also scholarship suggesting that much of the officer corps was indifferent to, or even against, national territorial expansion. In his analysis “Manifest Destiny and Military Professionalism,” historian Samuel J. Watson (1996: 469) unequivocally states that “as a group, officers were certainly national and ethnic chauvinists, but they did not express expansionist sentiments ardently or often, contrary to the assumptions made by most scholars.” While the physical process and result of transgression and conquest remain unchanged compared to the dominant narrative, the perspective and intent are clearly different. A similar category of participants can be found in the commercial sailors who found themselves in the ports of California at the time of military action. Of diverse and sometimes surprising origins,8 such sailors participated in all of the major campaigns of the conquest, and yet their presence in California was simply a factor of their employment, and their enrollment in the fighting often a case of perceived necessity or local loyalty rather than a notional nationalistic endeavor. The early California historian William Smythe (1908: 202–3), for example, mentions the whaling ship crews whose service was motivated by “apparently well-founded rumors of a plot of the Californios to kill the Americans.” Among those sailors whose role in the conflict has been recorded as a patriotic episode, it may be noted that Albert B. Smith had, following a period as a sailor involved in the tallow and hide trade, “settled in the community, converted to Catholicism, and married the daughter of a ‘distinguished’ Californio family” (Hughes 2012: 9). While his participation in favor of the United States during the actual conflict with Mexico is clear, his disassociation from the country prior to that conflict also seems apparent.

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A similar case can be made for the participation of various frontiersmen who were present in the state in the years prior to the mid-1840s (Weber 1982: chap. 10). This period, heavy in political upheaval with several revolutions and governmental reversals, found American citizens taking up arms on various, and sometimes opposing, sides of the conflicts depending on which alliance better suited their own interests. While there is no historical question that such men took an active part in the campaigns of 1846–48 on behalf of the United States, it can be asked whether they would have done the same should another power—Californian or foreign—have sought to overturn the Mexican government. Even such notable figures as Kit Carson, who served as a guide and aide to both General Kearny and Major Frémont, do not appear to have acted as much out of nationalist fervor as out of both the need for employment and a sense of adventure. In these cases, there were convergent interests that resulted in American expansion, but the outcome was as much a by-product of personally inspired transgressions as a serious intent to spread a national culture or territory. Yet through various mediums, these parallel experiences are often incorporated into the dominant narrative of westward expansion.9 It is difficult to fully qualify the extent of this process, whose sources vary from oral stories, cartoon references, simplified histories such as William Smythe’s (1908) renderings of John Frémont’s popular reputation and nickname, the Pathfinder,10 and more. In any case, a broad picture appears to be painted in which personal and national border-crossing tales seem conveniently aligned in the national discourse, alongside such qualities such as independence and individual courage that have been adopted by the popular culture perception as profoundly American.11 Perhaps the most unrecognized category of border crossings in the settling of California is that of American citizens whose immigration to Mexican California appears not only to have been unrelated to an intentional national or cultural expansion, but to have entailed a more complete set of transgressions. Among the early regional settlers are a group of emigrants who not only left the American national territory, but also embraced a new nationality, language, and religion with the intention of permanent assimilation. Even among those familiar with the American Southwest, the notion that American pioneers were in effect fleeing the United States rather than working toward its expansion can be a novel revelation. Three examples of prominent Mexican Californios of American origins, Able Stearns, William Heath Davis, and Henry Fitch, can serve to illustrate this counter-narrative. The first of these, Able Stearns, was born in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, from whence he emigrated to Mexico in 1826 in order to participate in the South American and Pacific shipping trade, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1828 and arriving in the capital of Mexican Califor-

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nia, Monterey, in 1829. He participated in regional politics, holding office as sindico, or fiscal agent, in Los Angeles and marrying into the prominent Bandini family via his union with Arcadia Bandini. While the Huntington Library holds a large collection of Stearns’s correspondence and records of his extensive business transactions, references to any involvement in expansionist policies are unknown prior to the declaration of hostilities in 1846. Rather, one finds that Able Stearns became proficient in Spanish and converted to Roman Catholicism, thus becoming not only politically, but linguistically, religiously, and intimately integrated into the local Mexican Californio community. Henry Delano Fitch presents a similar profile, arriving in California in 1826 soon after Mexican independence from Spain in 1821 and having worked as a shipmaster in the Pacific trade. Falling in love with Josefa Carillo, Fitch sparked a local controversy when he adopted Mexican citizenship, converted to Catholicism, and yet, due to complications with his wedding plans, eloped to Peru with his intended in 1828 before returning to regularize his situation in California in 1829. Like Able Stearns, Henry Fitch participated in civic society, holding several offices and changing his name to a locally more respectable Hispanicized Enrique Domingo. While maintaining a lively social and business correspondence with the United States, he did not actively advocate for territorial or even cultural inclusion with his former nation.12 While it is important to note that Fitch actively traded with Kearny’s forces during the period of 1846–48, it is also noteworthy that he happily supplied multiple actors in local politics and abroad throughout the 1840s. In sum, his actions up to and during the conquest of California appear to be individually rather than nationally motivated. Another example can be found in the figure of William Heath Davis, a Hawaiian-born US citizen who immigrated to Mexican California permanently in 1838. From a Boston-area seafaring family, Davis took up residence in Monterey and then San Francisco, creating a trading network and participating in the local community.13 Of interest in citing the case of Davis is that he maintained social and commercial ties to both Hawaii and the United States and, possessing both citizenships, clearly had a choice in not only his place of residence but also his national appurtenance. That he would choose to integrate into Mexican Californian society indicates that his personal pursuits, whether commercial or emotional, overcame any sense of national belonging. Synthesized in the preface to Davis’s (1967: x) autobiographical Seventy Five Years in California, “He stood well with the native landed gentry, married into the land-rich Estudillo family, and at one time became, himself, a ranchero.” Of particular interest in this context is that Davis married into the prominent Estudillo family through his union with Maria de Jesus Estudillo only in 1847, indicating that even in the midst of an international confrontation of territories and perhaps cultures, his own actions were driven by personal impera-

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tives. He clearly did not see the Estudillos as either enemy or inferior. And he relates his religious conversion with simple pragmatism that belies any serious qualms about the change. “So, if a young man wished to obtain the hand of a California lady in marriage he was compelled to turn Catholic,” Davis (1967: 55) states, prior to naming other Americans who acted similarly and noting that his own conversion occurred “several years before his wedding.” Other examples and case studies abound in the region during this period, and the intent of this analysis is not to present an exhaustive listing of such figures. Rather, the presentation of these historical figures is intended to support the idea of a substantial counter-narrative to the dominant perceived theory of expansionism and rigid socio-national border constructs. In each of these cases, US citizens not only transgressed the national and cultural borders, but did so knowingly and, up to the moment of an American conquest that they did not solicit, permanently. In doing so, they were embracing many of the indicators ascribed by Ernest Gellner (1983: 7) as constituting national identity in the form of culture, “where culture in turn means a system of ideas and signs and associations and ways of behaving and communication.” By adopting the language, religion, and civic and social codes, the historical figures cited above appear to have clearly transitioned from American to Mexican, and certainly to Californio, national cultural appurtenance. In this, these emigrants were not a willing part of American expansion in a territorial sense, and only partially (because any lasting interaction, whether social or commercial, leads to a hybrid construct) in terms of cultural expansion. While included in the construction of American California, it is as assimilated Mexican citizens that this occurs and not as invaders or as pioneer settlers. They are therefore, in fact, examples of a counter-narrative, one in which personal border crossings in the form of emigration are in no tangible way related to the American expansion myth.

Constructing the Narrative Such histories rarely find their way into the broader historical narrative of Anglo-American settlers and settlement, partially due to the reductive nature of generalized histories and partially, it can be argued, due to the contradictory example that they present. In the majority of sources, either popular or academic, the American-Mexican Californios are simply referred to as American. When their adopted nationality is acknowledged in regional historiographies, canonic authors such as William Smythe (1908: 200) tend to downplay the significance as a minor point, even describing it as “the pleasantest memory of the period” as he recites the “most embarrassing situation.” Questions of national culture and social adhesions, including the potential betrayal of the said

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constructs, are lightly addressed as anecdotal of the practical nature of siding with the forces that could offer “personal security, material prosperity, and liberal self-government” (Smythe 1908: 200). Smythe’s analysis is interesting in that it paradoxically both supports and undercuts the popular and populist expansionist doctrine. On the one side, the United States is presented as certain vanquishers in the conflict, and adhesion to the cause is as justified as it is inevitable. However, those Anglo-Californios who chose to side with the Americans did so not out of national loyalty but out of necessity, in conflict with their “obligations to their adopted country and the natural sympathies of their wives with the race to which they belonged” (Smythe 1908: 200). Here national borders are crossed and recrossed, with conflictingly presented ideals of national and personal loyalties creating an identity dilemma. Yet, this conflict has often been trivialized and, as such, removed as a serious counter-narrative option. Considering the vehemence of the rhetoric associated with Manifest Destiny—in both historical and contemporary writings—this trivialization is particularly surprising. The same broad national body that condemned (literally) the San Patricios, Irish immigrants who ended up fighting for the Mexican cause during the Mexican-American War, can ignore such potentially treasonous behavior within its own territorial boundaries. Such a paradox requires further examination but implies a flexible border conception. That such American Californios were welcomed back into the national fold—both contractually under the terms of Article VIII of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (Law Library of Congress 2012)14 and socially into the changing California community—reveals a porosity and a flexibility that is both notional and pragmatic. On the one hand, it reveals that the social borders, like the national territorial borders, were porous constructs that could be bent to the perceived needs of a given context. As such, in parallel with the dominant narrative, the collective identity is encouraged to continue in spite of divergences in its composition. On the other hand, the strong commercial networks linked with social connections and local knowledge represented pragmatic concerns that made these American-Mexican-Americans a valuable asset in exploiting the potential of a newly acquired and largely foreign territory. The rhetorical constructions clearly dividing one side from the other, in national, cultural, or ethnic terms, are thus set aside in an example of pragmatism that transcends borders. If, as Calvin Coolidge stated in his address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1925, “the chief business of the American people is business,” then the largely Anglo-American immigrant population to California was willing to set nationalistic border transgressions aside in order to get on with something equally American, the development of the region in an economic sense. The re-examination of dynamics of American expansion in mid-nineteenth-century California clearly show that multiple variations existed among

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American emigrants and that those variations ranged from supporting, to complementing, to opposing the dominant idea of a coherent American expansion. At the very least, all of the three types of migration narrative inherently evoke a departure from the territorial space of the United States and thus a crossing of national borders. While such a statement seems obvious, it implies that, at that point in the national construction process, not only was the physical border not fixed, but the notional border was clearly also in flux. If, as it can be inferred from the broader scope of departures from the United States, the act of leaving is revelatory of profoundly American characteristics and traditions, how can we reconcile these states? In this light, emigrants such as Abel Stearns can be seen as profoundly American for having sought their fortunes outside the settled territories, showing courage and adaptation, even while adopting Mexican nationality. Variations of historical filibustering figures, from John C. Frémont to Lansford W. Hastings, whose “half formed purpose of exciting a revolution, of wresting California from Mexico, and of establishing an independent republic with himself as president, or at least of annexing the country to Texas” (Bancroft 1886: 396) in 1844, reveal a national cultural, if not political, ideal in formative, unsettled, and at times contradictory terms. At the heart of this expansion lies a striking paradox: a profoundly individual and yet—in this context—“American” action, that of expanding the nation, implies leaving that nation behind, both in physically crossing the national border that defines its territory and by leaving behind the construct of the nation as it existed at the moment of departure. There is an important difference to be retained between national and individual transgressions in this case, though the two may coexist both in time and space. Expansion in the imperialistic sense combines the act of transgression with that of national transformation, in which the state is constantly replaced by choice with a larger, transformed version of itself. This can be observed in the military conquests associated with US expansionism. To various degrees independent from this action are the individual border transgressions, in which citizens or residents of the United States left the national territory and, to an extent, its culture for personal reasons having little or nothing to do with the expansion of the state. Recent scholarship has addressed this issue in works such as Rachel St. John’s (2011) Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexican Border. The author carefully examines both borderlands culture and the importance of the border itself within it. Discussing the multiple transgressions of filibustering expeditions in the 1850s, she states that the border crossings “reflected the unsettled and opportunistic climate of that time and place more than the imperial ambitions of the United States” (St. John 2011: 249). In the case of the conquest of Mexican California, the implications—territorial, military, economic—of the transformations to follow cross-border

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settlement were contemporarily acknowledged to be vast, even though they proved to be underestimated. Through the incorporation of California, a highly cosmopolitan population was integrated whose local culture was to have lasting implications on the national cultural construction.15 Even in the extremely short term, whether through the changing of trade dynamics via improved access to the Pacific markets or the changing balance of power that defined US-Mexican relations in the coming decades, crossing the border into Mexican California redefined the physical and imagined borders of the United States. In an interesting twist, the rhetorical constructs that were in part used to justify expansionism in the Southwest revealed elements that were to be integrated into the national culture and identity. To cite just a few of the profound transformations that are included in this dynamic in the example of California, the elements of religion, ethnicity, and civic institutions can be evoked. Despite the fact that the exposers of Anglo-American ethnic superiority in relation to national expansion were a highly vocal force, the imagined border between the relative ethnic Us and Them only became more muddled with the expansion into the Southwest. While, by the 1840s, the idea of Mexican ethnic inferiority was clearly established in popular cultural references, the desire to secure an expanded southern border from a people perceived as inferior had the opposite effect. Though certain contemporary chroniclers may have thought that the “Spaniards grated themselves on the conquered and debased aborigines, and the mongrel blood became dull and indolent” (Mayer 1847: 33), the territorial gains of 1848 integrated parts of this same population into the United States. As literary scholar Andrea Tinnemeyer (2005: 69) states in “Embodying the West: Lyrics from the U.S.-Mexican War,” “Indeed, the U.S.-Mexican War is a singular event marking the country’s entry into imperialism on an international scale and potentially opening up the category of citizen beyond the 1790 definition of free white male.” National and notional borders are thus crossed, and recrossed, as realities, and their accompanying representations are altered by the expansionist doctrine and conquest. In California, this is certainly the case as resident Mexicans (including those of American origins) and other foreign nationals, not to mention Native Americans, were brought into the national fold. Allies, former enemies, neutral observers to the conflict, all were now at least notionally equal upon accepting citizenship—including prominent Catholic, mulatto figures such as the last Mexican governor of Californio, Pío Pico.16 The multiple borders defining the country are thus shown to be flexible, porous constructions even as they are being publicly lauded and seemingly buttressed by a doctrine of national expansion and consolidation. In the case of California, to borrow from the argumentation of sociologists Adalberto Aguirre Jr. and Jennifer K. Simmers (2008), the “foreign body” in its many variants could not functionally be rejected as such by the dominant discourse without first destabilizing the myth by recognizing its

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variants/exceptions and secondly destabilizing the political and commercial constructions that were essential to control and valorize the newly acquired territory.17 To carry this line of thinking further, to reject American Mexican citizens would represent a double rejection of the self—myth and reality, just as the destabilization caused by economic rejection would be at not only material cost but also at the cost of rejecting an apparently core American objective—that of undertaking profitable business.

Expanding the Analysis The final part of this analysis lies in beginning to apply the complex scenario viewed in mid-nineteenth-century California to a broader scale, both in historical and representational terms, in order to begin to see whether these patterns of transgression, of emigration, are merely a regional anomaly or are part of a wider cultural pattern and paradox. While my own studies are largely focused on California, and borderland studies are often deeply rooted in local dynamics in which the border may be represented as an “irrelevant or incidental part of the borderland” (St. John 2011: 43), it seems that the individual/ national patterns of border transgression may be found in wider and more varied physical, temporal, and representational spaces. While the following examples may give the appearance of selectivity, they are acknowledged as being far from exhaustive, and their inclusion is an attempt to broaden the debate, to invite further analysis, and to begin the painstaking process of confronting different disciplines, discourses, and regions. The vastness of popular culture and history make such an approach unwieldly, especially in the reduced context of a chapter, but it is a potentially rewarding effort. The extent to which the examples drawn from mid-nineteenth-century California affect the dominant perception of borders in US popular culture is difficult to establish with certainty. At the very least, such examples serve to underline the need for a complexification of the canonic view of westward expansion. If, as has been asserted, westward expansion constituted a “chosen-people, beacon to mankind interpretation of America’s mission and duty” (Clark 1932: 1), then what is to be made of those Americans who voluntarily left their nation and nationality in order to reconstruct themselves? And what is to be made of the other, less permanently envisioned but equally consequential, border transgressions involved in the conquest of California? Should such actions and figures be treated as a simple, provisional phase in the overall mechanisms of a coherent expansion or as a regional specificity unique to a specific temporal and geographic space? Returning to one of the examples cited earlier in this text—that of Frémont’s army scout Kit Carson—suggests a wider application. Mr. Carson, leaving the

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United States in 1826 for the western—that is, Mexican—territories, established himself in Taos, after having lived among the Arapaho and Cheyenne Native American communities. While the time spent among, and even intermarriage with, Native American groups is a common theme among frontier representations, another aspect of Mr. Carson’s border crossing draws greater attention in the context of this analysis. While roving throughout much of the West, Carson consistently returned to reside in Mexican Taos, and it is there that “Kit was baptized by Fr. José Antonio Martinez in Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Taos on January 28, 1842” (Remley 2011: 94). This baptism, according to biographer David Remley (2011), was inspired more by his desire to wed Josefa Jaramillo, stepsister to his partner William Bent, than by a desire to more fully integrate into Mexican society. The ceremony is important, however, in that it illustrates the continuity of cultural border crossings prior to Carson’s involvement in the conquest of California. While Kit Carson has come to embody the spread of an expanding Anglo-American national identity construct, he himself was willing to forsake the apparent pillars of that construct: territorial residence, religion, and family ties. Tracing the historical and cultural lines from Carson, it becomes apparent that this form of border porosity was not unique to Carson himself. His earlier business partner of American origins, Robert McKnight, had preceded him in this national and cultural border crossing when in “1824 he returned to Santa Fe, married a local woman, and became a Mexican citizen” (Remley 2011: 53). Mr. Carson’s family history is also linked to that of another famous frontiersperson, Daniel Boone, who despite his folk hero status in the United States had himself emigrated to Spanish Louisiana in order to re-establish himself financially, adopting Spanish citizenship in the process, prior to American re-assimilation through the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. These examples, stemming from the extension of a regional analysis, support a greater scope of continuity in the apparently submerged narrative that undermines the dominant discourse of a consciously nationalized border expansion. In other words, the narrative appears to be constructed as much in spite of its component parts as because of them. It may be argued that American border figures, as much as their Mexican Californio counterparts on the eve of the Mexican-American War, showed that among other factors, “political loyalty may be emphatically modified by economic self-interest in dealings with foreigners across the borders” (Weber 1982: 241). In light of such examples, it appears that there is a further need to reexamine individual figures and their roles in the transformation of the borders of the United States, establishing case studies across time and geography in a re-evaluation of existing canonic, if popular, perceptions. In order to do so, a multidisciplinary, intersectional perspective is necessary to understand both the scope and the role of the porous border construct and the interplay

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between historical and representational realities. At which point did frontier adventurers such as Boone or Carson become the cornerstones of a simplified, homogenized tale such as exemplified by the singsongy televised Schoolhouse Rock videos that shaped a generation of contemporary Americans? In this widely diffused telling, the conquest of the West was a straightforward affair begun by President Thomas Jefferson “without a fuss” and finished by brave settlers willing to win “plenty of fights”—a combined allusion to both the Mexican-American War and the wars with Native Americans—along changing national borders in order to assert their collective and individual “land rights.”18 The re-evaluation of the role of the borders in the American identity construct is part of a broader rethinking of approaches to the border. Not only an element in the creation of borderland cultures, the border itself—and its transgression—has a great deal of real and imagined significance. And that significance varies according to peoples, times, and places. From Rachel St. John’s (2011: chap. 2) discussion of Native American rejection and subsequent manipulation of border constructions, or that of historian Pekka Hämäläinen (2009) in The Comanche Empire, to the mid-century use of the border as a tool of emancipation (e.g., Jacoby 2016), the historically plural border experience transcends the reduced national narrative. How to include the multiple examples and disciplines, and to transition between historical and cultural analysis, is a delicate balancing act. The idea behind this text is to begin a discussion, to invite further examination, and to provide examples that are far from exhaustive. If the canonic historical positions are to be revisited, so must the many other representations of the southwestern border be taken into account, as popular culture is affected as much by its history as by the representation and interpretation of that history, whether fictional or historiographical. In a conceptualization of the territorial and cultural border between the United States and Mexico as a more fluid, porous construct in which multiple realities and narratives coexist, how does one interpret other border-crossing representations? Taking just a few examples of important popular culture references, one can question to what extent fictionalized emigration portrayals serve as an extension of traditional historical emigration representations. The first of these is a brief scene in the iconic American Western film, John Ford’s (1939) Stagecoach. In what is in many ways a quintessential Western film, the protagonist Ringo (played by John Wayne) nonetheless suggests to his paramour that they leave the United States for a ranch that he owns in Mexico. In order to escape both justice and a family feud, Ringo speaks to Miss Dallas (played by Claire Trevor) of his ranch: “A real nice place, with trees and grass and water . . . and a cabin half-built. A man could live there, and a woman. Will you go?”19 Though the scene is short, and the imagined border crossing does not physically come to pass, the message is clear: in order to continue living the “American Dream” in its Western incarnation complete with good

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land, a cowboy lifestyle, freedom, and a family, the protagonist would be better off emigrating from the United States to Mexico. While questions of justice and personal honor, as well as the pragmatic concerns of the ranching conditions, come into play, the idea of leaving one’s country is only implicitly mentioned and that without apparent emotional attachment. From the director John Ford, and personified by none other than the iconic American cowboy figure John Wayne, such a proposition can be seen as profoundly surprising. And such a representation is not unique to the late 1930s Stagecoach. In other Western films such as the Wild Bunch (Pechinpah 1969) or All the Pretty Horses20 (Thorton 2000), protagonists closely associated with the iconic cowboy figure of the American Southwest seek a more profoundly traditional “American” experience south of the border in Mexico. In each case, and like the counter-narrative examples from the Mexican Californian period, the narrative begins as an open-ended departure based upon personal characteristics and motivations from which the national and nationalist discourse is largely, if not completely, absent. Do such films present an extension of the same American characteristics that drove early emigrants to Mexican California, or does each represent an anomaly, a deviation specific to time and place or creative license? And how can a culture that creates a cultural icon from a film such as Stagecoach not confront the paradox between an extreme identification as a closed, cohesive cultural identity in a time of focus on national border security and a cultural heritage that, in a parallel narrative, encourages departure from the national territory in order to attain that same cultural reference? This line of analysis can be further pursued in attempting to qualify the current exodus of US citizens toward Mexico, even in a time of concerted attention toward a closed or highly regulated border scenario. If Americans continue to cross the border, how might it be in a continuation of a long-standing tradition of emigration, and how have the literary or cinematographic representations of previous departures influenced this action? Far from a borderlands phenomenon, the cases of American citizens moving permanently to Mexico are at the center of interesting contemporary scholarship and reveal what appears to be a direct prolongation of the cultural counter-narrative of rigid border constructs, both national and notional. This emigration is recognized in the borderlands as a financially expedient mechanism, but it reaches much farther than simple economics. In the introductory interview presented by Stephen Banks (2005) in his work “Border Promotion Stories: Identity Management among Expatriate Retirees Living in Mexico,” the subject of his investigation sets a striking tone with this comment: “Yeah, I feel a lot freer here than I did in the United States” (33). Again, the paradox and porosity of the border are apparent. In crossing the border(s) into Mexico, the subject is manifesting the most profound of purported American values. It is important to state that the retiree community being studied is not from the borderlands of the South-

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west, but from the heartland states of Missouri or Georgia. While this is only a single example, it is as a representative of not only a larger movement but for the need for this movement to be studied and included in both academic and popular cultural constructs, inclusive of a re-evaluation of the borderland emigration dynamic.

Conclusion An important revision of the national border narrative is essential, not only for furthering our understanding of the actual mechanisms at work in the creation of a national identity, but also for evaluating the ramifications of an increasingly militarized and concrete (both figuratively and literally) border construction. The dominant narrative of Manifest Destiny social construction influences not only how we see the borders in the Southwest of the nineteenth century, but also how we construct them in the present. From the dominant axes of Chicano studies to populist politics, the perception of fixed rather than porous border constructions, whether ethnic or disciplinary, serves to limit the possibilities of study and of perspective. Thus the need exists to revisit these constructs, to re-evaluate them through a multidisciplinary and complexified approach that takes into account the “overlapping and competing narratives” (Ramos 2013: 579) of the nineteenth century in order to better represent both past and contemporary realities. Recognition of the plurality of the experiences that were involved in the US conquest of the Southwest opens new perspectives, in academic study and policy as well as in popular culture. The dangers of failing to do so are uncertain, not only in terms of conflicting cultural representations in a time of changing demographics, but also in terms of the continuance of mainstream American identity constructions that have traditionally relied upon border transgressions. The example of US residents easily crossing into Mexico is, again, quickly evoked—whether for tourism, as evoking rites of passage, or for residential stays of varying lengths. Should Americans find that the border has been closed to unwanted ingression, will they also find themselves deprived of the possibility to egress? And with this loss, will they lose that part of the capacity to test and redefine themselves that has proved to be an important part of the national imaginary? While the notion of territorial expansion in the model of Manifest Destiny is no longer prevalent, the idea of crossing borders—in this case national—for a wide range of reasons appears to continue to capture the imagination and play out in reality. If national territorial boundaries become less porous in both directions, Americans, as illustrated by Thomas Jefferson’s (quoted in P. Ford 1905: 351) writing of settlers reaching the Pacific and echoing another age, “may then set themselves down and weep for other worlds.”

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Jeffrey Swartwood was raised in California and has lived in France since the 2000s. His teaching and research focus on American civilization, especially in the area of Southwest border studies and California culture. Favoring an interdisciplinary approach, his work notably examines the complex social constructs in historical California and their representation in literature and film. He is currently an assistant professor at the Ecole Polytechnique near Paris and a member of the research group CLIMAS.

Notes 1. The examples cited in this work are, of course, limited but are intended to provide a cross section of the plurality of emigrant experiences. The works of David Weber (1982) and Hubert Bancroft (1886) provide multiple examples of emigrants seeking land ownership or other commercial opportunities in early to mid-nineteenth-century California. 2. For a telling representative example of the diversity of emigrants, see Bancroft 1886, vol. 4, chaps. 4, 10, 16, on foreign affairs and immigration. In each yearly entry, the author goes into great detail concerning the origins, intents, and actions of each known immigrant party as well as their reception from the Californians. In doing so, the author underlines the greater diversity among the participants in American expansion into Mexican California. 3. While the Mormon Battalion and, later, the Mormon Volunteers had a strong presence in Southern California during the Mexican-American War, the power dynamics in place merit a devoted work. What appears to be clear is that the ambiguous national sentiment and personal-political reasoning for their presence in California may mirror that developed in this chapter. For a succinct history, see Vurtinus 1979. 4. For an often cited example of such publications, see Bidwell (1890) 1966. 5. The term “immigrant” is here used in place of “emigrant” because the figures involved are not represented from an American perspective as leaving their nation and culture per se. While border and cultural transgressions occur in the settlement process, and while viewed by the Mexicans as immigrants or simply invaders, expansionist figures are not—in the popular perception—engaged in a process of departure. 6. Commodore Robert Stockton was responsible for the naval forces involved in the capture of California, while General Stephen Kearny led an overland expedition leading to the battle of San Pasqual near San Diego. John C. Frémont was a major with the topographical corps who played an important though ambiguous role in early American California, leading the Bear Flag Revolt against the Mexican government. 7. James Knox Polk (1795–1849) was the eleventh president of the United States, an expansionist elected in 1845 in part due to his promise to annex the newly independent Republic of Texas. 8. A striking example of this is that of student turned seaman, and subsequently author, Richard Henry Dana Jr., whose Two Years before The Mast is a canonical staple of travel literature and a reference in early California studies. 9. It should be noted that while clearly contributing to the expansion of the United States both directly and indirectly, many of the frontier explorer figures did not wish to culturally reintegrate into the “civilized” United States and remained outside of its cultural, if not territorial, borders by turning to the less structured inland territories. Their role was usually short-lived, if important, and appears based upon a broader

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10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

sense of cultural loyalty and, perhaps, personal gain, rather than on a clear notion of national expansion. For an example of such a text extolling Frémont as an American ideal, see Frederick W. Altstaetter’s (1953) John Charles Frémont: The “Pathfinder.” The opening paragraph reads as a personification of the paradigm, describing him as “remarkable,” “likeable,” “staunch,” “openhanded,” and showing “great personal courage” in his exploration of the West. Again, the sheer breadth of the material constituting “popular culture” renders a complete sourcing to be difficult, if not impossible. What appears clear, however, is that an abundance of sources—from book titles like Undaunted Courage (from Stephen E. Ambrose’s [1996] history of the Louis and Clark expedition) or the film Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier (Disney Studios, 1955)—suggest a strong link between desirable individual and cultural qualities and national border crossing in an expansionist narrative. A more complete history of Henry Fitch’s rather full life in California can be found in Adele Ogden’s (1981) biographical article. Davis left a rich autobiographical work detailing his time in California, offering insights not only into his personal and business relationships, but also into the question of national acquisition. See Davis 1967. Article VIII of the treaty covers questions of citizenship, creating both a mechanism for initial individual choice of citizenship and an automatic allocation of US citizenship after one year: “Those who shall prefer to remain in the said territories may either retain the title and rights of Mexican citizens, or acquire those of citizens of the United States. But they shall be under the obligation to make their election within one year from the date of the exchange of ratifications of this treaty; and those who shall remain in the said territories after the expiration of that year, without having declared their intention to retain the character of Mexicans, shall be considered to have elected to become citizens of the United States.” The extent of this influence is vast and largely outside of the scope of this work, but one can mention the influence of architects such as Cliff May in creating the archetypical suburban American ranch house as an extension of Californio ranchos, and the inclusion of barbecuing as a national culinary and cultural tradition, just to name two examples. Note that competing and contradictory narratives can be found in the levels of assimilation and reassimilation of local populations, including former American citizens, throughout the different regions and circumstances found in the Southwest at the time of, and subsequent to, conquest and annexation. Relatively low population densities, the striking changes and opportunities offered by the Gold Rush of 1849, and a cosmopolitan base all contributed to a facilitated acceptance of Americans who had sought and gained Mexican citizenship and whose actions may have been considered as scandalous, if not treasonous, under other circumstances. In their analysis “Mexican Border Crossers: The Mexican Body in Immigration Discourse,” Aguirre and Simmers (2008) provide a convincing critical analysis of border dynamics as relative bodies whose acceptance and rejection interact at both real and rhetorical levels. The Schoolhouse Rock series of animated shorts initially ran during the 1970s and ’80s during prime child-oriented time slots. Offering grammar tips, lessons on civic government, and American history, the colorful and catchy (though sometimes contested) productions greatly influenced their audience. Of particular relation to this work, the 1976 short “Elbow Room” succinctly states in one passage: “The way was

Warped Mirrors | 55 opened up for folks with bravery / There were plenty of fights / To win land rights / But the West was meant to be; / It was our Manifest Destiny!” Lyrics source: http://www .schoolhouserock.tv/Elbow.html. 19. This scene begins at approximately minute 51 in the film, and stretches over several minutes and two discussions, culminating in the couple’s decision to cross the border south to make a new life. 20. All the Pretty Horses is based on the novel by the same name by author Cormac McCarthy in 1992 as part of his Western trilogy. Winner of the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, among other recognitions, the novel has contributed to a critical and popular revival of the Western genre.

References Aguirre, A. J., Jr., and J. K. Simmers. 2008. “Mexican Border Crossers: The Mexican Body in Immigration Discourse.” Social Justice 35(4): 99–106. Altstaetter, F. W. 1953. “John Charles Frémont: ‘The Pathfinder.’” Military Engineer 55(36): 252–54. Ambrose, S. E. 1996. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. New York: Simon and Schuster. Bancroft, H. H. 1886. History of California. Vol. 4. San Francisco: A. I. Bancroft. Banks, S. P. 2005. “Border Promotion Stories: Identity Management among Expatriate Retirees Living in Mexico.” Storytelling, Self, Society 2(1): 32–47. Bidwell, J. 1966. Life in California before the Gold Discovery. Palo Alto, CA: Lewis Osborne. First published in Century Magazine 41(2) in 1890. Clark, D. E. 1932. “Manifest Destiny and the Pacific.” Pacific Historical Review 1(1): 1–17. Davis, W. H. 1967. Seventy Five Years in California: Recollections and Remarks by One Who Visited These Shores in 1831, and Except When Absent on Business Was a Resident from 1838 until the End of a Long Life in 1909. Edited by H. A. Small. San Francisco: John Howell Books. Ford, J., dir. 1939. Stagecoach [motion picture]. Ford, P. L., ed. 1905. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Vol. 9, 1799–1803. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Foucault, M. 1984. “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias.” Translated by Jay Miskowiec. Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité 1984: 2. Originally published in 1967 as “Des Espace Autres.” Gellner, E. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hämäläinen, P. 2009. The Comanche Empire. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Harlow, N. 1982. California Conquered: The Annexation of a Mexican Province 1846–1850. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hughes, C. W. 2012. Albert B. Smith and the Americanization of San Diego, 1830–1869. San Diego: CWH. Jacoby, K. 2016. The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire. New York: W.W. Norton. Law Library of Congress. 2012. “Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.” In A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U. S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875. American Memory from the Library of Congress, National Digital Library Program. May, R. E. 1991. “Young American Males and Filibustering in the Age of Manifest Destiny.” Journal of American History 78(3): 857–86. Mayer, B. 1847. Mexico as It Was and Is. Philadelphia: G. B. Zieber.

56 | Jeffrey Swartwood Ogden, A. 1981. “Captain Henry Fitch, San Diego Merchant, 1825–1849.” Journal of San Diego History, Fall, 238–39. Pechinpah, S., dir. 1969. The Wild Bunch [motion picture]. Pitt, L. 1966. The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846–1890. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Ramos, R. A. 2013. “Chicano/a Challenges to Nineteenth-Century History.” Pacific Historical Review 82(4): 566–80. Remley, D. 2011. Kit Carson: The Life of an American Border Man. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Schurz, C. 1893. “Manifest Destiny.” Harper’s Monthly, October, 737–46. Smythe, W. E. 1908. History of San Diego, 1542–1908: An Account of the Rise and Progress of the Pioneer Settlement on the Pacific Coast of the United States. Vol. 2. San Diego: History Co. Starr, K. 1973. Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915. Oxford: Oxford University Press. St. John, R. 2011. Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Thorton, B. B., dir. 2000. All The Pretty Horses [motion picture]. Tinnemeyer, A. 2005. “Embodying the West: Lyrics from the U.S.-Mexican War.” American Studies 46(1): 67–86. Vurtinus, J. F. 1979. “The Mormon Volunteers: The Recruitment and Service of a Unique Military Company.” Journal of San Diego History 25(3): 242–61. Watson, S. J. 1996. “Manifest Destiny and Military Professionalism: Junior U.S. Army Officers’ Attitudes toward War with Mexico, 1844–1846.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 99 (4): 467–98. Weber, D. J. 1982. The Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest under Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

chapter

3 “Dare to Dance Your Own Dance” Transgressing Aesthetic Borders in Early Twentieth-Century American Theatrical Dance Claudie Servian

In considering the extent to which American choreographers—that is, choreographers from the United States—have always tried to create a distinctly American art, this chapter focuses on early twentieth-century American theatrical dance and the notion of borders and border crossing. My objective is to analyze how these choreographers transgressed the aesthetic borders imposed by European artists to create a dominant and specific ideology. Indeed, typical of the nationalist ideology that emerged in the public spheres of industrialized countries by the end of the nineteenth century, American choreographers’ ideas were not exempt from a nationalist perspective. They contributed to representations of American theatrical dance that conferred increased distinctiveness to, and strengthened the nationalization of, American choreographic art. My search on the notion of border in North American theatrical dance emerged directly from the North American choreographers’ autobiographies and theories that I have read again and again with both pleasure and interest. The dancers mentioned are artists who made specific choices and who were willing to write about their work. It was the worlds of Isadora Duncan’s, Loïe Fuller’s, Ruth St. Denis’s, and Ted Shawn’s choreographies that led me to questions that were to form the core of my study. To innovate, North American choreographers at the beginning of the twentieth century drew their inspiration from ancient Greece, India, and Egypt, crossing historical and cultural borders. Some brought new dance forms to Europe, crossing aesthetic and national borders again. We may wonder whether North American dancers can take ideas from ancient and foreign forms and still maintain the integrity of their national art. This raises the question of hybridity: can an authentic in-

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digenous dance be born of non-authentic material? It was the world of Homi Bhabha’s (1994) concepts such as mimicry and hybridity, borderline, and “the beyond” that led my thought to this notion of border and transgression and of identity and affiliation. What existed in the early twentieth century was the desire for a novel theatrical dance that would express the spirit of independence from the Old World, of democracy, and of nationhood. The 1910s and 1920s were decades of nationalism, with suspicion against political radicalism, as Jean Kempf (2015: 92) explains it. When the nation experienced a reaction against communism and anarchism called the First Red Scare, which led to xenophobic mistrust, public liberties were restricted and suspected radicals were deported. US attorney general A. Mitchell Palmer launched a campaign against radicalism in 1919 and 1920 with a series of police actions, which raised the protests of civil rights activists, the radical left, and scholars. The 100 percent Americanism movement emerged, eschewing all that was foreign to American soil, and American artists debated over creating an American artistic identity. As part of America’s quest for a distinct identity, its choreographers developed a culture of resistance. St. Denis (1939: 331) saw “the emergence out of hatred propaganda and political gloom into beautiful, although austere concepts of American life.” Artists felt that America had to be independent in dance, as in politics. As choreographers failed to find existing forms of dancing, like the vaudeville or the European ballet, aesthetically fulfilling, they agreed on the need for new modalities of revolutionary change and shifted to a total critique of codified academic dance, which necessarily implied a ruthless criticism of traditional art. The most important impact of this ideology was felt on American choreographic forms, on the subsequent direction of an American style, and on modernist experiment. Homi Bhabha (1994: 10) explains: The borderline work of culture demands an encounter with “newness” that is not part of a continuum of past and present. It creates a sense of the new as an insurgent act of cultural translation. Such art does not merely recall the past as aesthetic precedent; it renews the past, refiguring it as a contingent “in-between” space, that innovates and interrupts the performance of the present.

For early twentieth-century American artists, a border is not a boundary, a limit where something stops, but that from which something begins anew: the border between ballet dance and a new dance form was made clear, and edges between the national and the foreign seemed carefully delineated. In ballet, there have always been codes contributing to specific boundaries. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, North American choreographers have always been willing to transgress borders to be innovative at all costs. The early twentieth-century American artists—Loïe Fuller (1862–1928), Isadora Duncan (1877–1927), Ruth St. Denis (1879–1968), and Ted Shawn (1891–1972)—

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were seeking new forms of dancing because they failed to find their early experience with existing techniques fulfilling. They were all suspicious of the technique of the European canonic ballet without totally denying the important impact of this academic art, and they were ready to make something different from European tradition and codes to create a more specific American dance. In their determination to differentiate their art from ballet, castigated as an expression of elitism and Europeanness, early twentieth-century choreographers incorporated images of other cultures in their choreographies. This was a reaction by European Americans against a European cultural heritage. The notion of transgression of codes and rules was a key concept in the American choreographers’ creative process. Such nationalist perspectives came to be encapsulated in the concept of American exceptionalism, with its assertions concerning a unified set of common purposes and values. This conception dates back to 1893, when Frederick Jackson Turner presented an essay called “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” produced in an institutional setting that encouraged a promotional discourse on the nation’s ideals. The spirit of the early twentieth-century choreographic art was born thanks to American dancers breaking old habits, setting out far from known paths, and pioneering, inventing, discovering, and combining novelty and change.

Traversing the Atlantic and Transgressing European Artistic Borders The United States being the frame within which the universal values of progress and renewal were developed, American choreographers, ready to trek into new territory, transformed the theories of academic dance dating back to the seventeenth century. In the early Renaissance, there was a body of traditions: codes were handed down from one century to another with almost no differences, and there emerged an Italian school and a French school. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there occurred several artistic and aesthetic shocks both in the Old World and in the New World. One of these was the revelation of new conceptions of dance brought to Europe by Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Loïe Fuller, who were convinced that European nineteenth-century aesthetic values were increasingly obsolete. They left the United States to tour European countries and paradoxically won acceptance in the Old World, where they remained to teach, and they founded schools offering instructions in techniques that could easily be adapted or absorbed. Tensions between nostalgia and novelty were exemplified in the experimental excitement of these artists who were endlessly to-ing and fro-ing between Europe and the United States. Shawn, St. Denis, and Duncan wrote about their

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journeys to Europe. We learn in Ruth St. Denis: Pioneer and Prophet; Being a History of Her Cycle of Oriental Dances (Shawn and Haweis [1920] 2010) that in May 1906 Ruth St. Denis went to Europe in search of new audiences. Guy Ducret (Pidoux 1990: 98) explains that Fuller’s school established in Paris in 1908 did not survive her, however successful and popular Fuller might have been, and in her autobiography, Duncan (1932) passionately described her art school in Russia, established in 1921, in which she felt free to teach students how to move and dance without respecting codes. American artists crossed the Atlantic, a natural border, and curiously felt free to develop something different from academic dance as then practiced in the United States. Both Duncan’s and St. Denis’s works were charged with a big mystic meaning. European audiences familiar with classical dance were amazed and wondered whether they should disapprove of their audacity. American audiences were astounded but surprisingly accepted this new conception of dance. Hugo Hofmansthal, whose Elektra was set to music by Richard Strauss as a one-act opera, wrote: The Incomparable Dancer. In this extraordinary hieratic art—strange combination of a strangely alive being with primeval tradition—every trace of sentimentality has vanished. And it is just the same with her smile, and this it is that from the first moment estranges the hearts of women and the sensual curiosity of men, when seeing Ruth St. Denis. And it is just this that makes her dancing incomparable. It borders voluptuousness, but is chaste. It is consecrated to the senses, but is a symbol of something higher. (Shawn and Haweis [1920] 2010: 33)

On Friday, 31 August 1906, after St. Denis gave a press performance at the Marigny in Paris, mobs waited outside the theater to see St. Denis come out. The press eulogized. Artists wanted to paint her; Rodin came to sketch her arms. The Baron and Baroness Rothschild came to her dressing-room and invited her to their home. And the engagement, instead of closing at the end of four weeks, was extended to six, keeping the Marigny theatre open two weeks after the date of its regular closing for the first time in its history! (Shawn and Haweis [1920] 2010: 13)

Success was unprecedented. Like Fuller and Duncan before her, Ruth St. Denis won the admiration of European artists and intellectuals, thanks to her innovative and creative spirit. Aesthetic and national borders were crossed as these Americans brought their new dance forms to Europe. These artistic borders were porous even as demands increased for closing geographical borders. In the first half of the twentieth century, choreographic experimentation took many directions in both Europe and the United States. Transgressing the old vocabulary of ballet, these dancers created new movements and developed new concepts. Ruth St. Denis (1939: 329) wrote that they gave birth to a new world for the dance:

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“We are witnessing the birth and adolescence of a true American art, the dance, which, with the metaphysical thinking which stemmed from our New England atmosphere, continues the only indigenous expression of our native consciousness.” As shown in Les Pionniers d’une danse américaine (Servian 2015: 9), the aim, for these pioneers, was to create a new specific American dance. To Ben Teale, the general stage manager of all Charles Frohman’s musical comedies (1856–1915), choreography presented the question “What will the new dance be?” He wrote, “This sort of dancing, the new sort, I mean, appeals to the higher senses and makes you think. It interprets beautiful things and can be as expressive as music or poetry” (St. Denis 1939: 72). The new dance should be original; the new artists should be free to choose. Susan Au (1993: 89) explains that early twentieth-century choreographers did not mean that the ballet form was bad, but that it was limited and suffered from no real development, which explains why they transgressed the limits of academic dance to seek new forms of dancing. Academic dance that involved technical forms of rhythmic art was suffering in those years. With them, a revolutionary American dance was born, and the aesthetic shock was intense first in Europe, the birthplace of ballet, and then in the United States. Ruth St. Denis (1939: 329) was persuaded that they were the symbols of a new age: “Between us we can build a rich and enduring American dance, compounded of the fruitful loam of the past, with the fresh seeds planted by youth.” Guy Ducret (Pidoux 1990: 110) analyzes how much Loïe Fuller’s innovations influenced the work of French artists. Most of her dances (e.g., Dance of the Lily, 1892; The Butterfly, 1892) evoked natural elements—flowers, butterflies, birds, and clouds—like the nature imagery with sinuous lines emphasized in art nouveau style. Her use of lights from beneath a pane of frosted glass and her use of mirrors and special dyes for her veils influenced Georges Seurat’s pointillist paintings as well. Her Fire Dance (1895), in which she appeared to be gradually consumed by flames, was reproduced in a lithography by the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Guy Ducret (Pidoux 1990: 108) also points out that the Symbolist poets and painters were interested in her creations, for her works appealed to the artists’ belief in art for art’s sake. Jean Moréas and Stéphane Mallarmé, for example, felt particularly impressed by Fuller’s appearance on stage, her use of lights and colors, and her theatrical magic, as was Paul Fort, who wanted to create an arts theater with an emphasis on synesthesia. Fuller was always open to new inventions and was “a pioneer in what today would be termed mixed media” (Anderson 1992: 166). The transgressing of traditional limits in the early twentieth century was not specifically North American; European artists transgressed codes as well. The dance historian Elizabeth Souritz (1990), in Soviet Choreographers in the 1920s, traces the influence of American dancers in Russia and explains that Isadora Duncan inspired the Russian choreographer Michel Fokine, who

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then decided to rebel against the artificial ways of the Russian Imperial Ballet and School and declared that dancers should look like human beings, that technique should be adapted to the theme, and that the setting should correspond in style to the period painted. Yet influences were not sufficient to make choreography completely new, and St. Denis (1939: 353) expressed her disappointment when she realized that the gap between Fokine’s views and her conceptions was really too wide: “It was not possible to reconcile our divergent systems of the dance.” Choreographic art became permeable to change and exchanges both in Europe and in the United States. Janet Flanner wrote in the New Yorker in January 1927 that Duncan revolutionized choreographic art in Europe: “Most grandiose of all her influences, Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet . . . ironically owed its national rebirth to the inspiration of Isadora, then dancing with new terpsichorean ideals in Moscow” (Flanner 1927: 17). Duncan (1932: 189), who made a speech on “Dance as the Art of Liberation,” was the symbol of emancipation from tradition: she removed story from dance and insisted that the dance should be an emanation of the emotions felt by the dancer. She explained, “I am an enemy to the ballet, which I consider a false and preposterous art, in fact outside the pale of all art” (Gottlieb 2008: 521). She was convinced that such types of movements were artificial, enemies to nature and to art (Gottlieb 2008: 522): The whole tendency of this training seems to be to separate the gymnastic movements of the body completely from the mind. The mind, on the contrary, can only suffer in aloofness from this rigorous muscular discipline. This is just the opposite from all the theories on which I founded my school, by which the body becomes transparent and a medium for the mind and spirit. . . . I was more than convinced that the Imperial Ballet School is an enemy to nature and to Art.

As opposed to the aestheticism of ballet, Duncan mixed elements of real life and movement into a natural expression. The dance critic Susan Au (1993: 89) wrote that “Duncan placed natural instincts above the dictates of convention.” Her dance was a symbol of freedom. When stressing the impact of Duncan’s ideas on painters, stage designers, and choreographers, Susan Au (1993: 89) also points out that Duncan’s ideas were similar to those of stage designers Adolphe Appia (1862–1928) and Edward Gordon Craig (1872–1966). Appia was known for the new perspective in scenic designs for Wagner’s operas, his three-dimensional sets, and his stage lighting. Craig achieved fame for keeping his design simple, so as to set off the movements of the actors and of light. Both had a revolutionary approach to stagecraft, economical in means but telling in effects. European artists were Duncan’s guides to transgress the limits of European ballet, and she recognized her interest for European artists: “As much as the ballet had filled me with horror, so the Stanislavsky Theatre thrilled me with enthusiasm. Stanislavsky came very often to see me and thought that

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by questioning me thoroughly, he would be able to transform all my dances into a new school of dancing in his theatre” (Gottlieb 2008: 523). About their conversations Stanislavsky wrote, “It became clear to me that we were looking for one and the same thing in different branches of art” (Gottlieb 2008: 547). Arts are permeable; exchanges between artists of different backgrounds enrich creations. Arts gained in richness by their juxtaposition. These dancers found their reputation highest in Europe among painters and poets, and it was not until modern dance appeared in the 1920s that these new conceptions began to be exploited by Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey, who started their choreographic studies at Denishawn. St. Denis (1939: 187) mentioned the fact that Martha Graham was “kind enough to say that the influence of my [St. Denis’s] personality and work was a large factor in her life. . . . She managed to give it (the task she was given) her own coloring, as every artist does, and her own emotional values.” And St. Denis (1939: 198) explained that Humphrey “had come to us from Evanston, Illinois, where she had her own dancing school, in which a devoted mother helped her. But being a keen-minded young person and feeling that we Denishawns had some new note to add to her concept of the dance, she had packed a suitcase, and here she was.” Considered the most significant experimentalists of the period because they possessed the sense of cultural contradiction looking both backward and forward, Fuller, Duncan, and St. Denis fought European tradition in Europe and in the United States and constructed a new tradition for their successors. Their impact continues and their expression of a modern American dance form persists in today’s dance. A fundamental change of forms has occurred with them, which parallels the achievements of European modernism, particularly German expressionism in dance. The Atlantic has never been an obstacle for these choreographers; rather it has been the opening of a series of cultural relations.

Crossing Cultural Borders In order to make American theatrical dance different from the European ballet, several choreographers sought new forms of dancing in other parts of the world and crossed artistic borders. They drew their inspiration from many cultures. The world of antiquity and the Orient,1 with all its rich analysis of the human soul, became sources of inspiration. Isadora Duncan, described by André Levinson as “the product of a race that had no past” (Gottlieb 2008: 540), rejected the artificial codified technique of ballet, but also rejected detailed and sophisticated stage settings that were fashionable in the nineteenth century. Instead, she employed no technique at all and used a gray-blue backdrop that avoided creating any special atmosphere, as mentioned in Ander-

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son’s (1935: 168) Ballet and Modern Dance: “She danced barefoot (which some audience found as startling as nudity) on a bare stage hung with blue curtains.” She also repudiated the vaudeville popular at the time. Duncan’s works were deliberately austere in movement, in scenery, and in costume in order to look different from ballet and American popular exotic shows. As stated in her autobiography (Duncan 1932), she ignored everything that preceded her, disavowing the choreographic heritage that was part of Western civilization. Her exploitation of the force of gravity and her development of floorwork were totally different from the ballet’s attempt to create an illusion of weightlessness. Duncan’s artwork was characterized by simplicity, economy of means, and naturalness. She opposed anything that was contrary to nature, including the turned-out position of the feet in academic ballet, and she preferred to find ideas in natural phenomena like the movement of waves. Duncan danced in a series of movements based on her understanding of the laws of motion. Her dancing drew upon ordinary actions—the movement repertoire of all human beings—like walking, running, or jumping. She also rejected the ballerina’s tutu, point shoes, and corset. She wore a Greek tunic instead and danced barefooted. Susan Au (1993: 90) describes her: “The little Greek tunic that she adopted instead was probably inspired by her early fascination with ancient Greece. . . . Many of her dances were performed without shoes, with the result that her new dance form was labeled ‘barefoot dancing’ by some of her contemporaries.” Her art symbolized freedom from conventions, and her choreography represented an imagination reaching out for a completely new vision of dance as yet unexpected in her time. Whereas the traditional ballet form represented affectation, Duncan’s dance was spontaneous and natural, and her movements were in harmony with the movement of the universe, as she explained during a conference in Berlin in 1903 (Duncan 1981: 23). As an expression of the self, her art was emancipated from all discipline and was called free dance. Because ballet belonged to the past and academic movements were often curved and symmetrical, early twentieth-century dancers used asymmetries, emphasized simple movements rather than sophisticated ones, and disdained the balletic glamorous style. Their works were an effort to feel the pulse of the country whose roots were in a search for freedom. With them, dance became a means to restate some of their native truths. Their revolution was destructive. In breaking with formalized ideas, in abolishing order, their rebellion was the expression of their freedom of thought and belief. Inspired by her fascination with ancient Greece, Duncan (1932) explained that she studied ancient Greek art in the museums of London and Paris but did not, however, visit Greece until 1903. She incorporated foreign movement motifs in her dances: many of her poses were derived from Greek statuary. Her analysis of Greek art confirmed her ideas on the beauty of natural movements. St. Denis (1939: 92) wrote that

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“Duncan . . . was a vivid echo of the Greek loveliness. Her unforgettable power of stirring the mind of the ideal Greek culture and her insistence upon the use of great music was reverberating in the artistic atmosphere of the dance.” Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) and Antoine Bourdelle (1861–1929) saw in her the embodiment of the ancient world. In her autobiography, she described her first encounter with Rodin when she explained to him her theories about a new dance form (Duncan 1932: 90). Indeed, thanks to references to Greek culture and Greek canons of beauty, the developments of dance and physical education were linked at the beginning of the twentieth century. Duncan’s return to the natural in dance penetrated many phases of American choreographers’ developments and gave them new standards of body normality. Following in Duncan’s footsteps, St. Denis explained in her autobiography that she tried to reinstate humankind’s intuitive use of the dance with little technical equipment, compared to the virtuosity of the ballet dancer. Her creative instincts were not those of the dancer. Rather, she was obeying an inward impulse. Ted Shawn (Shawn and Haweis [1920] 2010: 33) showed that she translated a spiritual significance into rhythmic patterns that had not been done in Western dances before, nor expressed in the dogma of the Eastern dances: “Moreover, this was the first attempt in the Western world to preach a religious doctrine through the medium of the dance, an attempt that was little understood, inasmuch as complacent Christianity looks on the Hindu and his worship as ‘heathen.’ This was also the first hieratic dance in modern times.” Each of her dances expressed symbolic ideas and conveyed religious feelings. Her gestures meant the discipline of the mind. She wrote, “I sensed that any technique is sufficient which adequately expresses and reveals the thought intended by the artist. With this in mind, my medium of expression was more than adequate to my needs at that time” (St. Denis 1939: 56). In 1900 Ruth St. Denis visited Loïe Fuller’s theater in Paris, at the Exposition Universelle, which St. Denis (1939: 40) referred to as “Loïe Fuller’s tiny theater, which she was sharing with a remarkable little Japanese actress Sada Yacco.” Fuller, who had achieved great glory in the Paris Folies Bergères in 1892, presented pantomimes with Yacco, something totally different in form and technique from what St. Denis knew. St. Denis (1939: 40) was favorably impressed by Yacco’s style and by Fuller’s performance, commenting, “She [Fuller] was not in the strict sense of the word, a dancer. . . . She was an inventive genius and brought a wealth of richness to both the dance and the stage. A little of this I recognized that night, but my real excitement and wonder was stirred to an unbelievable pitch by the extraordinary acting of Mme Sada Yacco.” Ruth St. Denis also found new ideas about stagecraft in Fuller’s works. She enjoyed Fuller’s dances because they were representations of nature in its various forms. St. Denis similarly re-examined the relationship between nature and art. She also found new sources for her Orientalism in Yacco’s dances.

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Beneath the austerities of Sada Yacco’s Japanese art forms, St. Denis felt a deep-lying spiritual motivation. She explained in her autobiography, “Here, in her [Yacco’s] dancing was the antithesis of the flamboyant, overblown exuberance of our American acrobatics. . . . Her performance haunted me for years, and filled my soul with such a longing for the subtle and elusive in art that it became my chief ambition as an artist” (St. Denis 1939: 40). Later, she studied movement with a Japanese dancer in the Japanese quarter of Los Angeles. Her teacher settled her in the mold with knees bent, toes in, and eyes down. She also learned how to take up as little space as possible, both laterally and longitudinally, and to approach the art of dancing with reverence. This training impressed her: “I know nothing, not even the ballet at its strictest, which can exceed the precisions and discipline of Japanese technique,” she wrote (St. Denis 1939: 144). Japan represented a blossoming of all her aesthetic senses. With this influence, the idea of a dance-drama was beginning to take shape. “Pioneering in the Japanese even as she had pioneered in the East Indian and Egyptian dances,” wrote Shawn, “Ruth St. Denis brought to America our first authentic interpretation of Japanese art” (Shawn and Haweis [1920] 2010: 59). She harnessed foreign cultures to define a new American choreographic identity. After seeing a poster of Egyptian deities, St. Denis felt that the seated image of Isis opened up to her the whole Egyptian story. She rhapsodized, “In this figure before me was the symbol of the entire nation, culture and destiny of Egypt” (St. Denis 1939: 52). This poster changed the course of her artistic life by inviting her to seek inspiration from the artistic East, much popular in the West, as a source of material for her dance. St. Denis (1939: 52) explained that “the main concern in the picture was the figure, its repose, its suggestion of latent power and beauty, constituting to my sharply awakened sensitivity a strange symbol of the complete inner being of man. This was not merely a symbol of Egypt, but a universal symbol of all the elements of history and art which may be expressed through the human body.” While in London, St. Denis spent days at the British Museum, where she became acquainted with Egyptian art; she also read books on Egypt. The worlds of antiquity and the Orient, with all their richness, possessed her. She believed that “it was then absolutely necessary that we draw our substance from the ancient forms” (St. Denis 1939: 177). Her research gave birth to an Egyptian work, Egypta, with fifty dancers and musicians, led by St. Denis in the roles of Egypta, the goddess Isis, and a palace dancer. She created an atmosphere of mystery and devotion belonging to another civilization and another age. Shawn explains, “These were the first ancient Egyptian dances ever seen in America and Ruth St. Denis is the dancer who originated the hieroglyphic type of movements, that is, dancing imitating the postures of the figures carved on Egyptian temples and tombs. This style

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has been taken up by many lesser dancers” (Shawn and Haweis [1920] 2010: 48). Surprisingly, with the Egyptian series and her six Egyptian dancers with their tambourines and two-dimensional movements were laid the first faint outlines of an American ballet. The roots of a specific American dance could be found across North American borders. Her choreographies were emblematic of an interest for what impresario Lincoln Kirstein (1969: 205) called “the geographic ballet,” a ballet form rooted in a specific environment and culture. To be more creative, the artist felt she had to gain some knowledge of painting and sculpture and some familiarity with archeology. To innovate, St. Denis also studied Indian art and artifacts in Paris museums to create new dances. In fact, it made no difference what the artistic environment or race culture was that she transmitted through the dance. When she returned to New York in 1909, she became acquainted with Hindus, talked with them, and absorbed information about the temple ceremonies of India, which she translated into temple dancing reimagined as an ancient tradition. When she went to the East Indian village of Coney Island, she saw snake charmers and nautch dancers, and the fascination of India caught hold of her. India held her interest to the same degree as Egypt had. She was then determined to create nautch dances, an imitation of these whirling skirted dancers. Not being acquainted with the costumes, she spent hours at the Astor Library to do research in nautch-style costumes, in order to make her dance as authentic as possible. She read everything she could to saturate herself in the atmosphere. She explained in her autobiography (St. Denis 1939: 55) that there was an attraction at Coney Island called The Streets of Delhi, in which the atmosphere was re-created with snake charmers and fakirs. While watching the performance, the idea of a cobra dance took shape in her mind. She created Radha (1906), the symbol of the human soul seeking the divine, with three dances: The Cobras, The Incense, and The Nautch. In The Nautch, she used the rhythmic stamping accentuated by the ankle bells, the whirling, and the sinuous arms of Indian street dancers. The suggestions of Oriental philosophy, implicit in the performance, caused discussions and research that penetrated the whole of America. She wrote, “The world of antiquity and the Orient with all its rich poetry of the human soul opened up and possessed me” (St. Denis 1939: 53). She had glimpsed in the history and arts of India and Egypt the symbols of humankind’s search for the beauty of life. She saw in Indian and Egyptian dancing the antithesis of the exuberance of the American acrobatics of that time. This was completely new and different, even though the steps were not always authentic. Thus pioneering, she created an understanding of the beauty of Indian dances and opened up new fields from which later artists could reap. Ahmed Alley wrote in the Rangoon Daily News that “Miss Denis is assuredly the greatest Western exponent of Indian dancing that one has yet seen in the East. So

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often has the Indian dance been confused with the Egyptian movements by Western dancers, who have visited the East, that it is a pleasure to witness the typically Indian dance which is performed by Miss St. Denis and her troupe” (quoted in St. Denis 1939: 283). Critics considered this dance a faithful representation of Indian dancing because they felt she had caught the Indian spirit. Ella Wheeler Wilcox said, “Radha is a dance and a hymn, a prayer, a picture, and an epic poem all in one. It is better than a sermon and greater than any sacred music even sung or played. Here is another woman who has created a new thing in art, and again in the realm of Terpsichore. Let her name go in the Hall of Fame. She has elevated her art and given the world a beautiful work” (Shawn and Haweis [1920] 2010: 33). While St. Denis’s imagination and her sense of imitation were stimulated by India and Egypt, what she wished to express should not, according to her, be classed as “Oriental dancing,” but was part of a new conception of what American theatrical dance should be. She wished to say through her body and her dance that humankind, in all the arts, must find an interest in religion and must be worshipping God, whatever name God may be called—Jehovah, Brahma, or Allah. “The few who perceived this,” wrote St. Denis (1939: 136), “only made me reach the farther to touch those who came for entertainment and went away merely entertained.” The full effect of this pioneering work, when the Hindu culture and the Egyptian culture were introduced to American audiences through the dance, cannot be underestimated. St. Denis explained (1939: 182): My psychological attitude regarding this new development rested on two points. The first, the Orient was my personal art which audiences would expect me to give for some years to come. The second, that the still beauty of the East should be infiltrated into both the school and the company as compensation for the spacecovering athleticism of our American life. For after all, what do we mean by America, and what do we mean by an American ballet? Isn’t it bound to be made up of elements that are poured into our national consciousness year by year?

The rhythms, the costuming, and the suggestions of this foreign thought were not at all felt as a shift of loyalties. It made no difference what the artistic environment or race culture was that she transmitted through the dance. It had a universal value, and it was all that mattered to her. St. Denis also believed in the bond between movement and emotions. She insisted on personal expression and told her students, “Dare to dance your own dance. Do not be bound by the techniques that you have learned, or the criticism you fear to endure. I call to you not to be mere followers, not to be bound to the sound of a drum, but to speak your own voice, to take your place in the forefront of dance, and to be the symbol of a new age” (St. Denis 1939: 330). Her dances were lush and combined universal messages with appeals to the senses.

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When she was dancing, she became an abstraction, “a creature set apart from time and space, unrelated to human things in the ordinary sense” (St. Denis 1939: 241). According to Shawn, “The technical character with which Miss St. Denis invests the Indian representations is, first, the elimination of any movement that might detract from a feeling of continuity. Every action proceeds in waves; a ripple slowly undulates down the body, and even seems to continue on its way into the earth” (Shawn and Haweis [1920] 2010: 39). She delivered a wordless message of immortality—in Shawn’s words, she “always stood for high things—things above the petty human orbit, things cosmic and eternal. In The Incense was pictured the whole subject of worship. It expressed completely and beautifully that spirit which rises out of humanity seeking reunion with the Divine” (Shawn and Haweis [1920] 2010: 39). In comparison with the ballet dancer, St. Denis brought minimal technical equipment to assist her in the expression of these ideas. She thought in terms of scene and not in terms of technical virtuosity. In her solo The Cobras (1906), for example, she transformed her arms into two coiling snakes. According to her, any technique was good provided it expressed and revealed the thoughts intended by the artist. Her first Indian dances were a jumble of everything she was aware of in Indian art. She tried to translate into rhythmic patterns a spiritual significance that had never been done before in the Western world. Her dances made no claim to authenticity, but were aimed at getting the spirit of the cultures they depicted. They served to give American audiences a foretaste of ethnic dance styles without authenticity. St. Denis was an interpreter of certain phases of Indian thought and art when she translated an atmosphere into movements. “It seemed to me,” she wrote, “that the painter and the sculptor and the writer must of necessity steep themselves in the environment they wish to represent, but that the musician and the dancer should merely sip at the nectar of the artist’s distillations, rather than attempt to digest the coarse food of current life and culture of the people” (St. Denis 1939: 108). Her choreographies also expanded the horizons of American audiences by giving them glimpses of the cultures of other times and places and by showing them a dance form that took itself seriously as an art. It is worth noting that cultural borrowing in dance was not a one-way street. Both Indian and Asian dancers have been influenced in different ways by American dance. It has happened through cultural exploration of the West as a source of inspiration by non-Western artists. Indeed, Ruth St. Denis’s Denishawn School served as a model for Shankar’s pan-Indian dance academy. St. Denis was said to have revived Indian dancing in the 1920s and 1930s at a time when the movement for independence gained momentum. The renaissance of traditional unhybridized dance in India at that period was followed by the birth of a modern dance movement as American choreographers visited India and as Indian artists came to the United States to perform. Once again, the

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permeability of borders led to the transgression of traditions. Tours by Isadora Duncan’s students and by Denishawn inspired modern dancers in Japan. In the 1920s and 1930s, Japanese dancers traveled to the United States and to Europe to study German expressionist dance and early twentieth-century dance, which took on Japanese characteristics. Hybridity was multilayered: German expressionist dance and early twentieth-century dance were influenced by Asian dance, which brought the imprint of American dance.

Creating a New American Dance Early twentieth-century American choreographers removed the dance from the field of pleasant entertainment into genuine identification with their own world and feelings. Duncan gave the new dance the impulse that raised it from a commercial commodity to an art. Similarly, St. Denis wanted art to appeal to the intellect. She explained in her autobiography, “At that time Isadora and I, and others who had forsworn the orthodoxies of the ballet, were busy waging our war to make Americans accept dancing as an art” (St. Denis 1939: 140). They both believed that dance should stimulate rather than entertain. They suspected that the national culture was repressive and indifferent to the arts, and they created new dance forms as a symbol for the dawn of modernity, as art critics Caroline and Charles Caffin noticed, writing, “And this is just what they had never done before with the art of dancing. Pretty, amusing, even charming it might have been; but never before had they met in the dance this high seriousness of purpose, which compelled a like seriousness of consideration” (quoted in Shawn and Haweis [1920] 2010: 26). Although the American public of that time was very prudish, they were either conquered or surprised by this new conception of dance. Caffin and Caffin (1912: 66) explained the phenomenon: “A beautiful body was displayed with no casings to interrupt the play of light on the bronze skin or hide the play of muscles of the lithe limbs. But the crystal purity of the dancer’s intent seemed to have reflected itself in the minds of her audience and banished every thought of prejudice.” Paradoxically, the traditions of ancient cultures looked new on the American stage once they had been transplanted to a different culture. Through this heritage, concert dance as a serious art form was in search for authenticity, for the stripping away of European elements. Artistic transgression was a conduit for border permeability. Choreographic change came from exchanges. Although these alliances were historically unnatural, they became pragmatically necessary because American choreographers lived in an age of cultural assimilation. They all agreed about the necessity of creating a national dance form with the help of foreign art. To paraphrase George Orwell’s words (quoted in Buckland 1999: 21), some dances are more ethnic than others; some are also

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more culturally hybrid than others. These dancers crossed cultural and historical borders when they drew inspiration from ancient Greece, India, and Egypt. They were pioneers in the way they had turned their backs on what went before and had started to create something revolutionary. Dance and hybridity served as a route of resistance to imposed cultural systems. The borrowing of other dance techniques helped choreographers to reach some kind of a new specificity based on a rich vocabulary of movements from foreign cultures. They developed new types of dances that used choreographic techniques from other parts of the world and constructed these dances to be reflective of American nationalism. These unlikely alliances were at the center of a fundamental realignment of American dance, and in some way, indigenous landscapes were remapped to include these artists who wanted to create new American dance forms. The conflict between hybridity and authenticity born out of the mixing of different elements surprisingly seems to be resolved in these multiethnic works of art. The quest for novelty begins with multiculturalism, with the premise that the new is somehow better than the old, a premise that suits well the American demand for improvement. All these different sources are essential to early twentieth-century American dance, and the extraordinary variety to be found contributes to the complexity and multiethnicity of contemporary American experience. Early twentieth-century American theatrical dance’s originality comes from the fusion of different elements, old and new, outside and inside, near-sameness and otherness. Borders are forgotten in the name of freedom and of artistic and choreographic expression. Transgressing the traditional limits of dance found institutional expression in the creation of the Denishawn School, “the temple of the dance” (St. Denis 1939: 185). With Ted Shawn, St. Denis opened the school in 1915; the curriculum included all the arts as an essential part of the dancers’ training. With its Westernized culture looking outward to Egypt or India, and with the juxtaposition of different sources, Denishawn gave the students the possibility of living a new and different enriching existence. As St. Denis was sympathetic to the old Eastern modes of artistic expression, the Greek, the Egyptian, and the Hebraic constituted the underlying spiritual guides of the school. Shawn represented the Greek philosophy, and they both turned to their common Christian heritage. Under Shawn’s influence, the predominantly exotic subject matter used by St. Denis was expanded to include Amerindian, Spanish, and North African, giving Denishawn a completely eclectic character. Martha Graham pointed out that “there were three aspects to the school. One was the classical ballet, one was of course the Oriental dance, which Miss Ruth had, and then there was Ted Shawn, who had drama” (Gottlieb 2008: 732). This school had a revolutionary approach: the elements of ancient wisdom were restated by the school in an atmosphere of simplicity and in an atmo-

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sphere as near nature as possible. Learning ran parallel to artistic and personal progress, and St. Denis and Shawn worked to transform their art into a freer expression. St. Denis (1939: 175) wrote, “That this system, or as Ted has said, lack of system, since it embraced so many techniques and cultures, proved harmonious to the American spirit and youth was witnessed in the following years when one considers the number of creative dancers who emerged from the walls of the Denishawn.” St. Denis and Shawn did not give the students a rigid technique, but instead an intimate understanding of the arts. There were classes of music visualization, and students learned the basics of the dance techniques of India, Japan, Egypt, and North Africa. The dancers studied dramatic gestures based on François Delsarte’s theory. Indeed, St. Denis and Shawn made a contribution to the technique of dance by a complex fusion of the work of François Delsarte, who tried to make an examination of the ways in which emotions are reflected in postures and gestures, with that of traditional ballet. St. Denis and Shawn also gave lectures on the history of dance and on costumes. They did not include dance on point shoes or traditional ballet: It was not because of any barriers between what we considered the truly American development and the old traditional forms, but because we felt we could not assume the organization of a complete ballet department. Yet we always taught the fundamentals of bar work which would allow a girl to become a ballerina with very little adjustment. We believed that, as the American dance theatre developed, all forms, old and modern, would have to be represented. (St. Denis 1939: 244)

The European heritage was reappropriated and transformed in this school to be assimilated and re-examined into a contemporary idiosyncratic art form. St. Denis and Shawn reinvented tradition and studied the human body as an instrument of art expression. A Japanese dance historian described the difference between ballet and Denishawn art: “We have never been so moved as by the dancing of Denishawn. When Miss Anna Pavlova came, we admired her technical skill, but these artists bring us a spiritual and physical beauty of dance and I believe that this beauty is a more eloquent and vital thing in dance than mere skill” (St. Denis 1939: 267). Tradition was not forgotten but transformed, transgressed, and adapted to a new environment and to a new people. As Bhabha (1994: 3) explains In restaging the past it introduces other incommensurable cultural temporalities into the invention of tradition. This process estranges any immediate access to an originary identity or a received tradition. The borderline engagements of cultural difference may as often be consensual as conflictual; they may confound our definitions of tradition and modernity; realign the customary boundaries between the private and the public, high and low; and challenge normative expectations of development and progress.

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These visionary dancers both used and went beyond old academic limits and values. They did not particularly want to reinvent tradition; they were simply on the move, always involved in original creative processes, in an exploratory movement. Bhabha (1994: 1) thinks that “it is the trope of our times to locate the question of culture in the realm of the ‘beyond.’ . . . The ‘beyond’ is neither a new horizon, nor a leaving behind of the past.” With these artists, there was a sense of an exploratory, restless movement in the “beyond.” Indeed, as Bhabha (1994: 6) explains, “‘Beyond’ signifies spatial distance, marks progress, promises the future; but our intimations of exceeding the barrier or boundary, the very acts of going beyond, are unrepresentable, without a return to the present which, in the process of repetition, becomes displaced.” Early twentieth-century choreographers lived beyond the border of their times; the present was no longer considered a break with the past—it was a place of experimentation. Shawn and St. Denis also formed a company known as Denishawn Dancers, which provided the nucleus of an American dance. Both Shawn and St. Denis’s ideals regarding the company were that it should be composed of American substance, although St. Denis did not forget the beauty of the East, which infiltrated both the company and the school. The touring Denishawn Company was eclectic and multicultural, with Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists who used gestures that were bewildering to Western eyes. Their programs included Hindu dances, dances based on ancient history, rhythmic interpretations of concert music, and demonstrations of the latest popular dance craze. Denishawn was more than an institution; it was a philosophy and may be considered as the symbol of transgressing borders, transgressing techniques and genres with the help of artists from different origins, cultures, and countries to create a specific American theatrical dance. The mixing of different elements from different cultures led to the birth of a complex artistic movement in which syncretism and eclecticism were the rules. Borders seemed to have disappeared, but in fact they had not, since the philosophy of the school was to have a completely American company performing a distinct American dance. Although these artists found their inspiration in ancient Greece, India, or Egypt, they showed how obsessive the idea of the Americanness of the new dance was. Indeed, few major dance artists have been as preoccupied with the idea of nationality at a time of debates over American identity, of restrictive immigration laws (e.g., the 1917 Immigration Act, which barred immigration from India, and also the 1924 National Origin Quota Act, which restricted southern and eastern European immigration and all Asian immigration). Despite the nationalization process, early twentieth-century American theatrical dance at the beginning of the twentieth century was not a mere reflection of that nationalist discourse with its assertions about a unified artistic community. Indeed, the refusal of categories by American choreographers prevented the idea of national belonging. The panorama of various categories structur-

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ing the choreographic imagination of the United States was the interpretative frame proposed for a better understanding of how American theatrical dance was woven into the ideological fabric of American society and, by virtue of its modern resonance, existed for more people than simply the Americans. Despite the great richness of its characteristics and goals, early twentieth-century dance was unified by its emphasis on the expression of feelings and emotions through choreographed movements, as opposed to a decorative display of a codified technique. Considered the founders of modern dance, these visionary dancers developed their art in response to varied cultural influences while attempting to discover their own personal approach to movement. And yet the notions of modernism and modernity were born on European soil, in Germany, with the Ausdrücktanz, or “expressive dance.” It later found in the United States and with American artists what it needed, a world where it could grow. Early twentieth-century choreographers recognized the diversity of approach of American artists and tried to convey this diverse approach through dance. Dance scholar Margaret Lloyd (1949: 45), regarding the notion of modernism, pointed out that “there is some interrelation of influences, but each leader works primarily alone, and all work from the heritage of what has gone before. The process of individual discovery must inevitably continue.” The process encompasses the cultural distillation the artist needs to create the work. Lloyd’s remark shows how much the concept of interrelation is inherent in the concept of border. Interrelations express interest in other artistic values, which can be followed by cautious assimilation or complete refusal. This intricate problem incites one to rethink the border’s double function of either identification with or rejection of the other. The simultaneous rise of the notion of modernism and the nationalization of society is neither paradoxical nor specific to the United States and reflects the transnational contest for a clear understanding of American theatrical dance.

Conclusion North American choreographers both crossed and transgressed borders at the beginning of the twentieth century. They crossed national borders to produce complex works of difference and identity, inclusion and exclusion. What was theoretically innovative was their need to think beyond categories and styles and to focus on the articulation of cultural differences to initiate new signs of artistic and creative identity. American dance developed as a result of dancers learning from and going beyond or rebelling against their elders. During the early twentieth-century theatrical dance period, when identities were being defined more in transnational or hybrid terms, the presumed ties between state borders and national identity seemed to have lost their meaning. Borders were

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transgressed, and artistic identity came from diversity. American nationalist styles first differed from the European ballet, which put an increasing emphasis on technical virtuosity and resulted in the loss of emotional content. Since America has often been called “a nation on the move,” it can be argued that early twentieth-century dance represents one way of exemplifying an American creatively permissive spirit, an American ideal of democracy and nonconformity. The beginning of the twentieth century and the 1920s were times of indiscipline, of choreographic experimentation, and of adventure. Equally essential are the critical tensions one finds in the dance techniques between rules and freedom, codified movement and natural movement, and canon and diversity. The border between European academic dance and North American early twentieth-century dance was then clearly defined: these artists searched the fundamental principles of movement, such as the basic function of the act of walking, which inspired Duncan; they did not feel interested in perfection and virtuosity. Their work can be defined as the process by which they deconstructed tradition and constructed their own approaches to movement. The use of Orientalized iconography was a case of transcultural inspiration. This kind of creative movement across cultural boundaries posed challenges for creators and viewers alike. This renewal of dance emphasized the fluidity, the permeability, between somatic identity (the expression of one’s physicality) and a cultural one (how one’s body, gender, and age produce meaning). Although all these choreographers agreed to go beyond the routine to make their art always new, to go beyond the limits imposed by a codified technique, to go beyond their European roots to find material for dancing, nothing homogeneous emerged from their conceptions. Their work favored individual vision over cultural identity. But, as we have seen in this analysis, there is more to American nationalist artistic styles than being different from Europe. Indeed, key factors in Americanness were the changes in technique, style, form, and content brought by early twentieth-century American artists who were participating in a melting-pot sort of ideology in which cultural assimilation was a primary value. With Isadora Duncan, Loïe Fuller, Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn, dancing could move across boundaries, making fluid and permeable such terms as “American dance,” “the self,” and “the other.” This interconnectedness of dancing bodies and transgressive identities created the transformative power of early twentieth-century theatrical dance. Moreover, these innovations and transgressions provided groundwork for future achievements in dance. Considering the work of these choreographers, it seems that artistic production is most productive where it is most ambivalent and transgressive. Claudie Servian is currently an associate professor of North American civilization at Grenoble Alpes University and a researcher at the ILCEA4 research center. Dance studies in New York triggered her interest in North American

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dance history and research. Both as a scholar and a practitioner, she has lectured in museums, theaters, and national centers of contemporary dance. She is the author of books on North American dance and of articles on dance and performance art in numerous publications. Among her recent publications is “La danse étatsunienne du début du XXeme siècle aux années 1980: histoire d’une dichotomie entre mouvement et geste” (North American dance from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1980s: The history of a dichotomy between movement and gesture), Interfaces 40 (2018).

Note 1. The word “Orient” in this article is a historical term used in the way the pioneers of modern dance at the turn of the century used the word.

References Anderson, Jack. 1935. Ballet and Modern Dance: A Concise History. Princeton, NJ: A Dance Horizons Book, 1935, 1992. Au, Susan. 1993. Ballet and Modern Dance. London: Thames and Hudson. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Buckland, Theresa. 1999. “All Dances Are Ethnic, but Some Are More Ethnic Than Others: Some Observations on Dance Studies and Anthropology.” Dance Research 17(1): 3–21. Caffin, Caroline, and Charles H. Caffin. 1912. Dancing and Dancers of Today. New York: Dodd, Mead. Duncan, Isadora. 1932. Ma Vie. Paris: Gallimard. Published in English as My Life (London: Victor Gollancz, 1928). ———. 1981. Isadora Speaks: Writings and Speeches of Isadora Duncan. Edited by Franklin Rosemont. San Francisco: City Lights Books. Flanner, Janet. 1927. “Isadora Duncan’s Return.” New Yorker, 1 January. Fuller, Loïe. 1939. An Unfinished Life. New York: Harper and Brothers. Gottlieb, Robert. 2008. Reading Dance: A Gathering of Memoirs, Reportages, Criticism, Profiles, Interviews and Some Uncategorizable Extras. New York: Random Books. Humphrey, Doris. 1959. The Art of Making Dances. Alton: Barbara Pollack, Dance Books. Kempf, Jean. 2015. Une Histoire culturelle des États-Unis. Paris: Armand Colin. Kirstein, Lincoln. 1969. Dance: A Short History of Classic Theatrical Dancing. New York: Dance Horizons. Lloyd, Margaret. 1949. The Borzoi Book of Modern Dance. New York: Dance Horizons. Pidoux, Jean-Yves. 1990. La Danse, Art du XXème siècle? Lausanne: Payot Lausanne. Servian, Claudie. 2015. Les Pionniers d’une danse américaine. Paris: Publibook. St. Denis, Ruth. 1939. Ruth St. Denis: An Unfinished Life. New York: Harper and Brothers. Shawn, Ted, and H. R. Haweis. (1920) 2010. Ruth St. Denis: Pioneer and Prophet; Being a History of Her Cycle of Oriental Dances. New Zealand: Wheelers Books; Yokai Publishing. Souritz, Elizabeth. 1990. Soviet Choreographers in the 1920’s. London: Dance Books. Suquet, Annie. 2012. L’Éveil des modernités. Une histoire culturelle de la danse (1870–1945). Pantin: Centre national de la danse. Turner, Frederick Jackson. (1893) 2008. The Significance of the Frontier in American History. Penguin.

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4 Border Work The Migration of Los Angeles Japanese Americans from the Manzanar Relocation Center to Father Flanagan’s Boys Town during World War II Heather Fryer

Omaha, Nebraska, is not the first place that springs to mind when one thinks about the social geography of the mass confinement of Japanese Americans during World War II. Its Japanese American community was quite small, with fewer than eighty families and no sign of a Japantown. Nebraska was not one of the Pacific Coast states within the exclusion zone of the Western Defense Command from which Americans of Japanese descent (collectively, the “Nikkei”) were forcibly removed. The War Relocation Authority (WRA), the federal civilian agency charged with overseeing the mass confinement, discussed locating a camp in Nebraska but never did, so there are no pilgrimages or camp remains to readily forge connections between that “West Coast history” and the distant plains. Yet the influence of the confinement is strongly felt among—even defining for—the Omaha Nikkei. The greater portion of Omaha’s Japanese American community are descendants not of the tiny wave of immigrants who settled in the late nineteenth century, but of people who had been released from the concentration camps (known as “relocation centers”) to resettle at Boys Town, made famous in the 1938 film of the same name. Yet the story of the Nikkei who settled there has only been “passed on for generations by word of mouth” among Japanese Americans, as reported by Harry Honda, editor emeritus of the Pacific Citizen (Lonnborg and Lynch 2003: 104).1 Father Edward J. Flanagan, who was portrayed by Spencer Tracy in Boys Town, is known to have advocated the release and comfortable resettlement of forty-three individuals and families—nearly all from Los Angeles—to his “City of Little Men” just outside of Omaha (Reilly and Warneke 2008: 131).2 Less clear, however, is how a midwestern Irish Cath-

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olic priest dedicated to ensuring that troubled boys (most of whom were white or black) become “excellent citizens” could exert significant influence over the federal government’s removal and detention of Japanese American Los Angeleans. There were very few young boys among the Japanese arrivals and very few Catholics. As beloved as Father Flanagan was, there was almost no public support for bringing the people their government called “the enemy race” into the heartland of America. The archival record shows that while Father Flanagan provided the destination and the most visible advocacy for resettling the second-generation (Nisei) Japanese American incarcerees outside the camps, he was but one of a network of approximately a dozen priests, government staff members opposed to the confinement, and Nisei incarcerees themselves who effected their migration to Nebraska. Each of these individuals played indispensable roles in the border work that made the government’s wartime racial boundaries permeable enough to channel a significant migration stream to Omaha. They doubled the size of the Japanese community and established themselves within Omaha society, yet are all but invisible within a historical framework that confines the incarceration experience to the Pacific Coast states and only recognizes migrations when they appear as mass movements or as international border crossings (United States Bureau of the Census 1950: 99). Although the migration from the Manzanar Relocation Center to Boys Town was small, it brought opponents to race-based mass incarceration into negotiations with the government on one of the most sweeping aspects of its domestic security policy. The success of this broad-based, trans-regional, grassroots collaboration points to broader phenomena within the history of state-managed internal migration as components of settler colonialism and the containment of perceived threats in wartime, particularly in the trans-Mississippi West. Civil disobedience, demonstrations, and other forms of resistance are more visible in wartime, but the quiet border work that brought Japanese Americans to Boys Town was more effective than these other actions in accelerating change in the government’s racial ideology, detention policy, and the demographic distribution of people of Japanese ancestry across the US interior.

Border Work in Theory The term “border work” has its origins in Homi Bhabha’s (2013: 107–10) conceptualization of borders as interstitial zones of productive encounter between state and society. In the liminal spaces of borderlands, selves and societies are asserted, contested, negotiated, and creatively invented (or reinvented). One could say that whether a border is permeable or impermeable depends less

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upon what the barrier is made of (barbed wire, guards, laws, treaty agreements, custom, etc.) than the extent to which people can work a way around it, or through it, or can convince enough people that the border does not serve its intended purpose. Rachel St. John (2011) provides a concrete example in her history of the US-Mexico border, where state-created demarcations are established and re-formed through contests and negotiations between individual, economic, and government entities—“Apaches or immigrants, capital or cattle, alcohol or bullets.” Her assessment that these standoffs and crossings made the border “a critical site for understanding the evolution of government priorities” holds equally true for internal borders as considered in this chapter (St. John 2011: 9). Both are sites where the state is continually re-created and re-legitimated through the interplay of its demographic and territorial definitions of “the nation” and its responses to the challenges posed to these definitions by an array of social agents (Reeves 2014). Border work significantly differs from the skirmishes between the state that builds borders and those who seek to alter them that the mention of migration brings to mind. Rather, it is rooted in participants’ attunement to the political potential that Bhabha identifies within such liminal spaces. The “in-betweens” of society—those who “both belong and unbelong”—have experienced state power structures very differently from those whose belonging is understood as being beyond question. Their ability to perceive structures as structures enable society’s in-betweens to articulate, engage, problematize, and disrupt the logics of state power that hold up things like borders (Bhabha 1994: 34– 45). Literary scholar Ambreen Hai describes a “liberatory potential” that inbetweeners can successfully harness through border work. “Border work,” she writes, “can undo binaristic and hierarchical categories of opposition, offering useful critique and reconceptualization of either side of an opposition—be it cultural, political, or intellectual” (Hai 2000). The border workers in California and Nebraska, as insiders, outsiders, and in-betweeners within the system of militarized racial boundaries in wartime, did not breach a border, let alone bring it down. This group of non-assimilationist priests, incarcerated racial outsiders, and softly dissenting government workers, through their targeted resistance to the mass incarceration, provided the WRA the way out of its own predicament. Their work allowed the federal government to breach its own border by permitting structured and civilian-supervised resettlements, even in urban areas, to take place in a manner that disrupted the logic of the militarized state in some respects, while conforming to it in others. The Manzanar–Boys Town migration has all but disappeared from historians’ notice and Omaha’s local historical memory, yet merits historians’ attention as an example of how strategically formed networks can find the precise combination of incentives and pressures to pierce the most airtight segregative

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structures of the state, even those presented as vital to national security in wartime—and possibly with the assistance of the state itself.3

Father Flanagan, Boys Town, and Nebraska Father Flanagan was the most visible agent within the larger projects of engaging the state in border work and facilitating the Manzanar migration, though he had no more intention of championing the migration of Japanese Americans from Los Angeles than Nebraskans had of increasing their Japanese population when the United States entered World War II. Father Flanagan founded Boys Town in 1917 as an alternative to the punitive reform schools and juvenile justice system that isolated troubled young boys from their communities instead of preparing them for citizenship by putting them in one (Flanagan ca. 1940). After having run the Workingmen’s Hotel on the model of Father Timothy Dempsey’s nationally recognized Hotel for Working Men in St. Louis, Missouri (“Father Dempsey’s Hotel” 1909: 262), Father Flanagan had an epiphany: he believed that the men in prisons, on skid row, and in his hotel had all the potential to thrive when they were boys, but as a result of emotional injuries of various kinds, they acted in ways that were “bad.” From that point, he believed that his work was to create an environment for abused and abandoned boys that would nurture their best qualities in preparation to be good citizens (Flanagan ca. 1940). In at least two ways, Father Flanagan’s mission at Boys Town prepared the way for the later experiment involving Manzanar internee relocation to Nebraska. First, religious tolerance and racial equality had been guiding principles throughout his ministry, starting with the mission statement for the Workingmen’s Hotel: “The management of the Hotel knows of no distinction as to class, creed or nationality. We are interested in God’s deserving poor, and find no time for drawing lines of demarcation” (Annual Report of Father Flanagan’s Working Men’s Hotel n.d.). Instead of building Boys Town’s financial foundation upon the vast resources of the Catholic Church, he forged partnerships with people like Henry Monsky, president of B’nai B’rith and champion of child welfare, who was a major fundraiser, longtime counsel, and close friend of Father Flanagan (“H. Monsky, 57, Dies” 1947). The boys were to welcome as citizens of Boys Town any newcomer, regardless of “race, creed, color, or religion” (Flanagan 1917–38).4 While religious practice was a requirement of all Boys Town residents, Father Flanagan saw to the construction of a Protestant church and a Jewish temple near the Catholic chapel so that every boy could meet this requirement in his own way. Furthermore, Boys Town was one of the few fully integrated cities in the United States, and Father Flanagan worked to ensure that all who lived and

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worked there lived out his racial egalitarianism. And Boys Town made no secret of its stance on racial equality. More than once, Father Flanagan canceled a performance of the Boys Town choir or pulled the Boys Town football team from a tournament because the host city would not allow black participants to share accommodations with whites (Oursler ca. 1940: chap. 28, 58–61). He seized every opportunity to show America what racial integration looked like, including his investiture as domestic prelate by Pope Pius XI in 1937. The photo that ran in the local press shows Right Reverend Monsignor Flanagan seated in his full vestments, surrounded by Boys Town citizens of Caucasian, Asian, and African descent. Nebraska Catholics, in celebrating the ascent of one of their local parish priests, would by extension celebrate Father Flanagan’s lived belief in racial equality, or at least encounter it in a positive light. (“Flanagan, Rt. Rev. Edward J.” 1947: 143; McHugh 2014). Second, the Boys Town ethos was rooted in an Americanism that valued responsibility, fairness, and faith in the inherent goodness of the individual (even juvenile delinquents and racial “others”) and that also valued self-government, the ultimate triumph of the American experiment. This “City of Little Men,” which eventually became a fully incorporated city funded through private donations (“Byron Reed’s Old Residence” 1917), was supervised, but self-governing. The mayor of Boys Town was elected from among the boys who resided there, as were an array of town officials invested with decision-making power, including legislators, judges, and law enforcement. Father Flanagan met every suggestion that he “safeguard his troubled boys” within a fenced perimeter with this answer: “I am not building a prison. I am building a home. You do not wall in members of your own family” (Oursler 1949: 197). Self-reliance, self-determination, self-esteem, and exemplary citizenship were the goals for every boy, regardless of religion or race. More than two decades of building a haven for racial integration and resisting segregation made Father Flanagan a seasoned border worker by the 1940s, but his neighboring Nebraskans did not share his utopian visions. The first mention of Japanese moving to the interior West as voluntary migrants or as an incarcerated mass spurred Nebraskans to register their opinions with Governor Dwight Griswold before the federal government could make such a request of the state. Among the fairly standard fears that Japanese workers would commit sabotage, take jobs from white Nebraskans, and overwhelm New Deal public assistance programs was the alarming possibility they could “be left alone with our Women Folks [sic]” (J. A. Axtell to Governor Dwight Griswold, Feb. 28, 1942). One expression of such fears was the case of a Chadron man’s son who “had been at Pearl Harbor” and who “got hold of a bottle of whisky and a gun” and went after a Japanese American man who was minding his own business (Dwight Griswold to W. S. Trumbull, July 7, 1942).

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Meanwhile, the Wartime Civil Control Administration and the War Relocation Authority—staffed with a number of Bureau of Indian Affairs employees and ever cognizant of the assimilationist structures of the Indian reservation system—built concentration camps away from the Pacific coast, where people of Japanese descent could be watched, controlled, and, officials claimed, trained in the ways of “true Americanism.” The paternalist system of self-government was superficially similar to that at Boys Town: the incarcerated adults were instructed to form community governments whose decisions would be implemented with the approval of the WRA. But the rightsconstricting paternalism that the WRA imposed on adult citizens was markedly different from the rights-conferring paternalism provided to the children at Boys Town. Life in the camps was structured to teach self-reliant, loyal adult members of American society that they were immutably foreign and ever suspect. Cut off from their homes and livelihoods, they were subjected to endless living lessons about the things they had already been doing before they were incarcerated: participating in politics, earning a living, speaking English, and living as Americans. The camps—like Indian reservations after which they were modeled—were “inverse utopias” in which all the key features of American life are in place, but geared to work backward (Fryer 2010: 284). The ill effects of inverse utopian management of a nonexistent threat showed themselves within eight months of the camps’ creation. By 1943 some WRA officials alerted the Roosevelt administration that the overcrowding, unrest, and unprecedented government dependency that the camps were cultivating would put the Japanese on the same trajectory as Indigenous Americans who had become trapped within the federal government’s failed reservation system—a system from which the federal government also sought its freedom (Fryer 2010: 284; United States War Relocation Authority 1946: 32–34). Also, by 1942, just as the camps were being fully populated, the WRA was looking for ways to maintain the appearance of the firm, “protective” border that it had convinced the rights-worthy general public it desperately needed, while at the same time addressing the emerging labor shortage created by the military draft. The first thought was to locate people away from the West Coast, in settings that would not arouse fear among non-Japanese or, worse, bring charges that the federal government was failing its obligation to protect “the [non-Japanese] American people.” Work-release furloughs were fairly commonplace in areas near the camps and enabled small numbers of Nikkei incarcerees to provide cheap, expendable labor, mostly in agriculture, to replace that lost to the military draft (United States War Relocation Authority 1946: 34–37).5 Only a small number of workers were assigned to each rural work setting, where they worked under close supervision and under continued control of the WRA. Workers could mark time in manual labor jobs outside the barbed wire, but they were not free people working to build careers,

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communities, or financial futures. Evacuees arriving at relocation centers after May 1943 received orientation pamphlets that opened with information on leave clearance procedures and encouragement to “take advantage of the opportunity” to “use [their] energies more productively and effectively” (United States War Relocation Authority 1943: 1). Despite their earlier racially motivated intransigence, Nebraskans were more eager to answer this call from the government to hire a handful of cheap laborers than the call to serve as “host” to a full concentration camp, and this receptiveness helped prepare the path for the Manzanar–Boys Town migration. The J. C. Robinson Seed Company believed that “mak[ing] ‘Japs’ into ‘Roving Labor Battalions’ was a ‘crack-brained’ idea” that it was nevertheless open to, prior security concerns aside, because it needed two thousand men to produce hybrid corn (J. C. Robinson Seed Company n.d.; “Three Growers Ask Japanese Labor on Beets” 1942). Governor Dwight Griswold’s letter to Congressman John H. Tolan, head of the Commission on National Defense Migration, registers Nebraska’s economic and racial anxieties, admonishing the California congressman to “remember that these aliens, if transported to the middle west, will be among strangers who will distrust them and they will have to remain in custody of guards.” He noted, however, that “Nebraska might use a few thousand on work projects” if they were held under armed guard (Griswold n.d.). Nikkei labor was vital to the American cause, but the people who performed the labor were cast as potentially dangerous others. It was increasingly clear that the border between the US citizenry and its fellows of Japanese ancestry was of two kinds: one, a national security structure made with barbed wire and armed guards, and the other, a rhetorical one where projections of state power and reconfigurations of racialized citizenship could create malleability for the sake of economic expediency.

Border Work in Practice It is within these complex configurations of racial anxiety, fears of foreign invasion, and economic exigency that Father Flanagan sent word to the Wartime Civil Control Administration that he was interested in employing and housing up to fifty Nikkei in the centers. Instead of working with crops, Japanese on indefinite work release to Boys Town would work closely with the boys as teachers, caretakers, and even counselors. Like the camps, Boys Town was an enclosed, supervised, isolated community with strong paternalistic tendencies. At Boys Town, these structures were effective in helping young boys grow into adulthood. When imposed upon adults in the WRA incarceration camps, they were structures of control. Additionally, Father Flanagan could offer some of the features of the camps that made the military, the government, and the

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mainstream public comfortable—Boys Town was far from the West Coast and enclosed within a clear perimeter in isolation from the rest of the community. Further, the Boys Town migrant community would consist only of a small Japanese population. Though Boys Town provided the means for the Nikkei to live outside the confines of armed guards and barbed wire and no longer directly subject to the government paternalism of the camps, adult resettlers lived in an enclosed community of and for children, which aligned with the long-standing racialist notion that nonwhite people were the “children of civilization” who benefited from the tutelage of Euro-American societies. The road from Los Angeles to Nebraska was paved from west to east by the efforts of two more Catholic priests, Fathers Hugh Lavery and Leo Steinbach. Father Lavery had served Japanese Catholic Los Angeleans (Yamazaki 2000) for twenty-nine years, first as the parish priest and, starting in 1935, as superior for the Japanese mission. Los Angeles’s Japanese churches served as sites of acculturation through multiculturalism and ecumenicism, though they did not pressure congregants to convert to Christianity or meet any prescribed markers of assimilation. Lon Kurashige (1999) notes that “Nisei ministers conducted services in English for both Buddhist and Christian congregations,” and Yuki Yamazaki (2000) notes that the Maryknoll Japanese Catholic church served as a zone of acculturation. St. Francis Xavier School offered an education in both Japanese and English, which drew enrollments from non-Catholic parents who sought an excellent education that would prepare their children for life in the United States or Japan—should these “aliens ineligible for citizenship” have to return to the homeland (Yamazaki 2000: 61). In 1925, only 10 percent of St. Francis Xavier students were Catholic or other Christians; the remaining 90 percent were Buddhists (Yamazaki 2000: 60). Like Father Flanagan’s Boys Town, Father Lavery’s Maryknoll communities lived out an ethos of respect for America’s “racial outsiders” and their right to lead selfdetermined lives. This radical assertion of racial progressivism countered prevailing national trends such as the implementation of the Immigration Act of 1924, whose race-based quotas made immigration from Asia all but impossible (National Origins Act 1924: vol. 65). Father Lavery sprang to the aid of his parishioners when President Roosevelt promulgated Executive Order 9066 in February 1942 by spearheading a plan to move members of the Maryknoll community (parishioners and students at St. Francis Xavier) as a group during the “voluntary phase” of the evacuation. According to the official parish history, 28,850 community members were registered when General John DeWitt rescinded voluntary evacuation in favor of mandatory removal of all Japanese from the West Coast (“The History of Our Parish” n.d.). Father Lavery, enraged, wrote to Colonel Karl Bendetsen, assistant chief of staff to DeWitt, asking about the children of the “enemy race” in the Maryknoll Orphanage. Bendetsen determined every per-

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son with even “one drop of Japanese blood in them must go to camp.” For this, Lavery referred to Bendetsen as “a little Hitler” (Weglyn 1995; Feldman 2011: 175). When it was clear that most of the Los Angeles Maryknoll parish would be incarcerated at the Santa Anita Assembly Center and, eventually, the Manzanar Relocation Center, Maryknoll fathers, brothers, and sisters worked with the migration stream by establishing churches in the camps to keep the community intact. Father Steinbach aided Japanese Catholics, at first, and then worked with others at Manzanar, much as the Maryknolls opened their communities and schools to non-Catholics in prewar Los Angeles. His missionary work in Korea suited Father Steinbach for Manzanar; he was one of several Maryknoll missionaries imprisoned by Japan at the start of the war and had only recently been returned to the United States through prisoner exchange (“Fr. Leo Steinbach, MM,” n.d.; “Scheduled for Repatriation by the Japanese” 1942). Caucasian Catholic priests had an audible moral voice, but it was the WRA that determined the fate of the people it incarcerated. Bringing people across would require border work from the inside of the WRA. WRA employees calling for permeability of its borders required the moral endorsement of credible figures from outside the agency. Lavery’s and Flanagan’s collaboration with Santa Anita Assembly Center employee E. J. England and his assistant, Caroline Trask, was instrumental in arranging the earliest releases to Boys Town. England, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, shared his concern about the injustices perpetrated by the camps to Father Lavery, who suggested he correspond with Father Flanagan (Lonnborg and Lynch 2003: 97). In September 1942, England, Trask, and other WRA officials began interviewing Santa Anitans in search of a good fit for Boys Town. James Takahashi and Katsu Okida, two friends imprisoned at Santa Anita, piloted the “program” by settling at Boys Town to work as agriculturalists and agriculture teachers. Father Flanagan notified the Wartime Civil Control Administration within weeks of the men’s arrival that Takahashi and Okida were “working out very satisfactorily” and expressed his hope that more such placements could be made soon (Fr. Edward J. Flanagan to Caroline Trask, September 22, 1942). The absence of any clear outlines for this inchoate “program” meant that each placement required its own round of collaborative border work, starting with outsiders Lavery and Flanagan, insiders England and Trask, and the incarcerated in-betweeners (Caroline Trask to Father Flanagan, September 20, 1942). Jerry Hashii sent a letter of application to Father Flanagan on 19 September 1942, having heard that Boys Town sought “men of specific ability to teach [the] boys the practical application of certain farm trades.” As a landscape gardener, he had a great deal of knowledge to offer. He also noted that he was “an American Citizen, twenty-six years old” who was eager to contribute

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to Boys Town’s “constructive effort” (Jerry Hashii to Father Flanagan, September 19, 1942). After several unanswered queries from Father Flanagan, Trask, a resettlement worker, requested he secure permission for the Hashii family’s release from the Presidio directly. Father Flanagan wrote twice to the Presidio and provided the family train fare when the permissions came through. Shortly after the Hashiis moved to Boys Town, Trask informed Father Flanagan that England was “anxious” for the husband of his secretary to be hired as a house man. Mrs. Lily Okura was “a very able secretary,” and her husband, psychologist Kiyoshi Patrick Okura, had a background that was “unusual” (Caroline Trask to “Larish,” September 26, 1942). Okura was a talented mental health professional, and Father Flanagan sought him to head Boys Town’s counseling programs. Bringing him to Boys Town, however, presented risk to Father Flanagan’s larger program and required more intricate, assertive border work with Congress and the general public. In 1939, the Los Angeles Civil Service Commission hired Okura as a personnel technician, making Okura the first person of Japanese ancestry to hold an administrative position in Los Angeles city government. He earned two promotions in two years and hired more qualified Japanese Americans for city positions. His coworkers liked and respected him and affectionately referred to him as their Irish friend “O’Kura.” That changed in February 1942, when journalist Drew Pearson reported that a Japanese American man, posing as an Irishman named “Patrick O’Kura” spearheaded the infiltration of the Los Angeles municipal power and water systems by hiring fifty “qualified employees” who were really “saboteurs.” Los Angeles mayor Fletcher Bowron called twice for “the most dangerous Japanese in the city” to resign, but Okura refused. Instead, he was granted a leave of absence from the city so that he could be evacuated to Santa Anita.6 The success of the previous placements enabled Father Flanagan to assume the risks to Boys Town that would come when his border work came into national spotlight. Bowron implicated Flanagan and the WRA in his testimony before the Dies Committee on Un-American Propaganda Activities in 1943 that Okura had been allowed into the “vital nerve center” of Omaha, where he was “influencing the philosophy of the future citizens of this country” at Boys Town (United States Congress 1943: 8898–99). An investigator for the Committee on Un-American Activities testified that Okura’s residence at Boys Town put him in “a very American institution” and that subversive activity would be squelched under Father Flanagan’s watch. Congressman Costello noted that Father Flanagan could not have known of Bowron’s concerns, making it impossible for him to have acted upon them (United States Congress 1943: 8897–98). Father Flanagan corresponded with J. Edgar Hoover about Okura’s innocence, first to have Hoover confirm it, then to underscore that absent any evidence of sabotage the Okuras should be allowed to live as freely as loyal

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German and Italian Americans (Fr. Edward J. Flanagan to J. Edgar Hoover, June 19, 1943). He also underscored this point in his letters to Nebraskans who wrote in anger at his opening the border between themselves and Okura. Father Flanagan returned each letter with a mention of his consultation with Hoover, admonishing, “I don’t think . . . that we should be a party to condemning people until they are proven guilty, and I am sure this is your attitude also.” The Okuras remained vital members of the Boys Town community, with Patrick Okura retaining the position of staff psychologist for seventeen years. Father Flanagan had to file reports on the relocatees remanded to his supervision. His reports were brief and positive; the Okuras were vital contributors to the work of Boys Town, good neighbors to all, and exemplified the benefits of border permeability. The existence of these reports also indicates that the borders between the free and the surveilled were still in place. Minimal and friendly as Boys Town surveillance was, it was surveillance nonetheless (Patrick Okura Files n.d.). While there is no question that the cooperative efforts of England, Trask, and Fathers Lavery, Steinbach, and Flanagan were essential to these resettlements taking place, it is equally clear that the Nikkei were vital in transforming a “work-release arrangement” into a migration stream. The Okuras founded a reception committee for new arrivals; as with the Los Angeles Maryknoll Catholic Church, Father Flanagan’s Boys Town provided the space for the reinvention of a Japanese American community within their post-incarceration, midwestern context. Their gatherings were self-created community events and not programmatic activities organized by the WRA or Father Flanagan. By organizing house parties, community organizing sessions, and informal networks for disseminating frank information about what resettlement was like, and being able to be Japanese Americans without being scrutinized, migrants could experience the borders surrounding camps as permeable without being forced to choose between imprisonment and social dispossession. The reception committee became such a vital aspect of resettlement that when the War Relocation Authority opened a resettlement office in Omaha in 1944, director William Parmenter asked the committee to aid him in assisting people coming from all ten camps. WRA photos feature the Okuras entertaining newcomers and sharing their experiences, almost as if the agency had devised the committee itself. In 1947, this grassroots organization formed the Omaha chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (“Omaha Chapter History” n.d.). Resettlement from Manzanar to Boys Town increased in pace and resulted in an increased number of long-term stays. Margaret Takahashi’s letter to Father Flanagan, written 7 December 1942, provides at least a partial explanation. She drew a sharp contrast between life under WRA control and life with the economic, social, and personal supports that Boys Town offered. Her children had put on weight, were “much healthier and happier,” and had a “normal

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life” ahead of them. Finding words inadequate to express her gratitude beyond “I owe the well-being of my children to you,” she closed with “Thank You, Father” and affirmation that as a result of their shared border work she was, indeed, in “The Heart of America” (Margaret Takahashi to Father Edward J. Flanagan, December 7, 1942). By April 1943, ten Japanese Americans were supporting themselves and their families through their employment at Boys Town (Lonnborg and Lynch 2003: 98). The WRA took note of this success of “its” experiment in permeability and sought to resettle internees in Omaha and in larger numbers. In the summer of 1943, newspapers in several relocation centers ran features on Omaha as a land of opportunity for those willing to relocate there. The Topaz Times announced in July that the Omaha YWCA was opening a hostel for twenty-five Japanese women and girls who wished to take available jobs as sewing machine operators, health aides, stenographers, or domestic workers. Lodging and counseling would be provided at no cost, and meals available at very low cost (“Omaha YWCA Opens Hostel for Women Relocators” 1943). By January 1944, Omaha had become a hub for midwestern resettlement—the concern about multiple resettlers in a city no longer a great concern. The Manzanar Free Press reported on 5 January 1944 that work was plentiful in Omaha and that Parmenter reported that 125 relocatees were employed in the area (“Work Opportunities Plentiful in Omaha” 1944). On 26 January, the Granada Pioneer reported that “Sino-Japanese harmony exists in Omaha,” where relocatees were working as fur seamstresses, secretaries, hotel workers—and even as cooks and servers in a Chinese restaurant (“Sino-Japanese Harmony Exists in Omaha” 1944). According to the WRA Final Report, 231 people were resettled from the camps to Omaha. The collective efforts of Fathers Lavery and Steinbach, WRA staff, incarcerees like Jerry Hashii, and many others made the barbed-wire borders around the concentration camps permeable, while Father Flanagan and former incarcerees like the Okuras (and many others) pierced the invisible borders of Nebraska drawn by racial anxiety, reinforced with threats of violence, but subject to appeals to labor demand and the influence of its most famous Irish immigrant priest (United States War Relocation Authority 1947: 146). Although the federal government and the military dictated the terms of each phase of this wartime migration, the evidence is clear that the state engaged the border work of the Manzanar–Boys Town migration in its search for a way out of its self-created policy peril. The War Relocation Authority recounted in its final report that its authority to detain the noncitizen Japanese immigrants was clearly constitutional. The mass detention of US citizens of Japanese descent, however, was “a vastly more complex, delicate, and debatable kind of question.” The lawyer for the WRA noted that in times of war, when the survival of the nation is at stake, the Constitution “must prove adaptable to

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the needs of our times” and that “standard concepts of constitutional law will therefore undoubtedly be applied in light of current war needs.” In this light, in the opinion of the WRA lawyer, the suspension of Japanese Americans’ civil liberties on the basis of their ancestry could arguably have been a “war need” and not state-sponsored racial discrimination. “On a purely legal basis,” the WRA report explained, “WRA quite possibly had . . . the authority to detain the entire evacuee population or any individual member of it if such detention could reasonably be found necessary to protect the national security” (United States War Relocation Authority 1946: 32–33). The lawyer would have been aware that the American Civil Liberties Union and others were already bringing the WRA’s unsteady defense of the mass incarceration before the Supreme Court, and the signs were clear that Mitsuye Endo’s claim that incarceration of a loyal citizen absent evidence of a crime violated habeas corpus, even in wartime, would be affirmed. A second, more immediate, set of pressures came from Japan, who reported on the conditions in the camps in their propaganda broadcasts to US allies in Latin America, pressing the continual disjuncture between America’s stated war aims of promoting racial equality and global democracy while it held its own citizens behind barbed wire, at gunpoint. The government of Japan sent regular shipments to its citizens in the camps—those elder Japanese ineligible for naturalization as US citizens until 1952—to ensure they had shoyu and other comforts in scarce supply to citizens in the home country. That, the propagandists explained, was the depth of compassion that the Japanese people had for its compatriots and the “unfortunate percentage of its own citizens who have committed no sin, but made the fatal mistake of being born of the Japanese race and living in America” (Mizuno 2013: 110–12; United States War Relocation Authority 1946). It is worth underscoring here that increasing the permeability of the borders to allow a continuous migration stream to Omaha was the outcome of collaboration, instead of confrontation. Although Father Flanagan resisted the racism that underpinned the mass incarceration of the American Nikkei, he cooperated willingly with the WRA and with J. Edgar Hoover in the case of Patrick Okura. The federal government would have its own concerns about Father Flanagan’s racial liberalism but willingly worked with him. In April 1944, Father Flanagan responded to a request from Parmenter for a list of California Japanese resettled at Boys Town. At that time, there were four families, one married couple, and three single men. Parmenter used a testimonial from Father Flanagan in a pamphlet he prepared in 1944 for distribution to prospective employers, reading: “I have at Boys Town eight Japanese, five of whom have wives. I have found them to be very satisfactory in their work, and they are anxious to get along. They make very good citizens, and there has been no difficulty with other employees. . . . I think the sooner these men get employed

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instead of being in the Centers, the better it will be for the government and for the men themselves” (Parmenter 1944). The WRA, Father Flanagan, the Maryknoll Fathers, and most importantly, the Hashiis, Okuras, and other Boys Town families were so vocal about the benefits that accrued to all from their resettlement that within a matter of months Omaha was an established resettlement destination. When the War Manpower Commission determined that Omaha’s defense industries were lagging due to acute labor shortages, the city was reclassified as a “Group II Labor Market” for the number of its unfilled positions for relocatees. The Gila News-Courier devoted the better part of a page of its 7 October 1944 edition to enticing evacuees to Nebraska, and Omaha in particular. A coalition consisting of the Omaha Chamber of Commerce, the Associated Retailers, the Omaha Manufacturers, and the Omaha schools devised a plan with the WRA to release students with strong academic records to work for twenty-four hours per week. Boys Town placed open ads for two positions: a barber (Issei or Nisei) and a bus driver (no mention of Issei, so presumably only Nisei could apply). So, too, did a “leading department store” in search of a freight elevator operator/porter, a produce packing company for one harvester and one packinghouse position, and employers in Lincoln and other nearby towns (Gila News-Courier, 7 October 1944). Ultimately, the collaborative border work between Boys Town, the Maryknolls, the WRA, the Omaha Reception Committee, and the Nikkei migrants themselves forged a significant migration route when one considers that the 1950 census shows that the Japanese population of Douglas County (where Boys Town and Omaha are located) increased from 40 to 141. This was the first census in which the county had a Japanese population large enough to make the number statistically significant and warrant its own category (United States Bureau of the Census 1940; United States Bureau of the Census 1950). While most migrants from the camps returned to their homes on the West Coast or settled in other parts of the United States, many stayed for decades after the war. Their roots in Omaha ran deeply enough that their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are among the city’s established residents.

Conclusion In addition to expanding the geography of the Japanese American confinement from the West Coast to the heartland, the transfer of Japanese American incarcerees to Boys Town serves as a case study of how state borders work— and are “worked” by individuals and groups—to determine movement of persons, the rights accorded them, and the demographic composition of places on regional, transregional, and national scales.7 Although the federal government

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considered itself the sole border-worker during the war, the historical record shows clearly that the migration from Manzanar to Boys Town required the cooperation of the state but was effected through the creative network for navigating government and mainstream American interests and racial anxieties. The peopling and workings of this network bring many of the subtle (along with the patently unsubtle) intersectional power relationships across multiple social categories; race, religion, citizenship, class, age, and gender were certainly salient, but so too were moral authority, low-key allyship with government agents, celebrity, and the ability to achieve unimpeachable credentials as fully “American.” The power conferred upon each category changed with the exigencies of the war, yet at every turn everyone involved exerted significant agency within—and upon—this state-imposed, state-controlled system of race-based incarceration that the government presented as vital to wartime national defense. The power of this unlikely network of Catholic priests, Irish immigrants, Japanese Americans, and War Relocation Authority staff in resistance to the incarceration came from each participant mobilizing their various subjectivities in precise combination to enable the state to introduce permeability to its borders without compromising its power or public image. Although the state encourages the conceptualization of borders as minimally penetrable, they are permeable by design. Permeability is sanctioned by the state according to its political needs. However, as this case study suggests, migrants and those who support migration can create the political conditions that move the state toward greater or lesser permeability. In the case of Father Flanagan and the Japanese Americans at Boys Town, this process was not adversarial, but collaborative—and informal, so that the War Relocation Authority’s system of borders appeared solid to the general public demanding “security” while functioning to minimize the hidden dangers within its ill-conceived program of mass incarceration. The agency’s adversaries gave the WRA the opportunity it needed to breach its own borders. The story of the resettlement of Japanese incarcerees from Manzanar to Boys Town restores a small part of the historical picture of wartime migration. More than that, it suggests that analyses of smaller-scale, regional border work and migration streams hold the possibility of uncovering details about how coalitions of individuals working across intersectional lines can engage the state and a nativist majority to increase the permeability of borders. The current historical moment is rife with issues salient to this study: the Trump administration’s immigration policy features a wall at the Mexican border to stop all manner of threats from terrorism and sexual assault to prescription drug abuse; a ban on travel from a curiously selected group of Muslimmajority nations in an ostensible attempt to prevent ISIS infiltration (especially from refugees, which makes no sense) that met resistance from the state

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of Hawaii; and many American cities assuming local control of immigration policy by holding firm as sanctuary cities under threat of cuts in federal funding. The intrastate migration of the incarcerated Japanese Americans from Southern California to eastern Nebraska offers a reference point for charting the development and efficacy of the coalitions of individuals in and outside the United States who gather at airports and on social media, who pressure Congress to intervene, and who work to undercut the internal racialist illogic that rests within many of the mechanisms and rhetoric of twenty-first-century domestic security policies. The key now, as during the war, will rest in working across lines of difference to maximize the power and influence of grassroots networks as they engage the state. The history of race in America makes this no easy thing, but the history of the Manzanar-Nebraska migration is likely just one of many that shows that it is well within the realm of feasibility. Heather Fryer is the Fr. Henry W. Casper, SJ Professor of History and director of the American Studies Program at Creighton University. She is the author of Perimeters of Democracy: Inverse Utopias and the Wartime Social Landscape in the American West, which reveals the impact of federally run reservations of all kinds on the social and political development of the American West. She is also editor of Peace & Change: A Journal of Peace Research.

Notes 1. Honda wrote a column in a similar spirit in 2010, in which he ties Father Flanagan’s advocacy for the Nikkei in World War II to Flanagan’s open criticism of the Irish church for failing to protect abused children. See Honda 2010. 2. Reilly and Warneke (2008: 131) quote an estimate by Patrick Okura, who was among the first to move from the camps to Boys Town in 1942 and was a founding member of the Omaha chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, that “about three hundred Japanese Americans found their way to Boys Town between 1943 and the end of the war.” Firm numbers are hard to establish from archival documents, but there is no question that Boys Town was the point of entry for most of the Japanese Americans from California who settled in the Omaha area for the duration of the war and, in several cases, permanently. 3. These questions respond to geographer Mark Ellis’s call in 2012 for a reassessment of the separation of transnational and internal migration studies, particularly if they seek to answer the question of whether “state power, citizenship, and identity are also relevant for internal migrants.” Ironically, it is the very analytical constructs that scholars of migration have used to describe migration flows and processes in an orderly manner that has made this vital central question relatively obscure (with the rich body of scholarship on the Great Migration of African Americans to the North in the early twentieth century the outstanding exception). Ellis (2012: 196–208) observes, “The territorial state’s privileged status as the scale at which we frame our understandings of social processes, such as migration, stems from an assumption that state power and a host of nationally based social relations that influence social outcomes, operates

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4.

5. 6.

7.

uniformly within countries up to their borders and then stops.” Other scholars have joined Ellis’s call, including Russell King and Ronald Skeldon (2010: 1619). The spatial breadth, sociopolitical complexity, and heightened visibility of individual agency that this history of the Manzanar–Boys Town migration network invites the sort of shift in periodization of Nikkei immigration to and within the United States that Donna Gabaccia (2015: 99) urges immigration scholars to employ. Chapter 18 of Oursler’s (ca. 1940) notes dictated from Father Flanagan notes that the donor for the first month’s rent for Boys Town was anonymous, and there was much speculation about his identity: “May have been Jew, Protestant or Catholic. Had friends among all groups. Many guesses made. Flanagan will not deny or confirm. Reason for mystery: So that honor of having given Boys Town its start may be shared in by all who helped in those early days.” For more on the contributions of churches and religious organizations to resettlement, see Hayashi 2008: 85–86. Okura’s leave was originally for one year. Documentation in the Boys Town Hall of History suggests that Father Flanagan had to aid Okura in arranging for it to be extended (Okura 1981: 1–4; Hosokawa 1969). This examination of Boys Town is energized by the wave of scholarship that is expanding the geographic, chronological, and experiential parameters of the history of the mass confinement. Examples include Greg Robinson’s (2011) transnational study that considers Hawaii, Canada, and Latin America’s involvement with incarceration; Patricia Wegars’s (2013) study of Kooskia; and the small but growing literature on the role that religion played in shaping the social landscape both in- and outside the camps, most focusing on the experiences of coreligionists, e.g., Suzuki 1979; Angell 2006; Bowen Gillespie 2000.

References Angell, Stephen W. 2006. “Bunji and Toshi Kida and Friends Missions to the Japanese in California.” Quaker History 95 (Spring): 1–25. Annual Report of Father Flanagan’s Working Men’s Hotel, Boys Town Hall of History, Boys Town, Nebraska. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge. ———. 2013. “World Order: In Between Cultures.” New Perspectives Quarterly 30(4): 107–10. Bowen Gillespie, Joanna. 2000. “Japanese American Episcopalians during World War II in Los Angeles, 1941–45.” Anglican and Episcopal History 69 (June): 135–69. “Byron Reed’s Old Residence to Be Boys’ Industrial Home.” 1917. Omaha World Herald, 7 December. Caroline Trask to Father Flanagan, September 20, 1942. Jerry Hashii Correspondence File. Boys Town Hall of History. Caroline Trask to “Larish,” September 26, 1942. Jerry Hashii File. Boys Town Hall of History. Dwight Griswold to W. S. Trumbull, July 7, 1942. Dwight Griswold Papers 1940–54, RG1 SG 32, Series 1: 1942 Correspondence. Nebraska State Historical Society. Ellis, Mark. 2012. “Reinventing US Internal Migration Studies in the Age of International Migration.” Population, Space, and Place 18: 196–208. DOI: 10.1002/psp.666. “Father Dempsey’s Hotel.” 1909. The Square Deal 5 (August): 262. Feldman, Jay. 2011. Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America. New York: Random House.

94 | Heather Fryer Flanagan, Father Edward J. 1917–38. Speeches, Boys Town Hall of History, Boys Town, Nebraska. ———. ca. 1940. Prologue to “The Story of Boys Town,” by Francis Chase Jr., unpublished manuscript. Boys Town Hall of History. “Flanagan, Rt. Rev. Edward J.” 1947. In The American Catholic Who’s Who, vol. 7, 143. Grosse Pointe, MI: Walter Romig. Fr. Edward J. Flanagan to Caroline Trask, September 22, 1942. Jerry Hashii Correspondence File. Boys Town Hall of History. Fr. Edward J. Flanagan to J. Edgar Hoover, June 19, 1943. Patrick Okura Correspondence File. Boys Town Hall of History. Fr. Leo Steinbach, MM. n.d. Biographies. Maryknoll Mission Archives. Accessed 15 February 2017. http://maryknollmissionarchives.org/index.php/history/1327-steinba chfrleoj?p=2. Fryer, Heather. 2010. Perimeters of Democracy: Inverse Utopias and the Wartime Social Landscape in the American West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Gabaccia, Donna. 2015. “Time and Temporality in Migration Studies.” In Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines, edited by Caroline B. Brettnell and James F. Hollifield, 99. New York: Routledge. Griswold, Dwight. n.d. “Governor Dwight Griswold to Congressman John Tolan.” In Dwight Palmer Griswold Papers. Nebraska State Historical Society Archives. Hai, Ambreen. 2000. “Border Work, Border Trouble: Postcolonial Feminism and the Ayah in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India.” Modern Fiction Studies 46(2): 379–426. Hayashi, Brian. 2008. Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. “The History of Our Parish.” n.d. Maryknoll Japanese Catholic Center. Accessed 15 February 2017. http://sfxcjcc.org/index_files/SFXJCCtimeline.htm. “H. Monsky, 57, Dies: Leader in Judaism.” 1947. New York Times, 3 May. Honda, Harry. 2010. “Boys Town Father Flanagan’s JACL Connection.” Pacific Citizen, 21 May. Accessed 10 June 2014. http://www.pacificcitizen.org/node/644?page=show. Hosokawa, Bill. 1969. Nisei: The Quiet Americans. New York: Morrow. J. A. Axtell to Governor Dwight Griswold, Feb. 28, 1942. Dwight Griswold Papers 1940–54, RG1 SG 32, Series 1: 1942 Correspondence. Nebraska State Historical Society. J. C. Robinson Seed Company. n.d. “J. C. Robinson Seed Company to Governor Dwight Griswold.” In Dwight Palmer Griswold Papers, 1940–54, ed. Nebraska State Historical Society. Omaha: Nebraska State Historical Society. Jerry Hashii to Father Flanagan, September 19, 1942. Hashii Correspondence File. Boys Town Hall of History. Kurashige, Lon Yuki. 1999. “The Rise and Fall of Bi-Culturalism: Japanese American Identity and Festival before World War II.” Los Angeles: University of California Southern California Studies Center. Lonnborg, Barbara A., and Thomas Lynch. 2003. Father Flanagan’s Legacy: Hope and Healing for Children. Boys Town, NE: Boys Town Press. Margaret Takahashi to Father Edward J. Flanagan, December 7, 1942. James Takahashi File. Boys Town Hall of History. McHugh, Jolene. 2014. “From the Archives: Boys Town.” Omaha World Herald, 14 April. Accessed 15 April 2014. http://www.omaha.com/blogs/from-the-archives-boys-town/ article_b82a51eb-6f1d-5524-9502-60346baac2bc.html?mode=image. Mizuno, Takeya. 2013. “A Disturbing and Ominous Voice from a Different Shore: Japanese Radio Propaganda and Its Impact on the US Government’s Treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II.” Japanese Journal of American Studies 24: 110–12.

Border Work | 95 National Origins Act. 1924. Congressional Record,  68th Congress, 1st Session, vol. 65. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. King, Russell, and Ronald Skeldon. 2010. “‘Mind the Gap!’ Integrating Approaches to Internal and International Migration.” Journal of Ethinic and Migration Studies 36(10): 1619–1646. Okura, Patrick. 1981. Testimony before the CWRIC Hearings in Seattle, Washington, 9–11 September. Washington, DC: USGPO. “Omaha Chapter History.” n.d. JACL Midwest District Council. Accessed 10 February 2017. http://www.jaclmdc.org/chaptersomahahistory.html. “Omaha YWCA Opens Hostel for Women Relocators.” 1943. Topaz Times, 7 July. Oursler, William. ca. 1940. Notes dictated from Father Flanagan, ca. 1940, unpublished manuscript, Oursler Papers. Boys Town Hall of History. ———. 1949. Father Flanagan of Boys Town. New York: Doubleday. Parmenter, W. N. 1944. “To Those Interested in Obtaining Evacuee Labor.” In Dwight Palmer Griswold Papers, ed. Omaha War Relocation Authority Resettlement Office. Omaha: Nebraska State Archives. Patrick Okura Files. n.d. Boys Town Hall of History. Reeves, Madeleine. 2014. Border Work: Spatial Lives of the State in Rural Central Asia. New York: Cornell University Press. Reilly, Hugh, and Kevin Warneke. 2008. Father Flanagan of Boys Town: A Man of Vision. Boys Town, NE: Boys Town Press. Robinson, Greg. 2011. A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America. New York: Columbia University Press. “Scheduled for Repatriation by the Japanese.” 1942. New York Times, 25 June. “Sino-Japanese Harmony Exists in Omaha.” 1944. The Granada Pioneer, 26 January. St. John, Rachel. 2011. Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Suzuki, Lester. 1979. Ministry in the Assembly and Relocation Centers during World War II. Yardbird. “Three Growers Ask Japanese Labor on Beets, Any Kind of Aid for Platte Valley Will Be Accepted.” 1942. Lincoln Evening Journal, 13 May. United States Bureau of the Census. 1940. Nebraska Table 25: “Indians, Chinese, and Japanese, By Sex, for Counties.” Washington: USGPO. ———. 1950. Nebraska Table 47: “Indians, Chinese, and Japanese, by Sex, for Selected Counties and Cities, 1950.” Washington, DC: USGPO. United States Congress. 1943. House, Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States, Los Angeles, June 8, 1943. Washington: USGPO. United States War Relocation Authority. 1943. The Relocation Program: A Guide for Residents of the Relocation Centers. Washington, DC: United States War Relocation Authority. ———. 1946. The WRA: A Story of Human Conservation. Washington: USGPO. ———. 1947. People in Motion: The Postwar Adjustment of Evacuated Japanese Americans. Washington, DC: USGPO. Wegars, Patricia. 2013. Rugged as the Terrain: CCC “Boys,” Federal Convicts, and World War II Alien Internees Wrestle with a Mountain Wilderness. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Weglyn, Michi Nishiura. 1995. Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press. “Work Opportunities Plentiful in Omaha.” 1944. Manzanar Free Press, 5 January. Yamazaki, Yuki. 2000. “St. Francis Xavier School: Acculturation and Enculturation of Japanese Americans in Los Angeles, 1921–1945.” US Catholic Historian 18(1).

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5 From Geographic to Virtual Borders in New York City From Little Italy to Chinatown Marie-Christine Michaud

Little Italy, in the Lower East Side of New York City, is part of the historical and cultural heritage of the city. This ethnic enclave was established by Italian migrants, especially those from the south of Italy, who arrived in massive numbers at the turn of the twentieth century (Gabaccia 1984; Pozzetta 1981: 7–40).1 Distinct geographic, social, and cultural borders demarcated this neighborhood and offered a “shock absorber,” as sociologist Joseph Lopreato (1970: 46–47) put it, between the newcomers and their foster society as these Italian immigrants integrated into American society. Despite the persistence of the name and the steady stream of tourists who seek a taste of Italian culture, Little Italy is now home to very few Americans of Italian descent. Following mid-twentieth-century migration trends, Americans of Italian descent increasingly left Little Italy and other ethnic enclaves in Manhattan and resettled in the suburbs. At the same time, Chinatown, which was first founded in the mid-nineteenth century but considerably expanded after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, has effectively enveloped Little Italy, which now consists mostly of a few dozen Italian restaurants. Yet the descendants of the Italian migrants have remained attached in other ways to this neighborhood. Owing to the new information and communication technologies, Italian Americans who have scattered throughout suburbia no longer need a geographically defined Little Italy to support their Italian American identity. The geographic borders of the ethnic enclave, because of their permeability, have been crossed and have faded away. They have become symbolic and virtual. Little Italy has physically shrunk, while Chinatown has expanded, but Italian American identity persists. The sense of belonging to an

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Italian American community is maintained in spite of a decreasing attachment to a particular culturally delimited territory. We shall refer to the geographic borders of Little Italy—the limits that defined the area where Italian American people lived—in other words, the ethnic neighborhood. These borders were supposed to provide safety and delimit a space in which to maintain community identity. This geographic area was officially demarcated and labeled by the New York City Planning Department. But in addition to these cartographically identified borders, social, cultural, sentimental, and psychological borders may also define the community that individuals belong to. We may describe these borders as symbolic and virtual, since they are not physically distinguishable (Barth 1969), but they are nonetheless essential to individuals because they furnish a sense of belonging to the community. The first type of borders seems to be no longer permanent, as Italian Americans have moved out and Chinese Americans have moved in, easily crossing them in ways that show the borders’ permeability. Thus outsiders may penetrate the area, while insiders may leave the place. There is a twofold porosity. In contrast, virtual borders are sustained because they continue to make ethnicity alive. Thus, the sense of belonging to a group can be de-territorialized, or disconnected from a geographic location.

Geographically Structured Borders It is possible to locate three different Italian American neighborhoods in Manhattan: the largest, which was established in East Harlem at the beginning of the twentieth century (Italian Harlem); the smallest, in Greenwich Village; and the oldest, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the Neapolitans first decided to settle. Nowadays, this neighborhood is still considered the Little Italy of New York City, at least on the maps of the city, in spite of its blurred and permeable geographic borders and instability (Orsi 1985; Brown 1992; Michaud 1999). The Little Italy of the Lower East Side emerged as early as the end of the nineteenth century when numerous Italian immigrants settled in New York City (Molinari 2011). They tended to gather together in limited areas because of the process of chain migration—migrants from the same region following and settling with earlier migrants in newly established, ethnically centered communities. The settlement of previous relatives or friends constituted an irresistible magnet that explains the concentration of these immigrants within Manhattan’s Italian enclaves. New York City was the first port of entry of European migrants, and since Italians from Campania, where Naples is located, were the second most numerous group of Italians to come at the turn of the

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twentieth century after the Sicilians,2 the neighborhood that they established in the city to help them to adapt progressively and rapidly became important and visible. People’s way of life inside the boundaries of Little Italy reflected the existing mores in Southern Italy and relied on two main principles: first, familism— that is, allegiance toward the family and the clan only, and distrust, even rejection, of those who did not belong to the family; and the second principle, campanilismo, or identification with and devotion to the territory symbolically within the shadow of the campanile (bell tower). In fact the village provided individuals with a community with whom they shared not only their everyday lives but also common cultural values and a social system. Because of campanilismo and because they wanted to limit the cultural shock arising from emigration and the feeling of alienation associated with settling in an unknown environment, the migrants established Little Italies that continued to be structured according to traditional patterns. Thus, ethnic enclaves were distinguished by internal borders stemming from village or regional differences. Each street or block was “reserved” for a specific group of Italians; in the Little Italy of the Lower East Side, Sicilians from western Sicily concentrated on Elizabeth, Thompson, and Prince Streets, while eastern Sicilians resided on Catherine and Monroe Streets. Neapolitans settled on Mulberry Street, and Calabrians on Broome, Bowery, and Grand Streets, with each group also occupying one side of Mott Street. The Italians coming from Basilicata and Puglia inhabited Mott Street, Hester Street, and East Houston Street. Those from Genoa could be found on Bleeker Street. Such a mosaic pattern is typical of all the Italian enclaves that were established in North America (Tricarico 1984: 15–9). Each regional group distinguished itself from the others through its particular language or dialect, the creation of local societies, and daily practices such as food choices and religious beliefs;3 there was also a tendency to intermarry and then for the group to turn in on itself (Tricarico 1984: 20–3). This concentration of Italian people and their way of settling were typical of what sociologists, and especially those who have extensively studied Italian migration, have called “an urban village” (Gans 1962; Blanc-Chaléard et al. 2007). Migrants had a rural background, but they settled in urban areas where job opportunities were the most numerous. By trying to re-create a familiar way of living in an urban environment, they attempted to lessen the cultural and social shock arising from their migration to an unknown country. Hence, a phenomenon of self-segregation—geographic and residential—characterized the Italians’ settlement in New York City. Setting geographic limits was one of the components that defined the way of living of these migrants, but the territory they demarcated was generally more a social and cultural referent than a mere geographic zone (Barth 1969). Consequently, even if the

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Little Italy of the Lower East Side tended to fade away, as we shall see, as its geographic borders became ever more permeable, the Italian American community of New York City remained distinct from other groups because of the maintenance of virtual cultural borders that people clung to and that helped to distinguish them from others. It is worth remembering that at the end of the nineteenth century, when Italian migrants arrived in the United States in massive numbers, the Risorgimento, or unification of the Italian nation, had only recently been accomplished, and Italian migrants had no real sense of national identity. Consequently, they organized Little Italy according to regional solidarity, campanilismo, rather than a united and national sense of community. They gathered together because they shared some cultural values (the Catholic religion, for instance), a Latin origin, and social characteristics, such as their low level on the occupational ladder. In addition, they were pulled to the specific areas that Little Italy represented because it was structured around institutions—the church in particular—that provided them with a sense of security. By being organized, the newcomers were better prepared to face adversity, especially the prejudices and hostility born of American nativism. To Anglo-Americans they represented a single group, in spite of regional cleavages, and were dismissed and disparaged as guineas, macaroni, and WOPs, and confined to the limited space in the margins of mainstream American society. There were then two levels of geographic and social boundaries. The first one involved a regional dimension, and the second one was defined by an emerging national identity. It was as if the Italians of Little Italy were locked up twice within its borders. The first level of borders turned out to be rather permeable, as individuals from different regions of Italy had to face the same “Italian” immigrant experience and gathered together to facilitate their progressive integration in their foster society; the national ones were not as porous, as the protection of Little Italy guaranteed the maintenance of the identity of individuals by emphasizing the contrast between the social system of the old country and the system of American society outside their ethnic neighborhood. The neighborhoods that Italian immigrants made their own became “safe zones” in which new immigrants could adjust to the new society. Their concentration in these particular areas led the New York City Planning Department (1996: 32) to define Little Italy as the territory limited on the north by Houston Street, on the east by Mulberry Street, on the south by Canal Street, and on the west by Broadway. This area corresponds with the forty-first, forty-third, and forty-fifth census tracts. However, even if this area remains Little Italy in the collective consciousness and on city maps, its permeable boundaries allow both emigration from and immigration to the neighborhood. In fact, this ethnic enclave as home to a population with a particular Italian identity seems to be disappearing.

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A Shrinking Cultural Space Many Italian Americans have spread throughout Greater New York City. The progress of the integration process, the economic mobility of the families, and the emergence of the second generation induced many individuals to leave the ethnic colonies; to remain might slow their integration into the foster society. In addition, Little Italy was overcrowded, and the living conditions were poor, even insalubrious. In the early 1960s, 46 percent of the housing units in the forty-first census tract, namely the heart of Little Italy, were declared unhygienic by the sanitary services of the Bureau of the Census (Napoli 2002: 15–38). Most of the units had been built at the beginning of the twentieth century, and even though they had been renovated, compared to the newer and more comfortable apartments or houses in suburbia, the housing units of Little Italy could not meet the expectations of the new generation. After World War II especially, Italian Americans left the traditional ethnic enclave associated with their immigrant parents. This movement was facilitated by the development of new means of transportation, which encouraged commuting from home to work. For example, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which connected Staten Island and Brooklyn, opened in the early 1960s and stimulated the resettlement of Italian Americans. The Italian American population of Staten Island grew significantly. By 1980, 28 percent of the population of the borough had Italian ancestry (Youssef 1991: 26). Indeed, the Italian American population increased in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Long Island, New Jersey, and even Connecticut, greatly expanding the geographic scope of the Italian American population beyond Manhattan. However, even though Americans of Italian background tended to gather together, which gave birth to new ethnic neighborhoods, the density of the Italian American population in these areas was far less than in their old ethnic neighborhoods. In these new neighborhoods, the cultural markers that signified Italian American identity were not as visible as they had been in ethnic enclaves. In seeking greater integration into mainstream American society and the social advancement that was expected to come with it, the younger generations were ready to relegate their ethnic identity to a position of secondary importance. Hence, in 1980, 63 percent of the Italian Americans who had formerly lived in the metropolis of New York resided in suburbia; at the end of the 1990s, their percentage reached nearly 85 percent (Alba, Logan, and Crowder 1997: 883–912). The map in figure 5.1 shows that in the year 2000—the date is important because it was at the previous turn of the century that the peak of the massive settlement of these migrants occurred—the majority of New Yorkers with an Italian ancestry no longer lived in the Little Italies of Manhattan. The suburban flight thus brought a waning of the ethnic enclaves typical of massive immigration years.

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Figure 5.1. The Italian American population in New York City in 2000. Source: New York City Department of City Planning, The Newest New Yorkers, 2001.

Different projects of urban renewal also pushed away to suburbia those who could afford it. For example, the possible construction of an expressway from the Holland Tunnel to the Williamsburg and Manhattan Bridges (Napoli 2002: 18), which would de-structure the Italian American urban village located in this area and reduce housing options there, constituted a good reason to leave. The available space left by the departure of Italian Americans was then taken by people in search of a spare territory to settle in, and, as the Chinese population kept increasing in Chinatown, the adjacent Little Italy became coveted by the Chinese newcomers. The close proximity of the two ethnic enclaves, separated by Canal Street, prompted Chinatown’s expansion north into Little Italy.

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The Chinese population, all generations included, took to purchasing real estate in Little Italy, and as early as 1988 more than one-third of all the properties in Little Italy were owned by people of Chinese background (Zhou 1992: 186). This was part of the promises of the New World—immigrants could acquire property, run a business, and improve their status. In a way, this mobility testifies to some economic integration with the American mainstream, although the businesses and the social life associated with their occupational activities remained connected to the Chinese community. Thus the process of Chinese integration has remained slow. The growth of the Chinese population in and near Little Italy was an additional motivation for Italian Americans to abandon the city center. Furthermore, the fact that the Chinese were not well integrated into the mainstream American economy and that many of the newer settlers were of lower social status tarnished the image of Little Italy, at least in the minds of the Italian Americans, encouraging the departure of Italian Americans to other parts of the city. Like other white Americans who participated in the white flight in this era, Italian Americans sought the comfort of the suburban areas and their association with the Anglo-American middle class. To move to the suburbs was to fulfill the American Dream. This phenomenon of ethnic succession—when the settlement of newcomers pushes away the local population—coincided with the expectations of younger generations who wished to part from their ethnic tradition and to prove their integration in the dominant society. They preferred to bolster their socioeconomic status, aware that ethnicity could mean marginalization from the mainstream. In fact, is not the identification with the Anglo-American middle class, partly arising from dwelling in suburbia, one of the reasons why Europeans decided to go to the Promised Land that the United States represented—if not for themselves, at least for their children? The settlement in suburbia goes along with the ownership of a garden and a house—a dream brought about as a reaction to the economic limitations of the feudal system in the Mezzogiorno region from which so many Italians had emigrated. It is also linked to their wish to maintain some distance from marginalized colored minorities and newer waves of migrants who have settled in inner cities. Thus, to live in ethnic neighborhoods in suburbia was a sign of the improvement of their social status, and even their belonging to the middle class, which was a part of the expectations of former generations of migrants when they decided to leave for the United States. Consequently, this movement beyond the geographic borders of Little Italy and similar ethnic enclaves, and beyond their social boundaries, could be expected. In East Harlem, the Little Italy there (Italian Harlem) became Spanish Harlem due to the arrival of Puerto Ricans in the 1960s and the departure of Italian Americans, while the ethnic and social landscape of the Little Italy of the Lower East Side shifted to become an extension of Chinatown.

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Although the number of Little Italy residents of Italian background is negligible, the neighborhood maintains not just its name but elements of Italian culture. Residents with an Italian origin represent 5 percent of the population of the forty-first, forty-third, and forty-fifth census tracts in contrast to 90 percent in 1910, and none were born in Italy (Roberts 2011). Little Italy comprises only some restaurants and delicatessens with imported goods from Italy and some souvenir shops. Its Italian character relies on artwork displayed through exhibitions, celebrations, and the historical relics that are treasured in the Italian American Museum on Mulberry Street. The area has lost its Italian “soul”—what made it Italian (Park, Burgess, and McKenzie 1921)—which has led sociologist Jerome Krase (1987: 180) to qualify Little Italies in the United States as “ethnic Disneylands”: they are now part of tourist tours throughout the city, similar to leisure parks, and neighborhoods where the suburban Italian population comes to stroll on weekends and gather for family or ethnic celebrations, in particular the Feast of San Gennaro. Such a situation leads Nicholas Pileggi, an Italian American writer who lives in Little Italy, to call those visitors “suburban Saturday Italians—the prospering overweight sons of leaner immigrant fathers” (in Roberts 2011). Film director Martin Scorsese, born on Elizabeth Street, even regrets that “now that’s all Little Italy is, a façade” (in Tonelli 2004: 17). The Italian American inhabitants, however, have established societies to keep their heritage alive. The Little Italy Restoration Association aims at rehabilitating the neighborhood “to identify, preserve and enhance Little Italy’s special qualities so it can remain vital and viable,” as John Zuccotti, the NYC Planning Commission chairman declared (in Napoli 2002: 22). Similarly, the Little Italy Merchants Association wants to make sure that people can run Italian American businesses while the Chinese are extensively buying real estate; the purpose of the association is “to show unity to preserve the area and combat growing infiltration of other nationalities” (Napoli 2002: 21). These societies have supported the opening of new shops, cafés, and restaurants; the organization of traditional celebrations; and the maintenance of the relationships with the Italian American suburbanites and even their return to Little Italy. Some streets have been closed to all but pedestrian traffic in order to facilitate shopping, socializing, and developing tourism. New schools have been opened, along with the establishment of small enterprises. In spite of all these efforts, however, Little Italy is no longer Italian as it once was. It has become a historical site, a cultural curiosity, whereas before World War II, it was “as if you were in Rome’s piazza Navona” (Van Eckardt 1981). Indeed, according to tourist guide books and websites such as www.lit tleitalynyc.com, www.tripadvisor.com, www.freetourbefoot.com, and www .travelandleisure.com, Little Italy has remained the tourist magnet in New York City for those seeking Italian “culture.” It still is a fashionable place to

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go, well-known for its food shops and restaurants. It is identified on the Yelp website as a place where some of the best Italian restaurants in the city can be found, for example. Its food festivals constitute an attraction for tourists, as well as for Italian American suburbanites (Tonelli 2004). For these reasons, it is a “must-see place on the tourists’ New York itinerary” (Roberts 2011). The imagination of the visitors as well as Italian Americans is nourished by the traditional images of Italy and its “dolce vita,” which encapsulate both a feeling of nostalgia and the wish to be fashionable. This is why, even if in reality Little Italy is disappearing as a home to people of Italian ethnic background, the traditional Italian neighborhood is still part of the city folklore.

New Immigrants Massive Chinese immigration to the United States was due to the adoption of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which opened the doors of the country wide to people coming from Latin America and Asia. Consequently, the Chinese population in New York City has increased since that date. It rose by more than 73 percent in the 1960s, 111 percent in the 1970s, and 79 percent in the 1980s. Its number further increased by 104 percent in the 1990s, then 47 percent in the following decade, and it has risen by 37 percent more since 2010. In that particular year, the Chinese represented 7 percent of the total population in New York City (Zhou 2001: 146). The Chinese have been attracted by the promises of the United States. The capitalist system and the freedoms attached to the image of the New World have triggered a massive influx. Immigration is also facilitated by networks through which Chinese employers and enterprise owners already settled in New York City issue contracts to some of their compatriots so that they can come and work for them. This massive chain migration has encouraged the establishment of a growing Chinese enclave in Manhattan and the maintenance of a Chinese subculture in the city. In fact, several Chinese colonies have been established throughout the city, in Queens and Brooklyn in particular. But while these Chinatowns provide individuals with what they expect (housing, employment, a socialization system), their need—and even their wish—to spread in the urban areas has not been strong. Their remaining in Chinatowns can be considered as a brake to their social, economic, and cultural integration into the core society. Their concentration in communities creates distinguishable borders between the community and the mainstream. As a consequence, Chinese people remain marginalized in specific spaces, which may be considered a turning in on the community and, as such, a lack of social integration, in contrast to the experience of Italians, whose integration can be seen through their residential distribution in the boroughs of the city.

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According to the 1990 census, 58 percent of the inhabitants in tracts forty-one, forty-three, and forty-five are Chinese, and half of them arrived in the United States after 1965. Today, they represent over 70 percent of the population in Little Italy. To illustrate this phenomenon of ethnic succession, it is revealing to take the example of Saint Joseph Church (figure 5.2), located on Monroe Street. Though further to the south of Canal Street, it used to be the center of an Italian parish devoted to the Italian and Italian American population of Little Italy. It opened in 1924 and was run by the Scalabrinian priests to meet the needs of immigrants. The church front wall carries the words “San Giuseppe” above the “San Joseph” inscription. Then, especially from the 1990s onward, new parishioners arrived from the region of Fujian, in China, and a new board was fixed that indicated the name of the church in Chinese. When the church closed in 2015, mass was celebrated separately in English, Spanish, and Chinese, and 90 percent of the parishioners were Chinese. Another example of the coexistence of the two communities in the Lower East Side is the annual Marco Polo Festival, which has been organized since 2009.4 The medieval Italian who traveled extensively in China and returned home to share his experience with his fellow Italians serves as a potent symbol and a touchstone for an intercultural and cross-neighborhood celebration shared by two immigrant communities now sharing the same space.

Figure 5.2. The front wall of Saint Joseph Church. Photo by Marie-Christine Michaud.

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The Chinese population in New York City has increased so steadily and significantly that new Chinese neighborhoods can be found in Sunset Park and Sheepshead in Brooklyn as well as in Flushing and Jackson Heights in Queens (see figure 5.3). In Manhattan, Little Italy is withering, while Chinatown is flourishing, and the northern side of Canal Street has definitely become Chinese, which shows that the borders of Little Italy are porous (see figures 5.4 and 5.5). Moreover, it is worth noting that in 2010, the National Park Service designated a “Chinatown and Little Italy Historic District” with no geographic division between the two neighborhoods (Roberts 2011).

Figure 5.3. The Chinese population in New York City in 2000. Source: New York City Department of City Planning, The Newest New Yorkers, 2001.

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Figures 5.4 and 5.5. The streets of Little Italy in October 2016. Photos by Marie-Christine Michaud.

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Toward Virtual Borders and Persistent Cultural Identities As stated above, Italians and Italian Americans have spread in Greater New York, and they now live in suburbia in greater numbers than in the traditional and historic Little Italies of Manhattan. According to the official figures of the New York City Planning Department, in 2011, the proportion of Italians ranked eleventh among the foreign population living in the south of Manhattan (south of Twenty-Third Street); in 2013, Italians were not even mentioned, whereas the Chinese ranked first (even if today the largest foreign group to settle in the City of New York comes from the Dominican Republic). These figures indicate that the Italian American population in New York, scattered throughout the metropolis, is not as visible as it used to be, and it is no longer associated with a well-defined territory with circumscribed borders. In suburbia, there are ethnic neighborhoods, pockets that Stéphane Dufoix and Valérie Foucher (2007: 423–36) call “ethno-territories” to distinguish them from ethnic enclaves. In these areas, the Italian American population does not necessarily represent a majority of the inhabitants; the Italian American heritage is visible through Catholic churches and parochial schools, stores with imported goods, cafés, and restaurants, but without regulating the social organization of the areas. The inhabitants’ aspirations are no longer to re-create an urban village within ethnic borders. The limits of these ethno-territories are loose and do not constitute defining components of the inhabitants’ identities. These territories are no longer needed in the process of identification as Little Italies used to be for first-generation migrants. However, new generations settle in these ethno-territories not to lose their sense of belonging to a specific group, different from the other groups of white ethnics. In these areas, they can carry on having a familiar way of living with neighbors who share the same social and cultural values. Italian Americans, the descendants of migrants, now form part of the American cultural mainstream. It would be more accurate to say that they are Americans, born in the United States, who happen to have Italian ancestry. From time to time, when they choose to do so, they are likely to put forward their Italian origin, to promote their Italian-ness. They still identify with the Italian American community, but usually through symbols—celebrations, the Italian flag, typical food, artwork—and they are proud of their ancestry (Gans 1979: 205). They can be because it does not prevent them from being part of the mainstream nor does it hamper their social mobility. Hence, they can be attached to Little Italy in their hearts, since they are not socially bound to it. The drying up of Italian immigration to the United States, the process of integration, and the emergence of the younger generations born in the United States have contributed to the dilution of Little Italies, to the fading away

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of their ethnic and geographic borders—in other words, to a process of deterritorialization of their ethnic identity. Residential self-segregation within the boundaries of the Little Italy of the Lower East Side helped migrants build or maintain their identities; but nowadays, in spite of the de-territorialization process of their ethnicity, the Italian Americans can feel that they are part of the Italian American community even if they do not reside in a well-defined ethnic territory. They can go to Little Italy to celebrate traditional festivities, feste, to attend family ceremonies (weddings, baptisms that are celebrated in the Most Precious Blood Church), to go shopping and buy Italian foods, to meet friends or relatives in Italian American cafés or restaurants. In their daily life, however, they do not feel the need to assert their Italian ancestry or show their ties to the ethnic enclave. Moreover, they have found other means of affirming their sense of belonging to the Italian American community that are quicker, very efficient, and with a broader scope, and that enable them not to feel isolated and even to fight any sense of loss of ethnicity or anonymity. Thanks to the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) that have developed since the middle of the twentieth century, it is now possible to feel like a member of a community and to cling to it without submitting to the constraints of time and space. This is how many Italian Americans can live their ethnicity today in New York City. To have a sense of community membership may be important to those who belong to a minority group and do not necessarily share all the values of the dominant society. Even if Italian Americans are unquestionably part and parcel of the mainstream today, they are not just “white folks” like any other Americans (Vecoli 1995: 149–65). Rudolph Vecoli (1995) maintains that the Italian Americans were different from the rest of the American population, and in particular the Anglo-American dominant group, because of the discrimination that they faced mainly until World War II. Indeed, the Italian Americans are different; their migration experience, their cultural heritage, and their social background distinguish them from the Anglo-American majority. They have retained a sense of their Italian community, a deep attachment to traditions and Italian culture. All these features emphasize the distinction between them and others—in other words, the borders, even virtual, between their community and the outer society. As Mary Waters (1990: 150) said, writing about white people, “Having an ethnic identity is something that makes you both special and simultaneously part of a community. It is something that comes to you involuntarily through heredity, and at the same time it is a personal choice.” With the passing of Little Italy as a residential community, one could easily imagine the challenge to maintain an identity as an Italian (American). But ICTs have supplanted the role of physical space in supporting and maintaining

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ethnic identity. They reduce time and space even more than highways, airplanes, telephones, and televisions did after World War II. They have nearly annihilated distances, as one can see and speak with a person who stands on the other side of the city, the continent, or even the Atlantic Ocean (Italy in our case) at no special expense. Thus, they enable people to find virtual means to build or maintain their ethnic identity, to keep their sense of belonging to a community, even if they do not have any physical contact with the other members of this group. The development of the Internet, websites, online media, and social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter have revolutionized the relations among individuals within their community and within society as a whole.5 Thanks to these services, people’s ethnic identity is no longer rooted in a given territory or limited by precise geographic or social borders. It is no longer necessary to be physically present, close to others, or to go to the ethnic enclaves in order to meet the other members of the community and to know what is going on in the community. Websites and online media are the new means of communication among those who share interests, values, and group membership. For example, on the website of the Little Italy Merchants Association (www.littleitalynyc.com), anyone can find information about the cultural events and commercial activities of Little Italy, even the routes and timetables of the buses that cross the neighborhood. Community information can also be found in the ethnic press that covers not only New York City but the tri-state area—New York, New Jersey, Connecticut—which shows, first, the spread of the Italian Americans in suburbia, and second, that they are no longer confined to particular limited territories in traditional Little Italies. America Oggi and the Italian Tribune, the most popular Italian American papers now read in the tri-state area, are not printed in New York City but in New Jersey, in contrast to Il Progresso Italo-Americano, the most popular Italian American paper in the United States for one hundred years (1880–1989), whose readership was mostly from New York City and whose headquarters were in New York City. Revealingly, America Oggi and the Italian Tribune have websites in addition to their printed publications: www.americaoggi.info and www.italiantribune.com. The increase in the numbers of Italian classes, the establishment of Italian American studies departments in universities, and the multiplicity of associations especially since the 1960s (local societies such as Ciao Mott Street Center, academic societies such as the American Italian Studies Association or the American Association of Teachers of Italian, or societies based on the origin of their members such as the Abruzzi Social Club, to mention just a few) are all efforts to keep the Italian heritage alive and promote the visibility of the Italian American community. They testify to the maintenance of a sense of community among the Italian American people in spite of the permeability of

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the borders associated with the process of the de-territorialization of ethnicity. Likewise, the fact that traditional ethnic enclaves, such as the Little Italy of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, are vanishing and their borders are no longer well-defined does not mean the disappearance of the Italian American community in the United States.

Conclusion The new ICTs have transformed the means of socialization among individuals. They have also changed the relations between people and space and time. The multiple generations of migrants in the United States have crossed several levels of borders: in particular, national borders when they migrated, and social and ethnic borders when they decided to leave their historical enclaves and integrate into mainstream America. The impermanence of these types of borders—in other words, their permeability—reveals the progressive nature of the process of integration. The ICTs have enabled people to maintain cohesion within their community without being concentrated in limited spaces that were ethnically marked. In short, Italian Americans can belong to the mainstream while still belonging to the Italian American community. The diverse geographic borders that they have crossed have not prevented them from being attached to their mother country. The new borders that they are now facing are the universal, permeable, and flexible “hashtag borders.” Only those virtual borders that they maintain out of cultural and ethnic pride, individual will, and attachment to their Italian-ness make them Italian American folks before being “just white folks.” Marie-Christine Michaud is a professor of American Studies, and she teaches in Université Bretagne Sud, in France. Her research focuses on Italian Americans, and she has written several articles and books about their experience, including From Steel Tracks to Gold-Paved Streets: Italian Immigrants and the Railroad in the North Central States (2005). She edited an international volume titled Italians in the Americas (2012). Recently she has also worked on the relationships between Italian Americans and other minority groups in the United States. Her latest book, Italo-Américains et Noirs à New York, was published in 2018.

Notes 1. We distinguish two waves of Italian immigration to the United States. Northern Italians immigrated before the 1870s, and those from the southern regions, the Mezzogiorno, arrived mainly from the 1860s onward, at the time of the construction of the Italian nation, the Risorgimento.

112 | Marie-Christine Michaud 2. L’annuario statistico dell’emigrazione italiane dal 1856 al 1956 (Rome, 29 April 1958) counted that between 1900 and 1930 some 112,370 individuals from Campania migrated to the United States and some 137,610 from Sicily. 3. For example, the local patron saints of villages, such as San Gennaro (celebrated on 8 September), San Rocco (16 August), Saint Anthony (13 June), and each of them has specific powers. 4. See “7th Annual Marco Polo Festival,” 17 October 2015, CityLimits.org, accessed 11 March 2017, https://citylimits.org/event/7th-annual-marco-polo-festival/. 5. For examples of Italian American websites, see Twitter, https://twitter.com/italamer ican, accessed 11 March 2017; Twitter, https://twitter.com/ciaoamerica?lang=fr, accessed 11 March 2017; and Fronte 2016. Accessed 11 March 2017.

References Alba, Richard, John Logan, and Kyle Crowder. 1997. “White Ethnic Neighborhoods and Assimilation in Greater New York Region, 1980–1990.” Social Forces 75 (March): 883–912. Barth, Fredrik. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Bergen Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Blanc-Chaléard, Marie-Claude, Antonio Bechelloni, Bénédicte Deschamps, Michel Dreyfus, and Eric Vial. 2007. Les Petites Italies dans le monde. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Brown, Mary. 1992. From Italian Villages to Greenwich Village. New York: Center for Migration Studies. Dufoix, Stéphane, and Valérie Foucher. 2007. “Les Petites Italies (et les autres). Eléments de réflexion sur la notion d’ethnoterritoire.” In Les Petites Italies dans le monde, edited by Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard, Antonio Bechelloni, Bénédicte Deschamps, Michel Dreyfus and Eric Vial, 423–36. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Fronte, Vittoria. 2016. “Italian Media in the United States: A Two-Century-Long History.” La Voce di New York, 4 May 2016. Accessed 11 March 2017. http://www.lavocedinewyork .com/en/2016/05/04/italian-media-the-united-states-two-century-long-history/. Gabaccia, Donna R. 1984. From Sicily to Elizabeth Street: Housing and Social Change among Italian Immigrants 1880–1893. New York: State University of New York Press. Gans, Herbert. 1962. The Urban Villagers. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. ———. 1979. “Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America.” In On the Making of Americans, edited by Herbert Gans, Nathan Glazer, Joseph Gusfield and Christopher Jencks, 193–220. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979. Krase, Jerome. 1987. “America’s Little Italies: Past, Present and Future.” In Italian Ethnics: Their Languages, Literature and Lives, edited by Dominic Candeloro, Fred Gardaphé, and Paolo Giordano, 169–84. New York: AIHA. Lopreato, Joseph. 1970. Italian Americans. New York: Random House. Michaud, Marie-Christine. 1999. “Communauté(s) italienne(s) aux États-Unis au début du siècle: hétérogénéité et unité.” In Des Amériques, impressions et expressions, edited by Jean-Paul Barbiche, 180–86. Paris: L’Harmattan. Molinari, Maurizio. 2011. Gli Italiani di New York. Rome: Gius. Laterza and Figli. Napoli, Philip. 2002. “Little Italy: Constructing a New Community.” Italian American Review 9(1): 15–38.

From Geographic to Virtual Borders in New York City | 113 New York City Planning Department. December 1996. The Newest New Yorkers 1990–1994. New York: New York City Planning Publication. Orsi, Robert. 1985. The Madonna of 115th Street. New Haven: Yale University Press. Park, Robert, Ernest W. Burgess, and Roderick McKenzie. 1921. The City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pozzetta, George. 1981. “The Mulberry District of New York City.” In Little Italies of North America, edited by Vincenza Scarpaci and Robert Harney, 7–40. Toronto: Multicultural History of Society of Ontario. Roberts, Sam. 2011. “New York’s Little Italy, Littler by the Year.” New York Times, 11 February. Tonelli, Bill. 2004. “Arrivederci, Little Italy.” New York Times Magazine, 27 September. Tricarico, Donald. 1984. The Italians of Greenwich Village. New York: Center for Migration Studies. Van Eckardt, Wolf. 1981. “Little Italy Lives.” Washington Post, 4 April. Vecoli, Rudolph. 1995. “Are Italian Americans Just White Folks?” Italian Americana 12(2): 149–65. Waters, Mary. 1990. Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Youssef, Nadia. 1991. Population Dynamics on Staten Island. New York: Center for Migration Studies. Zhou, Min. 1992. Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ———. 2001. “Chinese: Divergent Destinies in Immigrant New York.” In New Immigrants in New York City, edited by Nancy Foner, 141–72. New York: Columbia University Press.

PART

II Permeability in Border and Migration Policy

chapter

6 Realizing Government Ambitions Policing Insiders and Outsiders Jon Wiebel

Not to be outdone by Donald Trump’s pledge to construct an impermeable wall along the entire length of the US-Mexico border, Republican senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue introduced the RAISE (Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment) Act in the United States Senate in August 2017. Supporting the legislation, President Trump asserted that the RAISE Act would, by ensuring that those who entered the United States could financially support themselves, prevent new immigrants from entering the United States and immediately collecting welfare (Trump 2017). Although the RAISE Act failed to make it to the floor of the US Senate, the president and Republican lawmakers in Congress have intensified their efforts to limit so-called public charges. On the same day in April 2019, Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the Senate reintroduced the RAISE Act in both houses (H.R. 2278 2019; S. 1103 2019). Additionally in May 2019, the Trump Administration began considering a US Department of Justice draft regulation that would interpret the “public charge” provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act so that it would be easier to deport legal immigrants who had used public assistance programs within five years of their arrival (Sury, Kinoshita, and Quinn 2019). The recent initiatives’ emphasis on limiting “public charges,” to ensure that only productive immigrants are allowed to enter and remain in the United States, has been a part of US immigration policy stretching back to colonial times (Borjas 2001). Yet despite their long-shared concern with public charges, immigration and welfare policies have emphasized the targeting, sorting, and managing of quite distinct populations: welfare policy is concerned with populations residing within national boundaries, while immigration policy is concerned with populations residing beyond the national boundaries. Although both sets of policies sort and manage populations into desirable and undesirable categories, the boundaries of each policy are usually thought to

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be mutually exclusive. Immigration policy may be concerned with preventing public charges, but it does not manage citizens. Or does it? This essay explores the permeability between immigration and welfare policy by examining the ways in which the formation of immigration policy becomes a mechanism for defining and managing the conduct of those residing within national boundaries. I analyze the 1996 policy debates over the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 to illustrate how the concept of immigration becomes tethered in important ways to larger debates about the definition of desirable conduct for various populations already residing in the United States. In other words, policy debates over maintaining our national borders provide a framework for forging welfare policy that seeks to create impermeable boundaries between worthy and unworthy citizens. Banting (2000) has noted that one response of limited or liberal welfare states (states whose welfare policy mainly consists of means-tested public assistance programs) to immigration has been to increase neoliberal attacks on the welfare state. Yet while Banting demonstrates how the late twentieth-century immigration reforms in the United States served to manage and regulate the conduct of newly arrived immigrants by eliminating their access to means-tested public assistance programs, his analysis stops short of exploring how immigration policy can function as a new weapon in the armory of neoliberal attacks on the welfare state more generally. That is, more than seeking to regulate the conduct of newly arrived migrants, this chapter argues that immigration reforms in the United States are articulated as part of a much larger neoliberal project designed to dismantle the welfare state. By exploring the justifications and rationalizations used to advocate for and against particular changes to US immigration policy, this chapter provides insights into the ways in which concerns over regulating the conduct of those residing beyond the United States can serve as part of a larger neoliberal project to eliminate public assistance programs that are said to undermine the self-regulatory capacities of those residing within the United States. Put another way, conceptions of the border as an impermeable limit designed to demarcate worthy from unworthy outsiders become a means by which legislators infuse regimes of worthiness for those legally residing within the United States with the very discourses that are ostensibly designed to manage and regulate the conduct of undocumented migrants.

Regimes of Worthiness: Intersections of Immigration-Welfare Policies Existing scholarship on the convergence of immigration and welfare policies typically addresses one of two concerns: how welfare policy impacts immi-

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grant use of public assistance programs (Borjas 1999, 2001, 2002; Espenshade, Baraka, and Huber 1997; Fix and Passel 1999, 2002; Hagan et al. 2003; Shields 2004) or the relationships between immigration and welfare legislation at the level of policy making (Geddes 2000; Nakar-Sadi 2013). While the former seeks to determine whether immigrants—mostly legal immigrants—use public assistance more often than natives and how particular welfare reforms impact immigrants’ use of public assistance programs, the latter “tries to conceptualize the relations between policies of welfare and immigration” (NakarSadi 2013: 52). Reviewing the existing literature on intersections between immigration and welfare policy, Nakar-Sadi (2013) argues that although this work enables scholars to consider how welfare policies, ostensibly designed to manage internal population, also affect the management of external populations, it depends upon a “unidirectional assumption that immigration policies are the result of welfare policies” (53). Such an assumption, according to Nakar-Sadi, results in a privileging of national boundaries as the most significant, if not sole, factor explaining the intersections between immigration and welfare policy. Indeed, as Nakar-Sadi illustrates, immigration and welfare policies enacted during the 1960s (the War on Poverty of 1964 and the Hart Cellar Act of 1965) did not reflect this unidirectional relationship. Instead of presupposing that national boundaries serve as the “intellectual precondition” (Miller and Rose 1990) through which welfare and immigration policy are articulated, Nakar-Sadi (2013) argues that scholars must divine the ways of thinking that function to articulate welfare to immigration policy and vice versa. To this end, Nakar-Sadi (2013) posits that immigration and welfare policies be viewed as “worthiness regimes” wherein each policy is viewed as “a meaningful platform by which social distinctions between the worthy and the unworthy are constantly created” (53). The language of entitlement that is used to characterize public assistance programs reflects the ways in which welfare policy is based on classifications of particular populations as worthy or unworthy of assistance. Worthiness has also anchored the formation and enforcement of US immigration policy—particularly as it pertains to immigrants from Mexico. For example, although there were no quantitative limits to “legal” immigration to the United States from Mexico prior to 1965, qualitative measures such as personal characteristics (“illiteracy” or potential to become a “public charge”), how one entered, and how one would conduct oneself once in the United States were used to regulate the entry of Mexican migrants (De Genova 2013: 44). Thus, a standard of worthiness anchored both welfare programs and immigration policies. Given these conditions, policies designed to monitor and manage internal populations and those designed to monitor external populations can become allied “through the adoption of shared vocabularies, theories and explanations” (Miller and Rose 1990: 10). As such, the

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fates of both internal and external populations are bound up with the formation of policies ostensibly designed to manage undesired internal populations (welfare recipients) or external populations (immigrants). What is important in each case is to analyze the specific vocabularies and logics that ground such potential linkages in order to understand the larger political forces at work in these public debates. I argue that discourses of entrepreneurialism—discourses that privilege defining individuals as enterprising agents who take risks and make decisions based on a desire to improve their economic lives—are critical to the definition of “worthiness” in the debates over the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA). Although they do not displace the more common discourses of criminality (i.e., unworthiness) that would ultimately govern the debates on the IIRIRA, discourses of entrepreneurialism paradoxically formed the foundation of several key provisions that were included in the final legislation. Tracing the discourse of entrepreneurialism illustrates how policies designed to govern populations seeking to enter the United States can affect the governing and managing of populations authorized to reside in the United States.

Immigration and the 104th Congress The passage of California’s Proposition 1871 by an overwhelming majority in 1994 signaled to many in the US Congress that the time had come for the federal government to live up to its responsibility to regulate the US-Mexico border. However, immigration reform was not part of the Contract with America.2 Although the Contract did offer proposals for limiting federal means-tested public assistance programs to legal immigrants, which was taken up as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, the Contract did not posit immigration as one of the problems facing the nation. The absence of immigration reform as part of the Contract with America casts doubt on any claim that would locate the relationship between the efforts to reform welfare and immigration by the 104th Congress in Republican ideology. Although it is unlikely that Republicans were unaware of the intensification of anti-immigrant sentiment across the country in 1994, immigration as a national issue was likely to split any Republican coalition envisioned by the Contract (Tichenor 2002). Even proposals to limit “illegal immigration” could unleash rival interests that would divide partisan coalitions. These divides were evident in the debates over how to reform immigration policy in the 104th Congress. For example, while initial proposals dealt with both legal and illegal immigrants, the mobilization of business interests who opposed

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any changes to legal immigration ensured that if Congress was going to reform legal immigration, it would have to do it in a separate piece of legislation. Despite the contentiousness of immigration as a national issue, the passage of California’s Proposition 187 and the Republican control of Congress set the stage for immigration reform to be taken up by the 104th Congress. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 was the product of a House-Senate conference committee charged to resolve differences between immigration reform bills passed by the House and the Senate. In the House, Lamar Smith (R-TX), with thirty-eight co-sponsors from both parties, including the ranking Democrat on the immigration subcommittee John Bryant (D-TX), introduced H.R. 1915, the Immigration in the National Interest Act (Gimpel and Edwards 1999), to the House immigration subcommittee. The original bill included eight sections that dealt with improved border security, alien smuggling and document fraud, streamlining the deportation process, employment verification, limiting public benefits, facilitating legal entry, and reforming legal immigration. After a series of amendments in committee, the bill emerged as H.R. 2202 with the same title and the core provisions intact, including notably provisions pertaining to legal immigration. On 19 March 1995, H.R. 2202 came up for floor debate. Over the course of three days, the House would debate a number of crucial amendments highlighting the distinction of insiders and outsiders. First, the rules committee allowed debate on an amendment that struck the legal immigration provisions from H.R. 2202. In addition, the House considered one of the most controversial amendments offered by Elton Gallegly (R-CA) permitting states to deny the admittance of noncitizen children of undocumented migrants to public schools. The floor debates over both amendments were critical moments where a discourse of entrepreneurialism emerged as a framework for constituting and managing desirable and undesirable populations residing within and beyond the territorial borders of the United States. Meanwhile the Senate considered S. 1664, the Immigration Control and Financial Responsibility Act of 1996, which was a combination of two pieces of legislation (one dealing with legal immigration and the other with illegal immigration) introduced by Alan Simpson (R-WY). As in the House, discourses of responsibility and enterprising conduct informed debates over two key amendments to S. 1664. First, due to significant pressure exerted by a coalition of businesses, which favored legal immigration, the Senate Judiciary Committee opted to “split” the bill and only consider the provisions designed to address unauthorized migration as part of S. 1664 (Gimpel and Edwards 1999). After the bill emerged from committee, Senator Simpson attempted to rejoin legal and illegal immigration reforms by proposing an amendment to hold legal immigration at a “level of 10 percent below the current total of regular non-refugee admissions” (142 Cong. Rec. S4417 [1996]) for five years.

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The amendment suffered a crushing defeat (eighty to twenty) on the back of arguments that legal and illegal immigration were separate issues. Throughout the debates, questions of responsibility and entrepreneurial conduct were front and center as senators routinely articulated the need to do something about illegal immigrants while lauding the contributions of legal immigrants. Yet even as senators held fast to the idea that something needed to be done to address undocumented migration, many would ultimately ascribe to the undocumented the very enterprising motives they claimed epitomized what it meant to be a legal immigrant. The second amendment, sponsored by Bob Graham (D-FL), attempted to undermine the deeming requirements (using the income of an immigrant sponsor to determine eligibility for public assistance programs) imposed by S. 1664. Graham argued that the deeming provisions amounted to an unfunded mandate—a practice whereby the Congress mandates policy to states and localities without providing funds to support compliance with the mandate—which had been ended as part of the Contract with America. If they constituted an unfunded mandate, according to existing law, they could not be enacted. While it was also defeated, Graham’s amendment afforded members of Congress the chance to once again emphasize the ideas of responsibility and enterprising conduct of all migrants, as support for the deeming provision turned on concerns over the deforming effects of public assistance programs. Given differences in the two bills, a conference committee was convened in order to produce a piece of legislation that could pass both chambers. While the conference committee would fail to include some of the more controversial elements of each bill, such as the Gallegly Amendment, the piece of legislation that emerged still held fast to the discourse of responsibility and enterprise that had animated much of the earlier debates. By being couched in discourses of entrepreneurialism, the debates over key amendments functioned to render undocumented migrants thinkable as rational, calculating, enterprising individuals. While this discourse would also be turned back against them (their decision to enter the United States illegally makes them irresponsible and hence unworthy) in rendering undocumented migrants thinkable in these terms, their conduct as rational, calculating agents becomes something to which all those also legally residing in the United States should aspire.

Governing Conduct through the Employment Magnet Ten years prior to the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act, entrepreneurial discourse emerged as part of the immigration debate when Congress passed what was heralded as a landmark piece of legislation to combat unauthorized migration, the Immigration Re-

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form and Control Act (IRCA). The impetus for the IRCA, like the Immigration Reform Act, was the belief that the United States had “lost control” of its borders (Espenshade 1995). For the first time, Congress included a series of employer sanctions designed to prevent employers from hiring undocumented migrants. Considered to be the “cornerstone” of the legislation, the IRCA employer sanctions prohibited three forms of activity: (1) knowingly hiring an undocumented migrant, (2) continuing the employment of a known undocumented migrant, and (3) the hiring of anyone without verifying their identity and authorization to work (Fix 1991). Congress believed that sanctions would eliminate employment opportunities for undocumented migrants in the United States, thus removing a major incentive for migrants to enter the United States without authorization (White, Bean, and Espenshade 1990). By 1996 it was clear that the employer sanctions inaugurated by the IRCA were ineffective. Members of Congress, while generally agreeing something needed to be done to eliminate the so-called jobs magnet, disagreed over why employer sanctions failed to eliminate it. Through this debate there emerged a conception of undocumented migrants as hardworking, enterprising individuals, which, like legal immigrants, made them worthy of the “privilege” of entering the United States. As in 1986, congressional debates on immigration reform in 1996 began from the notion that while border enforcement may make it harder for undocumented migrants to enter the United States, if measures were not taken to eliminate the incentives that entice migrants to cross the border or overstay their visas, undocumented migrants would continue to pour into the United States. Members on both sides of the political aisle routinely argued for the need to eliminate the jobs magnet. In the Senate, prominent Democrats like Robert Byrd (D-WV) claimed that “the only way to effectively halt the flow of illegal immigrants . . . is to take away the biggest magnet of all . . . jobs” (142 Cong. Rec. S4609 [1996]). Likewise Alan Simpson (R-WY) stated, “We cannot be serious about dealing with the problem of illegal immigration unless we are serious about dealing with those who knowingly hire illegals” (142 Cong. Rec. S4467 [1996]). As in the Senate, the refrain among members of the House was the need to eliminate the jobs magnet. Representative Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) boldly claimed that “despite the rhetoric . . . border enforcement will not solve the problem. . . . The lure of . . . plentiful job opportunities attracts thousands . . . each year” (142 Cong. Rec. H2449 [1996]). Not to be outdone on explaining the importance of dealing with the “jobs magnet,” Representative Bill McCollum (R-FL) proclaimed: I can put every person in the United States military across our Southwest border, I can seal it with a wall, and I cannot stop the people who are going to come here illegally, because they are going to come for jobs one way or another. Over half who

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are here illegally . . . are here because they have come on legal visas and overstayed. And the incentive for all of this is to get a job. (142 Cong. Rec. H2503 [1996])

In the 104th Congress then, there was a clear general agreement that any policy designed to curtail unauthorized migration would need to address the jobs question. While the need to remove the “jobs magnet” appeared to have universal appeal, members did not agree on the proposed measures to eliminate it. Both versions of the Immigration Reform Act included a “pilot program” for confirming an individual’s employment eligibility. The crucial difference between the two was that the House version stipulated that participation would be voluntary, while the Senate version allowed the attorney general to require participation (Gimpel and Edwards 1999). The most substantive debate on these provisions occurred in the House. Representative Steve Chabot (R-OH) and Representative John Conyers (D-MI) introduced an amendment to eliminate the pilot program on the grounds that it represented a threat to civil liberties. Ultimately the particulars of each proposal are less important than the rationales that informed and subtended them. What is significant in the debate for the purposes of this essay is that as members of Congress continually invoked the need to address the “jobs magnet,” there emerged a characterization of undocumented migrants as rational economic actors who are merely trying to maximize their own quality of life. The undocumented were paradoxically characterized as enterprising agents whose choice to seek a job was lauded and praised, even as their decision to enter the United States was condemned as criminal behavior. That is, the figure of the immigrant was defined as existing simultaneously as a criminal and as a worthy entrepreneurial subject. The discourse of criminality that defines the actions of undocumented migrants as crimes served to anchor much of the debate over how to eliminate the so-called jobs magnet. For many in Congress the problem—the ineffectiveness of employer sanctions—was due to the criminal conduct of the undocumented. Describing the problem as one of “document fraud,” Representative Bill McCollum (R-FL) concluded that “we can never stop employers [from] hiring illegal aliens because they do not know who they are and they get documents that are fraudulent” (142 Cong. Rec. H2452 [1996]). Likewise John Wiley Bryant (D-TX), ranking Democrat on the House immigration subcommittee, who cosponsored the House version of the Immigration Reform Act, explained that the ineffectiveness of employer sanctions stemmed from the fact that “job applicants have discovered how to counterfeit any one of or all of the 29 documents which can be presented to prove one’s status” (142 Cong. Rec. H2499 [1996]). Although Representative Bryant curiously uses the term “job applicant” instead of “illegal alien,” given the context of the debate it is not hard to ascertain just which “job applicants” to whom he refers. Others

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were even more generous to employers, such as Representative Charles Stenholm (D-TX), who described them as “hardworking, honest business people” who were doing “everything they [were] supposed to and still being held liable for unknowingly hiring an illegal alien” (142 Cong. Rec. H2511 [1996]). Employers were acting responsibly, fulfilling their obligations as required by the IRCA. These characterizations of the “problem” cast employers as victims and undocumented migrants as deceitful predators. From this perspective, the ineffectiveness of employer sanctions testifies to dangers of tolerating the “illegal” crossings of undocumented migrants from Mexico. Their crossing was not their only criminal act, as once in the United States they needed to obtain a job, which could only be secured by presenting fraudulent forms of identification. Thus, not only did they continue to engage in criminal behaviors, their criminal conduct spurred additional criminal conduct—the development of an industry devoted to the production of fraudulent employment documents. The undocumented then are cast as a contagion, one who threatens respect for the rule of law. Interestingly, however, employers were not tainted by the criminal conduct of the undocumented. Doing the best that they could to verify the authenticity of the documents they were presented, employers acted responsibly and should not be subjected to punitive measures if it was discovered that they unknowingly hired “illegals.” Even though the characterization of undocumented migrants as criminals dominated the debates over the Chabot/Conyers Amendment to eliminate the verification pilot program from the House version of immigration reform legislation, there emerged another discourse of criminality that focused on the culpability of both employers and federal institutions for the ability of undocumented migrants to gain employment. While those who characterized undocumented migrants as criminals for using fraudulent documents opposed the efforts of Representatives Chabot and Conyers to eliminate the verification system from the House version of the bill, members of Congress who blamed employers and the federal government for the failure of the employer sanctions included both those who supported the verification system and those who supported the Chabot/Conyers Amendment to eliminate it. Disagreeing over the significance of the verification system, both groups nonetheless called attention to the employment-seeking conduct of undocumented migrants. In doing so, the undocumented were no longer characterized through the language of criminality but through the language of enterprising conduct, reconfiguring their decision-making as emblematic of worthy entrepreneurial behavior—they are taking risks to make better lives for themselves. What is distinct here is not that immigrants are described as individuals seeking to better their lives; it is that within a neoliberal context, the behaviors of the undocumented are also positioned as taking responsibility for their own lives.

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While one of the key objections marshaled by supporters of the Chabot/ Conyers Amendment was that the system invaded the privacy of all Americans, they also contended that it would prove as ineffective as the sanctions in the IRCA at eliminating the “jobs magnet.” If the system depended on employers calling to verify the employment status of an applicant, employers hiring undocumented migrants would never call. The point was best articulated by Representative Conyers (D-MI), who noted that “unscrupulous employers . . . can simply continue to hire illegals underground and off the record as they do today” (142 Cong. Rec. H2497 [1996]). Confronting the romanticization of employers by supporters of the verification scheme, Representative Calvert (R-CA) proclaimed that while “it may come as a surprise” to members of Congress, “many employers knowingly hire illegal immigrants in this country” (142 Cong. Rec. H2502 [1996]). If opportunities for employment for undocumented migrants exist, it is because employers knowingly make them available. “That,” as Representative Conyers continued, “is how illegals get in” (142 Cong. Rec. H2497 [1996]). Yet it was not only those who opposed the verification system who attributed the “jobs magnet” to businesses located in the United States. Supporters of the verification system such as Representative Elton Gallegly (R-CA) claimed, “There are businesses in this country who knowingly break U.S. law and hire illegal immigrants” (142 Cong. Rec. H2501 [1996]). And Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) responded to claims by supporters of the Chabot/Conyers Amendment that businesses opposed the verification system, arguing that of course they opposed it, as “a lot of businesses . . . like to hire people who are here illegally” (142 Cong. Rec. H2514 [1996]). While it is unclear how one could accept the premise that much of the “jobs magnet” was due to employers knowingly hiring undocumented migrants and assert that the verification system would work, what is particularly important in these debates is how these characterizations reconceptualize the conduct of undocumented migrants. By emphasizing the conduct of employers, employers become the reason undocumented migrants are entering the United States. It is they who choose to hire undocumented migrants. As such they bear responsibility for the way the undocumented choose to enter the United States. Attending to the choices of employers to break the law, intentionally or not, “reduces the attribution” of responsibility for “illegally” crossing the US-Mexico border. Still couched in the language of individual responsibility, the actions of employers constitute the social context in which the undocumented find themselves (O’Malley 1996). When causation is ascribed to the actions of employers, the undocumented seem less like criminals and more like enterprising individuals. Lured here by “unscrupulous employers,” undocumented migrants do not spur illegality but are spurred by the illegality of irresponsible Americans. And who could blame them? Rejecting the notion that

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undocumented migrants come here to abuse social services or to engage in criminal behavior, members of Congress repeatedly stressed the idea that most migrants come here to work. Indeed, Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) argued that despite the discourse that characterizes undocumented migrants as freeloaders or criminals, most members of Congress “understood that most people come here to work” (142 Cong. Rec. H2498 [1996]). Answering the question why do most “illegal immigrants” come to the United States, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) responded, “Clearly, it is to find work” (142 Cong. Rec. S4021 [1996]). Even those in Congress who believed employers were not responsible for the “jobs magnet,” such as Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), by positing employment as the “No. 1 attraction” for unauthorized migration, characterized entering the United States as an economic decision (142 Cong. Rec. H2497 [1996]). Instead of looking to abuse the system or engage in criminality, undocumented migrants were characterized as deliberate actors engaged in strategic risk-taking behavior. Thus, of the undocumented migrants coming to the United States in search of employment, Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-VI) asked, “Who can blame anybody for wanting to come to this country for that opportunity?” (142 Cong. Rec. H2504 [1996]). Similarly, Representative Ken Calvert (R-CA) noted that while undocumented migrants come from “all over the world,” they all have one thing in common: “They mostly want a job” (142 Cong. Rec. H2514 [1996]). In these descriptions, the distinctions between the so-called legal and illegal immigrant, and with it the distinction between criminals and converts to the American Dream, begin to erode. What is marked as the distinguishing feature of legal immigrants—the desire to work hard and build a better life—now defines both populations. This is not to say that members of Congress would not continue to characterize undocumented migrants as criminals. Rather it is the case that during the debate, a discourse emerged that framed both legal immigrants and undocumented migrants in the language of enterprise. In the end, the discourse of criminality ultimately functioned to turn the discourse of responsibility back against the undocumented. Even those considered to be among the most liberal members of Congress ended up extolling the ideal of responsibility as a way to distinguish between “legal” and “illegal” immigrants. Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) reminded his colleagues in the Senate that the United States was “a country of laws,” and thus any sensible immigration policy required making a distinction between “those who obey the law and those who violate it” (142 Cong. Rec. S3281 [1996]). Likewise Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) explained that the reason there should be a separate debate on legal immigration is that “illegal immigrants choose to break our laws,” whereas “legal immigrants choose to follow our laws,” which in her view constituted “two distinct and important differences” (142 Cong. Rec. S4021 [1996]).

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From this discussion, it seems reasonable to conclude that the debate over the Chabot/Conyers Amendment advanced a discourse of entrepreneurialism that simply failed to pose much of a challenge to the dominant language of criminality through which immigration policy was being conceptualized more generally. By insisting that legal immigrants be distinguished from the undocumented and that policy should be formulated to, as Senator Mark DeWine (R-OH) stated, “crack down on illegal immigration” (142 Cong. Rec. S3304 [1996]), the understanding of responsibility articulated through the discourse of enterprise failed to displace an understanding of responsibility articulated through the discourse of criminality. Yet this is only the case if one sees these discourses as competitive rather than as mutually reinforcing. As political geographer Nancy Hiemstra (2010) points out, illegality does not deny the enterprising behavior of the undocumented, rather it serves to “conceal the value and importance of immigrant labor in the contemporary economy” (92). Their labor is necessary to the US economy; that necessity, however, is masked by a discourse that recasts the rational economic decision-making of undocumented migrants as a rational decision about whether to obey the law. The point, however, is that in the discourse of illegality it is not either/or, but both/and. That is, it is possible to recognize the undocumented both as hard workers and as criminals, explaining why some of the most vocal supporters of “cracking down on illegal immigration,” such as Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), could also state that employment was the “No. 1 attraction” for unauthorized migrants. The undocumented wanted to work, and as even those committed to some of the most draconian measures in the legislation were willing to admit, the undocumented want to work to improve their lives. Thus, even as they were deemed unworthy for choosing to break the law, they are worthy for their enterprising behavior—something that those residing in the United States should all aspire to. If those seeking to enter the United States “illegally” want to work hard and make a better life for themselves, how can we expect anything less from those who are able to reside here “legally”? This dynamic manifested itself in discussions on eliminating the “welfare magnet” as part of immigration reform.

Governing Conduct through Eliminating the “Welfare Magnet” Though undocumented migrants were not eligible for public assistance programs offered by the federal government, the reform of immigration policy in the 104th Congress did address the so-called welfare magnet. Noting that concern about immigrants becoming “public charges” has always been a central concern in the formulation of US immigration policy, Borjas (2002) notes that the welfare magnet argument rests on the idea that the “welfare state cre-

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ates a magnet that influences the migration decisions of persons in the source countries, potentially changing the composition and geographic locations of the immigrant population . . . in ways that may not be desirable” (1094). It is worth noting that Borjas’s description does not distinguish between “legal” and “illegal” immigration. And while the only provision of IIRIRA that addresses immigration and welfare pertains to legal immigrants (Title V of the IIRIRA contained a deeming provision that held that legal immigrants could be deported if their sponsors were unable to ensure the immigrants’ self-sufficiency), discussion over the magnetic effects of welfare emerged during consideration of the House and Senate bills that would come to make up the IIRIRA. In the Senate, discussion of the welfare magnet in the context of “illegal immigration” centered on the inclusion section that stipulated that “ineligible aliens” would not be able to receive benefits under public assistance programs except in cases of limited emergencies as defined by the Immigration Control and Financial Responsibility Act of 1996 (S. 2202). In the House, discussion of the welfare magnet was precipitated by two issues: (1) the inclusion of a provision in the Immigration in the National Interest Act of 1995 (H.R. 2202) that barred the undocumented parents of children born in this country from accepting the checks meant for their children and (2) the Gallegly Amendment, which enabled states to prevent undocumented children from attending public school. Although none of these provisions would be included in the final version of the IIRIRA, the debates over these provisions afford the opportunity to trace how immigration policy making relates to the monitoring and managing of undocumented migrants and citizens. If “illegal immigrants” were already prohibited from receiving welfare benefits, why reemphasize the point? Even if states were facing a heavy financial burden educating undocumented children as required by the Supreme Court decision in Plyer v. Doe, when has public education been thought of in terms of welfare? Given these dubious linkages, it is my contention that the discussions of the welfare magnet reflected more than a concern with how welfare pulled undocumented migrants into the United States; rather, the discussions of the welfare magnet were about welfare more generally—particularly the idea that welfare eroded the “self-generating capacities” of enterprising individuals on both sides of the border. During the debate over the Gallegly Amendment, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) best summed up the sentiment regarding the role of welfare in attracting undocumented migrants to the United States: Does offering money and services attract people? This used to be the land of opportunity. It is now the land of welfare. Do we believe people in some countries might say “I would like to go to America and get free goods from the American taxpayer?” Now if you believe people are totally coming to America with no knowledge of the

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free, tax-paid goods they are going to get, then I think you are living in a fantasy land. I think there is no question that offering free, tax-paid goods to illegals has increased the number of illegals. (142 Cong. Rec. H2495 [1996])

For Gingrich, as for many in Congress, there was “no question” that the “generosity” of US public assistance programs constituted a significant factor in the desire of individuals to come to the United States. Gingrich’s declaration, however, is more than a statement about the magnetic effect of welfare. Note that he opens by asking, “Does offering money and services attract people?” While one might argue that “people” means “illegals,” it seems curious that he would open with “people” if he meant “illegals,” given his subsequent usage of the term “illegal.” Indeed, the inclusion of the deeming provisions for “legal” immigrants speaks to the concerns about the enticing effects of welfare. Within the United States, stories about citizens moving to other states to take maximize public assistance benefits, dubbed “welfare migration,” impacted the decisions of states to cut back their public assistance programs (Schram, Nitz, and Krueger 1998: 211). Even if by “people” Gingrich means “illegals,” his use of the term “people” nonetheless reflects the potentiality of worthiness regimes used to manage and regulate the conduct of undocumented migrants to be deployed in debates over policies ostensibly designed to manage and regulate the conduct of those authorized to reside within the United States. Rather than simply clarifying the referent, the subsequent reference to “illegals” becomes a means by which one can use the purported conduct of the undocumented to support proposals for reducing public assistance programs, not because the programs are being abuse by unscrupulous individuals, but because they erode the enterprising capacities of all those residing in the United States no matter their citizenship status. Thus Gingrich’s statement highlights how the debates about the magnetic effects of welfare had little to do with the specific provisions that spurred them. Gingrich’s statement about welfare attracting undocumented migrants occurred during the debate over the Gallegly Amendment, which addressed the requirement that states allow undocumented school-age children to enroll in public schools. In addition, declaring that undocumented migrants could not receive public assistance benefits seemed pointless, as Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) noted that even as Congress was debating ending the welfare magnet, “illegal immigrants [were] already ineligible for public welfare benefits” (142 Cong. Rec. S4023 [1996]). Indeed, the only exceptions to that general ineligibility were cases of medical emergency, school lunches, disaster relief, immunization, communicable disease treatment, and child nutrition. Likewise, Representative Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) reminded her colleagues that “illegal immigrants [were] already barred from receiving benefits by current law” (142 Cong. Rec. H2484 [1996]). If immigrants were already barred from receiving

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benefits from public assistance programs, how do welfare programs entice migrants to cross the border? Ultimately that fact did not matter. While proponents of the welfare provisions would argue that Congress needed to, as Representative David Dreier (RCA) declared, make it “clear that illegal immigrants do not qualify for welfare programs” (142 Cong. Rec. H11071 [1996]), their statements about the welfare magnet were clearly about welfare more generally. The problem was not just that immigrants were enticed into the United States by welfare programs; it was that once here, they became dependent upon them. Thus, Elton Gallegly (R-CA) declared that the message of the status quo was: It is illegal for you to violate our borders, but if you somehow can successfully do so, then you can have whatever you want. It is illegal for you to break into a candy store, but if somehow you find a way to smash the door down and get inside, then by all means, clear the shelves with impunity. (142 Cong. Rec. H2485 [1996])

Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) seconded this idea by stating the message Congress should send is: “Come to America for opportunity; do not come to live off the law abiding American taxpayer” (142 Cong. Rec. H2495 [1996]). Two things are noteworthy about Gingrich’s discourse. First, by juxtaposing the use of public assistance programs by undocumented migrants with the conduct of “law abiding citizens,” Gingrich suggests that welfare dependency can be viewed as a form of criminal behavior. Second, by positing that migrants enter the United States to take advantage of “generous” public assistance programs, Gingrich posits the deforming effect of public assistance programs generally. Thus availability of these programs encourages individuals to not take responsibility for themselves in two ways—choosing to enter the United States, and using public assistance programs once here (whereby they reaffirm their criminality). Rather than taking responsibility for their social conditions, undocumented migrants choose not to exercise their autonomy by opting to live off the state—even if they are not authorized to be in that state. If that state makes this possible, its policy has gone astray. But in these debates it is welfare programs generally that are the problem. This is epitomized by Gingrich’s lament that America “used to be the land of opportunity. It is now the land of welfare” (142 Cong. Rec. H2495 [1996]). Keeping in mind that work on immigration reform was proceeding alongside work on welfare reform—that is, ending dependency—Gingrich’s statement reflects more than a concern about the lack of entitlement to public assistance. Rather, it speaks to a larger concern about the deforming and dependency-creating effects of the welfare state itself. As such, Gingrich’s lament is not just that undocumented migrants are being enticed to enter the United States “illegally.” Welfare programs have transformed America from a land where enterprising

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individuals took risks to improve their quality of life to a land of entitlement and dependency. Undocumented migrants using public assistance benefits merely highlighted the dependency-producing effects of welfare. Their use of public assistance therefore illumined the ability of welfare programs to erode the “self-generating capacities of individuals.” This accounts for the inclusion of the deeming provisions for legal immigrants. The deeming provisions ensured that only the right kind of immigrants got in—enterprising individuals who, by seeking to maximize their quality of life, would strengthen the nation. Proponents of the deeming provisions contended they were necessary to prevent “legal” immigrants from becoming “public charges.” Discussing the deeming provisions, Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) explained during the final debate on the joint House-Senate version of the bill, “America should welcome those who want to work and produce and contribute, but we should discourage those who come to live off the taxpayer” (142 Cong. Rec. H11080 [1996]). Likewise, during discussions of the deeming provisions for legal immigrants in the Senate, Alan Simpson (R-WY) asserted that “the American people believe strongly in the principle that immigrants to this country should be self-sufficient” (142 Cong. Rec. S4401 [1996]). Even Democrats, such as Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), who sought to limit the scope of the deeming provisions, nonetheless endorsed this idea, stating that deeming as a practice has had a “positive impact” by “protecting the interests of taxpayers” (142 Cong. Rec. S4296 [1996]). What links efforts to prevent “legal” immigrants becoming “public charges” with efforts to eliminate the “welfare magnet” is the notion that welfare makes people irresponsible. Epitomizing this link was Senator Alan Simpson (RWY), who noted that the deeming provisions would “increase the likelihood that aliens” would be “self-sufficient . . . and reduce any additional incentive for illegal immigration” (142 Cong. Rec. S4402 [1996]). One can imagine how, with a little modification, citizens can be included as part of the conversation. Smith’s statement could easily read, “America . . . should discourage those who . . . live off the taxpayer.” Gingrich’s statements could read simply, “Do not live off the law-abiding American taxpayer.” By emphasizing the dependency-producing effects of welfare, the debate on immigration reform reiterates the idea that social risks such as unemployment, poverty, and illness are to be borne by individuals. Undocumented migrants come to the United States to use public assistance programs because they refuse to take responsibility for themselves and become “economically rational ‘self-governing’ subjects” (Nadesan 2008: 32). As such they illustrate to hard-working Americans and “legal” immigrants that welfare only serves to erode their self-generating capacities.

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Conclusion Overall, what becomes clear from this analysis is that the 1996 policy debates over the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 were not discrete discourses, but were instead part of a larger neoliberal redefinition of populations and “worthy” conduct within the United States. By conceptualizing those crossing the border illegally as at once criminals and also enterprising entrepreneurial subjects, the debates functioned to reinforce boundaries between populations (illegal/legal, enterprising/lazy, worthy/unworthy) that subtend a range of policy interventions and actions against vulnerable groups. The efforts of legislators to curtail the use of public assistance programs by legal immigrants illustrate the continued prevalence of these articulations and their long-term impact on US policy. Welfare and immigration are not separate issues; they are debates whose formulations feed into and strengthen each other. Understanding the permeability between these issues is an essential piece of any project focusing on governance in a neoliberal state. Jon Wiebel is an assistant professor of communication arts at Allegheny College, a private liberal arts college in western Pennsylvania. His research interests include rhetorical theory, critical and cultural theory, governmentality, and mobility, with a focus on the discourse of intuitions involved in the formation of US immigration policy. He received his PhD in communication studies, with an emphasis on rhetorical studies, from the University of Iowa.

Notes 1. A state ballot initiative designed to deny public benefits to immigrants residing in

California without legal permission. 2. A document released by Republicans during the 1994 Congressional elections

detailing actions they promised to take if they won control of the US House of Representatives.

References Banting, K. G. 2000. “Looking in Three Directions: Migration and the European Welfare State in Comparative Perspective.” In Immigration and Welfare, edited by Michael Bommes and Andrew Geddes, 11–33. London: Routledge. Borjas, George J. 1999. “Immigration and Welfare Magnets.” Journal of Labor Economics 17(4): 607–37. ———. 2001. “Welfare Reform and Immigration.” In The New World of Welfare, edited by Rebecca M. Blank and Ron Haskins, 369–90. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press.

134 | Jon Wiebel ———. 2002. “Welfare Reform and Immigrant Participation in Welfare Programs.” International Migration Review 36(4): 1093–1123. De Genova, Nicholas. 2013. “The Legal Production of Mexican/Migrant ‘Illegality.’” In Governing Immigration through Crime: A Reader, edited by Julie A. Dowling and Jonathan Xavier Inda, 41–58. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Espenshade, Thomas J. 1995. “Unauthorized Immigration to the United States.” Annual Review of Sociology 21(1): 195–216. doi:10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.001211. Espenshade, Thomas J., Jessica L. Baraka, and Gregory A. Huber. 1997. “Implications of the 1996 Welfare and Immigration Reform Acts for US Immigration.” Population and Development Review 4(23): 769–801. Fix, Michael E. 1991. “Employer Sanctions: An Unfinished Agenda.” In The Paper Curtain: Employer Sanctions’ Implementation, Impact, and Reform, 1–30. Washington DC: Urban Institute. Fix, Michael E., and Jeffery S. Passel. 1999. “Trends in Noncitizens’ and Citizens’ Use of Public Benefits Following Welfare Reform: 1994–97.” Urban Institute. Accessed 2 February 2010. http://webarchive.urban.org/publications/408086.html. ———. 2002. “The Scope and Impact of Welfare Reform’s Immigrant Provisions.” Urban Institute. Accessed 2 February 2010. http://webarchive.urban.org/publications/410412 .html. Geddes, Andrew. 2000. “Denying Access: Asylum Seekers and Welfare Benefits in the UK.” In Immigration and Welfare, edited by Michael Bommes and Andrew Geddes, 134–47. London: Routledge. Gimpel, James G., and James R. Edwards. 1999. The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform. Boston: Longman. Hagan, Jacqueline, Nestor Rodriguez, Randy Capps, and Nika Kabiri. 2003. “The Effects of Recent Welfare and Immigration Reforms on Immigrants’ Access to Health Care.” International Migration Review 37(2): 444–63. Hiemstra, Nancy. 2010. “Immigrant ‘Illegality’ as Neoliberal Governmentality in Leadville, Colorado.” Antipode 42(1): 74–102. Miller, Peter, and Nikolas Rose. 1990. “Governing Economic Life.” Economy and Society 19(1): 1–31. Nadesan, Majia Holmer. 2008. Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday Life. New York: Routledge. Nakar-Sadi, Merav. 2013. “Beyond Insiders and Outsiders: Welfare and Immigration Reforms in 1960s US.” Social Identities 19(1): 51–70. O’Malley, Pat. 1996. “Risk and Responsibility.” In Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Rationalities of Government, edited by Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas S. Rose, 189–208. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schram, Sandford, Lawrence Nitz, and Gary Krueger. 1998. “Without Cause or Effect: Reconsidering Welfare Migration as a Policy Problem.” American Journal of Political Science 42(1): 210–30. Shields, John. 2004. “No Safe Haven: Work, Welfare, and the Growth of Immigrant Exclusion.” In Immigrants, Welfare Reform, and the Poverty of Policy, edited by Philip Kretsedemas and Ana Aparicio, 35–60. Westport, CT: Praeger. Sury, Aruna, Sally Kinoshita, and Erin Quinn. 2019. Public Charge as a Ground of Deportability. Washington, DC: Immigrant Legal Resource Center. Accessed 21 July 2019. https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/public_charge-deportabilityjune_2019.pdf. Tichenor, Daniel J. 2002. Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Realizing Government Ambitions | 135 Trump, Donald. 2017. “President Donald Trump Delivers Remarks at a Make America Great Again Rally, Huntington, West Virginia.” Speech, Huntington, West Virginia, August 3. White, Michael J., Frank D. Bean, and Thomas J. Espenshade. 1990. “The U.S. 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act and Undocumented Migration to the United States.” Population Research and Policy Review 9(2): 93–116.

chapter

7 Detention for Deterrence? The Strategic Role of Private Facilities and Offshore Resources in US Migration Management Marietta Messmer

While two of President Donald Trump’s most controversial immigration control initiatives—his plan to build an impenetrable wall between the United States and Mexico and his executive order “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” better known as the “travel ban” or “Muslim ban”—have sparked fierce debates on both a national and an international level, these initiatives often tend to obscure the fact that significant, not to say radical, changes in US immigration control had started well before Trump took office. Even though Trump’s measures arguably differ in degree and quality from earlier forms of immigration management, they can also be said to continue a trend that had already started after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and which can be summed up as the tendency to blur the discursive boundaries between undocumented immigrants, the war on terror, and the war on drugs. This conflation of categories has, in turn, led to a conceptual redefinition of the boundaries between refugees, economic migrants, and criminals, as well as a systematic extension and expansion of the legal reach of US border authorities into Mexican territory. Even though the absolute number of unauthorized crossings along the US-Mexican border has declined in recent years, US authorities still apprehended more than 688,000 undocumented immigrants in fiscal year 2019 (US Customs and Border Protection 2019a). Yet the national origin of these irregular border crossers has changed significantly (Amuedo-Dorantes, Pozo, and Puttitanun 2015: 1827). While Mexican apprehensions are currently at about half of their 2008 level, arrests of Central Americans (in particular people from the so-called northern triangle of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala) have consistently risen during the past couple of years from 94,000 in 2008 to 142,000 in 2012 (Amuedo-Dorantes

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et al. 2015: 1826–27), and more than 223,000 in FY 2018 (US Customs and Border Protection 2019b). The year 2014 saw a peak in unauthorized Central American crossings, and in 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2018 the total number of Central American arrests even surpassed that of Mexican apprehensions (Gonzalez-Barrera and Krogstad 2016; US Customs and Border Protection 2019b). These numbers also include more and more family units as well as unaccompanied minors who are fleeing the violent conditions prevalent in their home countries in the northern triangle. To try reducing the large streams of undocumented migrants and refugees, the United States has increasingly resorted to a strategy that can be termed the outsourcing of migration management. This strategy primarily manifests itself in two forms. On one level, immigration control measures are increasingly being delegated to private (forprofit) actors, and the detention industry, in particular, plays a central role in this context. In this way, as Valsamis Mitsilegas (2010: 59) has observed, “the private sector assumes State functions” but, as this essay will argue, there is often no clear accountability or transparency of procedures in place. On a second level, the control of migrant streams is also being outsourced to the transit country Mexico, which then becomes responsible for preventing migrants from reaching the United States and for deporting them back to their countries of origin. The goal of this chapter will be to explore the complex legal, social, political, and ethical effects that the privatization and extraterritorialization of immigration control has on Central American migrants and refugees trying to reach the United States, as well as on buffer countries such as Mexico. In practice, the outsourcing of migration management does not only lead to the mass criminalization and mass incarceration of irregular migrants as well as refugees; it also facilitates the circumvention of “basic human rights obligations, either because [they] are not applicable extraterritorially” (Gammeltoft-Hansen 2011: 3) or because these rights cannot be guaranteed or even enforced vis-à-vis private non-state actors. Focusing on the increasing interconnectedness between criminal law and immigration law (Stumpf 2006) and the neoliberalization of state functions (Darling 2016), this chapter will argue that these developments can be said to redefine the boundaries of state control as they simultaneously expand and disperse state power by increasing the government’s legal reach over vulnerable noncitizen populations even beyond national borders, while at the same time decreasing the government’s direct liability and accountability. The outsourcing of immigration control has thus led to what can be termed a significant “southward migration of the Mexico-U.S. border” (Flynn 2005: 18) and has created a “rights vacuum” or a “legal black hole” for migrants and refugees, as well as an accountability gap (Gammeltoft-Hansen 2011: 4). In the larger scheme of things, this indicates that, as Robyn Sampson and Grant Mitchell (2013: 99) have observed, “issues of territory, [national] sovereignty and political authority are being recalibrated”

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here, resulting in the United States’ increased legal and political control over Mexican migration management. Ultimately, these developments highlight an ironic tension between Trump’s nationalist rhetoric culminating in his symbolic efforts to create an impenetrable separation line between the United States and Mexico, and the United States’ de facto extension of its legal borders beyond its national ones, which is accompanied by a blurring of the discursive boundaries between migrants and criminals, a conflation of internal and external security dimensions, and a fusion of private and public sector functions.

Outsourcing Immigration Management to Private Detention Centers The current system of detaining undocumented immigrants has been in place since the early 1980s, when it was implemented to control the mass influx of Cuban and Haitian asylum seekers (Lindskoog 2018: 1–3).1 By the late 1990s, however, the policy was expanded to all groups of irregular arrivals (Lindskoog 2018: 3). This extension of the United States’ immigrant detention system coincided with a shift in the legal classification of irregular migrants. Traditionally, entering the United States without authorization has been treated as a civil offense rather than a criminal one (Amnesty International 2009: 4). This categorization changed, however, with the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act and, even more so, after the 9/11 attacks, when the cooperation between civil and criminal law enforcement apparatuses was intensified (Coleman and Kocher 2011: 230).2 This, in turn, has led to what Juliet Stumpf (2006: 367–419) has termed an increasing convergence between immigration law and criminal law—a process through which distinctions between civil and criminal offenders increasingly became obscured. As a result, instances of criminal prosecutions for unauthorized border crossings have increased exponentially (ACLU 2014: 20); by 2013, “more than half of all federal criminal prosecutions initiated were for unlawfully crossing the border into the United States” (ACLU 2014: 2). By the end of 2016, the United States operated the world’s largest immigration detention system, with a total of 352,882 people held in detention (“DHS Releases” 2016). As of August 2016, a minority of all immigration detainees (approximately 27 percent) were confined in state and county facilities run by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), while the vast majority (73 percent) were held in one of the thirteen private Criminal Alien Requirement (CAR) prisons (Small 2016: 11) located in Georgia, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas and mostly operated by the three largest for-profit organizations: the GEO Group, CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America [CCA]), and the Management and Training Corporation (MTC) (ACLU 2014: 2–3). Together

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these private prisons already housed more than 25,000 immigrant detainees in 2014 (ACLU 2014: 16), and 2018 saw the highest number of people in immigration detention since 2001, with an average of more than 42,000 people in custody on any given day of the year (Sands 2018). This sharp increase in the number of immigration detainees has led to a massive growth of the private prison industry, and CoreCivic, the GEO Group, and MTC already “reported nearly $4 billion in revenue in 2012” (ACLU 2014: 17). As one advertising campaign framed it, “illegal immigrants are not just a problem, they are an investment opportunity” for the prison industrial complex (quoted in Doty and Wheatley 2013: 432). And while the current Trump Administration has, in the context of the 2019 Migrant Protection Protocols (discussed below), increasingly resorted to having asylum seekers await their US immigration court hearings in Mexico, immigration detention in the US remains a highly profitable business. The people incarcerated in these private detention centers include undocumented immigrants, but also “asylum seekers, torture survivors, [and] victims of human trafficking” (Amnesty International 2009: 3). Under US law, they are held in what is termed “administrative custody” (Amnesty International 2009: 29) in order to “ensure that [they] appear at their [immigration or asylum] hearings and/or can be successfully deported after a final order of removal” (Chishti and Hipsman 2015); their imprisonment is explicitly not considered a form of punishment.3 Moreover, administrative detainees generally enjoy a number of fundamental human rights, including “protection against torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; access to medical care; exercise; and the ability to communicate with the outside world including consulates, attorneys and family” (Amnesty International 2009: 12). However, government control over how these “administrative detainees” are being treated in private detention centers has been very limited. In 2000, the American Bar Association and the Bureau of Prisons developed forty-one national standards for the treatment of prisoners in local, state, and federal prisons, with expanded and updated versions published in 2008 and 2011, but these standards have not been codified and are therefore neither binding nor legally enforceable in private facilities. In effect, this means that, despite some recent efforts to improve conditions in the US’s largest family detention complex in Dilley, Texas (Sacchetti 2019), for many years, the conditions in many private detention centers were in flagrant violation of both national US laws as well as international human rights standards (Amnesty International 2009: 7). Based on interviews conducted with detainees by Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union between 2009 and 2014, the following infringements have been documented: inmates were frequently denied access to regular exercise and educational opportunities, to law libraries, to supervised email and telephones, or to appropriate health care, including mental health services (Am-

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nesty International 2009: 7).4 In addition, immigrant detainees were often also held together with individuals convicted of criminal offenses (Amnesty International 2009: 7). “They are not able to wear their own clothes but instead have to wear prison uniforms and are often handcuffed” (Amnesty International 2009: 29); Amnesty International has documented cases where restraints were even used on pregnant women and women in labor (Amnesty International 2009: 37). Moreover, there were also documented cases of “racial, physical and sexual abuse” (ACLU 2014: 15), and in some cases people were placed in solitary confinement due to overcrowding or as punishment for minor complaints (Small 2016: 5). Many of these rights violations can be attributed to the private centers’ radical profit orientation. The BOP has established clear rules about placing prisoners in isolation cells, for example.5 Many contracts with private detention centers, however, stipulate that they will set aside 10 percent of their bed space as isolation cells at all times, which means that detainees were sent to isolation cells on a regular basis, usually for minor infringements such as “failing to ‘speak English in America’” or “because they helped others draft grievances and file lawsuits” (ACLU 2014: 3, 4).6 One man was isolated for six months after complaining about not having received “adequate medical care for a sprained ankle” (ACLU 2014: 33). In addition, most private detention centers operate with “minimum occupancy guarantees” that are “sometimes set at 90 percent of the total contracted prison beds” (ACLU 2014: 8). This means that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is obligated to pay private contractors for a minimum number of beds, even if these beds are not being used. Often ICE also receives a discount if they exceed the minimum occupancy quota. All of this, as Mary Small (2016: 8) has observed, incentivizes “even higher levels of detention disguised as a more efficient use of government resources” (cf. ACLU 2014: 36). In this way, the guaranteed minimums create “an inhumane, quota-based immigration detention system that functions as taxpayer-funded profit insurance for private prison companies”; but this quota system also means that “private prison companies . . . influence ICE’s decisions regarding how many people are detained, where they are detained, and how long they are kept in detention” (Rkasnuam and Garcia 2016: 8, 3). Private contractors are also responsible for providing medical services to their inmates and for covering those costs: “This contractual scheme creates . . . incentives for private prison administrators to limit costs by reducing medical staff and withholding treatment in order to maximize profit” (ACLU 2014: 42), which leads to “long delays for critically needed health care”—in some documented cases with fatal consequences.7 Some private detention centers have adopted extraction-only dental policies (ACLU 2014: 44), for example, and they cut costs by keeping contractually required staff positions vacant for long periods of time (Small 2016: 6). Yet as of now, there is no legal basis for

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holding private prisons accountable for infringing upon prisoner’s rights in this way. In Correctional Services Corp. v. Malesko (2001), the US Supreme Court stipulated that “a private prison company is not liable for violations of constitutional rights”; and in Minneci v. Pollard (2012), the US Supreme Court ruled that “an individual private prison officer is not liable for violations of constitutional rights” (ACLU 2014: 56, 57). In other words, neither a private facility nor an individual working in such a facility can legally be held responsible in the same way that a government official working in a state or federal facility is held responsible for rights violations on the job. This in effect protects private detention centers against most—if not all—liability claims. In addition, while federal agencies are generally required to disclose information to the public under the Freedom of Information Act, this act does not apply to the records of private prisons, as private contractors can claim exemption to protect “trade secret[s]” (ACLU 2014: 58, 7, 10). CoreCivic/ CCA, for example, “has spent about $7 million since 2007 successfully lobbying against legislation that would have subjected its prisons to the same federal open records obligations as BOP-operated prisons” (ACLU 2014: 58). Moreover, neither have inspections helped to alleviate these problems because they are rarely independent; frequently they are conducted “internally [by ICE] or by contractors hired and paid by ICE, [which raises] concerns about impartiality” (Small 2016: 9). Inspections are usually also announced in advance, and most of them do not include interviews with detainees (Small 2016: 9). Also, “the financial penalties from the Bureau of Prisons for privately run detention centers that fail to meet contractual obligations are so modest that it often costs less for the centers to pay the penalty than to meet the obligation” (“United States Immigration Detention Profile” 2016: 12). But even in cases where severe deficiencies had been identified in an inspection report, “ICE has not terminated contracts or used available penalties” (Small 2016: 9). Already in 2009, Congress had required ICE to stop contracting with any facility that had failed two inspections in a row, but so far this has had no effect. One can thus conclude that private detention centers can, with impunity, violate basic constitutional and human rights and treat detainees as “second-class prisoners” (ACLU 2014: 17)—simply because these people are noncitizens held in private institutions. Moreover, since the fall of 2014, more and more families and children have been detained in private facilities under these conditions. In 2014, approximately 60,000 families and (unaccompanied) minors fled from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras and sought refuge in the United States (“Demanding Dignity” 2014: 1) in order to escape “extreme domestic violence, threats against their lives, and attempted gang recruitment of elementary school-aged children” in their home countries (Dyer and Lopez 2015).8 In 2016, this number had risen to 78,000 (Etter 2016), and in FY 2018 to more than 157,000

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(US Customs and Border Protection 2019a). In response, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) significantly expanded their family detention facilities “by more than 4,000 percent from approximately 85 detention beds [in April 2014]” (“Stop Detaining Families” n.d.) to currently about 3,000 beds in three facilities located in Texas and Pennsylvania (although only two of them are in use at the time of writing) (Sacchetti 2019). ICE describes family detention centers as “‘residential facilities.’ . . . In reality, however, the families have limited freedoms and are forced to live in a restrictive detention setting” (“Demanding Dignity” 2014: 1). When United Nations commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet visited one of these centers in Texas in July 2019, she said she was “‘appalled by the conditions’ being forced upon migrants,” and she was particularly shocked to see “that children are forced to sleep on the floor in overcrowded facilities, without access to adequate healthcare or food, and with poor sanitation conditions” (quoted in Paul and Miroff 2019). Bachelet subsequently “admonished the federal government for failing to find noncustodial alternatives” for these families: “Clearly, border management measures must comply with the State’s human rights obligations,” she said, “and should not be based on narrow policies aimed only at detecting, detaining and expeditiously deporting irregular migrants” (quoted in Paul and Miroff 2019). Bachelet’s visit was a response to a recent report published by DHS’s independent investigative branch, the Office of Inspector General, which had criticized overcrowding, prolonged detention, and an escalation of security concerns in several detention centers in the Rio Grande Valley (“Management Alert” 2019: 4) and concluded “that the ‘urgent’ situation required ‘immediate attention and action’ and advised the government to ‘take immediate steps to alleviate dangerous overcrowding and prolonged detention of children and adults’” (quoted in Paul and Miroff 2019). The Office of Inspector General had visited a number of facilities in the Texas Rio Grande Valley because this area currently “has the highest volume [of border crossers] on the southwest border, with nearly a quarter million apprehensions in the first eight months of FY 2019. This total represents a 124 percent increase compared to the same period in FY 2018, with the greatest increase in family units” (“Management Alert” 2019: 3). Moreover, this inspection was in part also prompted by the fact that “more than a dozen adult detainees have died while in custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement since the beginning of last year [2018], according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association” (Vigdor 2019). Yet when Vice President Mike Pence toured two facilities near McAllen, Texas, several days after Bachelet’s visit, he “played down reports of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions” there, stating that these facilities “were providing care that every American would be proud of ” (Vigdor 2019). However, the journalists accompanying him, who managed to get a brief glimpse inside the center, confirmed that there were “nearly 400 men crammed inside a cage with no space to lie

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down and no mats or pillows” (Vigdor 2019), which corroborates the Office of Inspector General’s report that “at one facility, some single adults were held in standing room only conditions for a week” (“Management Alert” 2019: 7). According to Human Rights Watch, families and children should not be detained at all for prolonged periods of time—let alone under such conditions—given that “88 percent” of them “have shown that they have reasonable or credible claims of fear of returning to their home countries, a first step for qualifying for asylum in the U.S.” (“U.S.: First Step” 2015). And “asylum seekers are [usually] seen as . . . [people who] pose little flight risk, do not threaten public safety, and are [therefore] ill-suited for long-term detention” (Chishti and Hipsman 2015). Yet, instead of releasing these families, which the US government had typically done in the past (“Demanding Dignity” 2014: 3), DHS implemented a “no bond, no release” policy (“Policy Statement” 2016: 255).9 This policy was based on the so-called Blanket Detention Order of 2003, issued by Attorney General John Ashcroft, which stipulated that “illegal immigrants, including asylum seekers, can be held indefinitely without bond if their cases present national security concerns” (Welch and Schuster 2005: 405). The actual goal behind applying this order to Central American border crossers, however, was deterrence, as former Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson admitted in 2014 by calling it an “‘aggressive deterrence strategy’” (quoted in “U.S.: Trauma” 2015). This was confirmed by an ICE press release of 2014: “These [family detention] facilities will help ensure more timely and effective removals that comply with our legal and international obligations, while deterring others from taking the dangerous journey and illegally crossing into the United States” (“Ending the Use of Immigration Detention” 2015, emphasis mine). So DHS cynically hoped that by incarcerating these Central American families and children under off-putting conditions, they would be able to reduce the number of unauthorized border crossers coming to the United States from the northern triangle countries.10 Yet international law explicitly interdicts the use of detention for deterrence purposes. Moreover, in February 2015, a US federal court in the District of Columbia also “prohibited invoking deterrence as a justification for detaining Central American families apprehended at the border” (Chishti and Hipsman 2015). In addition, the detention of children is also legally highly problematic. Within the United States it is restricted by the 1997 Flores agreement (which has set the national standards for the detention and treatment of immigrant children) and internationally by the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Under Flores, a child may not be detained for more than three to five days (Dyer and Lopez 2015). And the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child confirmed in 2012 that detaining children “contravenes the principle of the best interest of the child” (“Policy Statement” 2016: 258). Even though the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) “allows

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for very limited use of detention . . . in some contexts—such as criminal juvenile justice”—the CRC Committee has made clear that in the context of immigration, “detention is never an acceptable practice” (“Never in a Child’s Best Interests” 2017: 2). This position is shared by numerous human rights organizations, including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (“Never in a Child’s Best Interests” 2017: 2). And the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan E. Mendez, even stipulated “that immigration detention is not only contrary to the best interests of the child, but may even constitute a particular form of torture” (“Never in a Child’s Best Interests” 2017: 4). DHS claimed to use family detention only and exclusively “as a means of keeping families together, [thus] falsely implying that DHS would otherwise have no choice but to separate mothers and children” (“Stop Detaining Families” n.d.: 1). But according to the CRC Committee as well as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in such cases the rights of the child would extend to her or his parents and would oblige the authorities to find alternative means for the entire family (“Never in a Child’s Best Interests” 2017: 4). The Obama Administration had already announced in 2009 that they would end the practice of child detention (“Demanding Dignity” 2014: 1). Moreover, former DHS secretary Janet Napolitano stated on 15 June 2012 that undocumented childhood arrivals meeting certain conditions would be granted lawful presence and a reprieve from deportation.11 And on 21 August 2015, “federal District Judge Dolly Gee of Central California ordered the department of Homeland Security (DHS) in Flores v. Lynch to begin releasing from immigration custody children and their accompanying parents” (Chishti and Hipsman 2015). However, the government appealed this decision in September 2015 (McBride 2015), and litigation was still ongoing at the moment when the Trump Administration developed an elegant way of outsourcing the problem of family and child detention by implementing the Migrant Protection Protocols (a.k.a. “Remain in Mexico” program) in 2019. According to this program, all asylum-seeking families are now being returned to Mexico in order to await their asylum hearings in US immigration courts there, which means that most of the responsibility for providing shelter for these families has now been shifted to the Mexican government (Human Rights Watch 2019).

Outsourcing Immigration Management to Mexico The delegation of immigration detention to private contractors within the United States is complemented by a strategy that focuses on the outsourcing of immigration control to resources and facilities outside of US territory. As Robyn Sampson and Grant Mitchell have noted, there is an “increased invest-

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ment by destination countries [such as the United States] in the detention infrastructure of transit countries” such as Mexico (Sampson and Mitchell 2013: 101). Based on a June 1993 Presidential Decision Directive issued by Bill Clinton (PDD-9), which required various government agencies to “interdict and hold smuggled aliens as far as possible from the U.S. border and to repatriate them when appropriate,” the United States has had access to offshore migrant processing facilities in the Bahamas, Panama, and Cuba since the early 1990s (“United States Immigration Detention Profile” 2016: 17). This Presidential Directive was followed by “Operation Global Reach” in 1997, which is a “strategy of combating illegal immigration through emphasis on overseas deterrence” and on whose basis the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) “established 40 overseas offices with 150 U.S. positions to provide a permanent presence of immigration officers overseas” (Flynn 2005: 6). Although Operation Global Reach is a worldwide program, a central focus lies on Latin America, and from 1997 on, INS thus undertook annual interception operations in dozens of Latin American countries (“United States Immigration Detention Profile” 2016: 17; Flynn 2005: 6). According to activists in these countries, during these operations, “INS (and now DHS) agents have accompanied local authorities to restaurants, hotels, border crossings, checkpoints and airports to help identify and apprehend suspicious travelers” (Flynn 2005: 7). After 9/11, the United States’ focus specifically turned to its southern neighbor Mexico. As Christopher Rudolph (2006: 78) has observed, the aftermath of 9/11 and the global war on terrorism made it more difficult “to separate ‘external’ from ‘internal’ security dimensions,” which, in turn, has proved to be fertile ground for the outsourcing of immigration control measures across the US-Mexican border. The first post-9/11 measure to extraterritorialize immigration control to Mexico was the so-called Southern Plan, El Plan Sur (2001), which led to the systematic militarization of Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala and Belize and made Mexico responsible for the deportation of irregular Central American and other migrants caught in Mexico back to their home countries before they even got close to the US-Mexican border. This cooperation also continued under former president Barack Obama and has led to several follow-up agreements during the post-9/11 years between him and former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto.12 One of the most crucial follow-up agreements—and one that paved the way for the 2019 Migrant Protection Protocols—can be seen in the so-called Southern Front Plan, launched by the Mexican government in July 2014 as a direct response to the surge of Central American migrants seeking refuge in the United States.13 “Since then, at least 5,000 Mexican federal police, army and navy officers have been deployed across the country to work alongside immigration officers to help stem the flow of northward-bound migrants” (Lakhani 2016). The majority of these migrants—who are, for the most part,

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potential asylum seekers from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador—have, since 2014, routinely been detained in Mexico prior to being deported back to their home countries. Moreover, the Mexican human rights group Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Matias confirmed in January 2016 that “U.S. immigration officers [are] working inside detention facilities in Mexico (“United States Immigration Detention Profile” 2016: 16), which has likewise resulted in a steep increase in the number of migrant detentions on Mexican soil. As Nina Lakhani observed, “Mexican authorities detained 190,366 people in 2015—120 percent more than in 2013, according to official figures. It deported 155,418 people [in 2015], compared to 80,902 in 2013.” This practice has intensified with the help of the 2019 Migrant Protection Protocols because many Central American asylum seekers are now faced with such high levels of violence in Mexico as well as such serious barriers to legal representation while awaiting their court hearings that they often see (voluntary) deportation to their home countries as the only option to save their lives and protect their families and children (Human Rights Watch 2019). Because the vast majority of deportees is coming from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, this raises serious concerns about Mexico detaining and deporting not just irregular (economic) migrants but also potential asylum seekers fleeing the violent conditions in their home countries. For this reason, a coalition of several Mexican and US NGOs led by the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles filed a lawsuit in the United States in February 2016 intending to find out “how much [the United States] pays Mexico to stop Central American migrants from reaching the U.S.Mexico border, . . . how migrants are treated in detention centers, and whether those fleeing violence are being allowed to seek asylum as dictated by international and Mexican human rights law” (Lakhani 2016; cf. “United States Immigration Detention Profile” 2016: 16). The human rights groups launched this lawsuit because, according to Lakhani, “there is ample anecdotal evidence that people are being denied the opportunity to seek asylum under an undeclared deportation quota system operated by INM [Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Migración], which breaches international law.” Lakhani (2016) also adds that an investigation conducted by the Guardian in 2015 “identified several deportees who were murdered within days or weeks of their return.” She also cites Alex Martínez, a former head of the INM, who told the Guardian that even though irregular migration through Mexico had been decriminalized by the Mexican government in 2007, former president “Enrique Peña Nieto had reverted to treating undocumented migrants as criminals,” thus adjusting Mexican immigration policy and law to US interests: “‘Mexico is hunting down migrants like criminals, abusing their human rights. . . . Most people are not permitted to go through the asylum process, they are quickly deported’” (quoted in Lakhani 2016). To date, with the US’s Migrant Protection Protocols

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in place, the situation has grown even worse. While the current administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador initially wanted to withdraw from immigration enforcement, he eventually gave in to Trump’s threats to close the border and impose punitive tariffs if Mexico refused cooperation (Semple 2019). Mexico’s current approach to undocumented migrants can thus be called a mirror image of the Trump administration’s, and the latter tends to regard especially unaccompanied Central American minors by default as violent and dangerous, associating them directly with criminal gang activity. This has been highlighted by a senior US juvenile immigration officer, who referred to unaccompanied child asylum seekers as “runaways or throwaways, petty criminals in the making” (quoted in Bhabha 2014: 249). To prevent these “criminals in the making” from reaching the US-Mexican border, Trump has started to phase out the Central American Minors Program, which means that since November 2017, no new applications for the refugee option have been accepted.14 Instead, Trump has proposed as an alternative the so-called Central American Minors Protection Act, “which would allow minors from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras with a ‘qualified parent or guardian’ in the United States to apply for asylum in their home countries” (Saleh 2019). While such a procedure has sometimes been promoted as a humanitarian alternative that could prevent children from undertaking the dangerous journey to the United States on their own, Trump’s proposal turns out to be far more problematic, as it would simultaneously eliminate the possibility for Central American minors to present themselves at a US port of entry in order to apply for asylum there. Moreover, the numbers would be capped at fifteen thousand per year, and DHS’s decision (to accept or reject an applicant) could not be appealed (Saleh 2019). Given that Trump’s proposal does not define “qualified parent or guardian,” the American Immigration Council has interpreted the proposal as a “‘de facto asylum ban’ for the vast majority of cases,” as it might limit eligibility to children of US citizens or permanent residents. “Central American minors who don’t have a qualified parent would no longer have a route to asylum” at all under this act (Saleh 2019).

Conclusion For the United States, immigration control has become inextricably intertwined with national security concerns, which, in turn, goes hand in hand with what Michael Welch (2000: 74) has termed a “new penology” vis-à-vis migrants and refugees whose purpose is “neither . . . punishing nor . . . rehabilitating individuals”; instead “the central objective of the new penology is to preemptively identify potentially risky groups and then to improve social con-

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trol measures for those groups.” This heightening of social control levels has led to the increasing criminalization of both economic migrants and refugees on the one hand and the implementation of ever stricter measures of immigration control on the other, including the outsourcing of border control and migration management operations. As this chapter has tried to demonstrate, this in turn not only has highly problematic consequences for individual migrants and refugees, but also has a serious impact on the buffer country Mexico, which acts on behalf of US national security interests. The partial outsourcing of immigration control to Mexico has led to what Michael Flynn (2005: 18) has termed a significant “southward migration of the Mexico-U.S. border,” in this way rendering ad absurdum Trump’s (to date largely discursive and symbolic) efforts to create an impenetrable separation line between the two nation-states. Moreover, Mexico’s active role in apprehending and detaining irregular migrants also means that the “expansion of [US] enforcement efforts beyond the nation’s territorial limits” has actually turned the United States’ southern border into a quite flexible and expandable boundary (Flynn 2005: 19)—albeit in a north-south direction only. For this reason, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) has observed in its 2001 publication Chaos on the U.S.-Mexico Border that the US-Mexican border should be seen “less as a fixed boundary than as an elastic line that expands outward and inward” (quoted in Flynn 2005: 19), depending on the US administration’s needs. The location of this elastic line, according to Flynn (2005: 19), “can be both everywhere and nowhere at the same time.” Yet this elasticity and liminality of the US-Mexican border has acquired a particularly ominous significance for the current stream of Central American refugees trying to reach the United States, as they can and do experience the USMexican border’s actual presence at any point within Mexican territory—that is, long before they have actually reached the physical US-Mexican border. Mathew Coleman and Austin Kocher (2011: 229) in this context speak of a shift in the government’s role from “management of territory” to “management of populations.” This indicates that, as Robyn Sampson and Grant Mitchell (2013: 99) have observed, “issues of territory, [national] sovereignty and political authority are being recalibrated” here, “resulting in new articulations of . . . control”—or, more precisely, of an extension of US control over Mexican territory. On the one hand, the US-Mexican border’s outward expansion into Mexico has, of course, helped Mexico acquire a very important strategic position. By adapting its migration and refugee policy regimes to US national security interests, Mexico’s position has been empowered through the financial and logistical support it has managed to obtain. Yet despite Mexico’s seemingly privileged position in this context, these developments cannot hide the tremendous power asymmetry that still exists between Mexico and the United

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States. Hence the question arises: at what price to Mexico’s own legal and political sovereignty does this cooperation come? The current development thus reveals Mexico’s complex and ambivalent role as a country torn between the benefits and privileges earned through an extended military and political cooperation with the United States and the disadvantages of a reduced degree of political sovereignty in terms of controlling its own immigration policy. Yet the outsourcing and offshoring of immigration control have serious consequences not only for the buffer country that acts on behalf of the United States, but also for individual migrants and refugees. The increasing privatization of immigration management both within and outside of the United States’ national borders makes it more difficult to monitor potential human rights violations and to hold specific agents accountable. If the management of irregular immigrant populations is handled by private, non-state actors, this facilitates the circumvention of both international and domestic legal guarantees for migrants (Ryan 2010: 3–4) because often these rights cannot be guaranteed or even enforced vis-à-vis private actors (Gammeltoft-Hansen 2011: 3). As Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen (2012) has observed, “Human rights law is largely designed on the presumption that it is states and not private companies that exercise sovereign powers like detention or border control. Legally holding governments accountable for human rights violations by [private] contractors” would therefore require additional legal provisions in order to prove “that it is the state and not just the corporation or individual employee that is responsible for the misconduct.” In addition, “private prisons [currently] operate in the shadows, effectively free from public scrutiny. By statute, most of their records are exempt from the open records laws that apply to . . . federal [or state] prisons” (ACLU 2014: 5). One can thus conclude that when “the private sector assumes State functions” in the context of migration management (Mitsilegas 2010: 59), migrants and refugees are often caught in what is tantamount to a “legal black hole” or a “stateless condition” that makes them “vulnerable to the sanctions of [US] law,” but at the same time they are “unable to access the protection of [US or international] law” (Kretsedemas 2012: 8) because formally appealing any rights violations is difficult or almost impossible in practice (Ryan 2010: 22). My ultimate claim is that this development is not entirely accidental. On one level, private contractors profit from a convergence of interests by the public, the media, and politicians (Golash-Boza 2009: 283)—a convergence of interests that frames undocumented immigrants—and increasingly also refugees from Central America—as a national security risk, which in turn facilitates their criminalization and subsequently their preemptive imprisonment. On another level, however, the privatization of border security also redefines the parameters of state control not just externally, but also internally. Jonathan Darling (2016: 231) refers to this development as “neoliberalization” of state

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functions as privatization simultaneously expands and disperses state power by increasing the government’s reach over vulnerable noncitizen populations while at the same time decreasing the government’s direct liability and accountability. Malcolm Feeley (2002: 322) in this context speaks of “government-franchised social control centers” that have “expanded . . . the functions of the state . . . in ways that make these functions less accountable.” In other words, what we see is the highly productive convergence between national security interests and the economic interests of private contractors that leads to the “commodification” of immigrants “as raw materials for private profit” (Welch and Schuster 2005: 73) and “the production of an [immigrant detention and] asylum market in which neoliberal norms of market competition, economic efficiency and dispersed responsibility are central” (Darling 2016: 230). In this way, the private detention industry can be seen as a recent addition to the range of businesses and industries that, paradoxically, actually thrive on rising numbers of undocumented immigrants. For many decades, such immigrants had already been commodified and exploited as docile labor in the agricultural, construction, service, leisure, and hospitality sectors, among others, while their unclaimed Social Security contributions (submitted by employers on behalf of employees using fake Social Security cards) help keep the nation’s retirement trust funds for aging baby boomers afloat.15 Ultimately, thus, both businesses and the government can be said to profit from the very immigrants that are being demonized and criminalized. Alissa Ackerman and Rich Furman (2013: 252) see this trend toward criminalizing immigrants primarily as a counterresponse to what they call the “natural loosening of nation-state borders” in the age of globalization, but one could also argue that by outsourcing immigration management, the neoliberal government is able to make use of and profit from this very loosening of nation-state borders without relinquishing its own territorial power and national security interests. Privatization in this context is thus less tied to the idea of a minimalist state but actually becomes its antithesis (White 2001: 113) because it substantially enhances the social control powers of the nation-state within a transnational neoliberalist framework. In this way, Trump’s nationalist rhetoric of impenetrable border walls is radically subverted by his administration’s transnational legal reach and economic profit, which in turn is fueled by a convergence of interests between the state and the private sector, an erasure of the boundary between criminal and immigration law, a blurring of the distinction between internal and external security dimensions, and a dissolution of stable national legal guarantees and boundaries. Ultimately, this highlights the fact, as Paul Otto and Susanne Berthier-Foglar have stated in their introduction to this volume, that “impenetrable borders are far more imagined than real,” while the United States’ actual national, legal, conceptual, and discursive borders are (and have always been) permeable, liminal, and fluid.

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Marietta Messmer is an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Gronigen. She received her PhD in American literature from York University, Toronto (Canada). Her publications focus on the political and cultural relations between the US and Latin America, Mexican and Central American migration to the US, violence in the US-Mexican borderlands, comparative US-EU border studies, as well as theoretical debates on human rights, citizenship, integration, and minority rights. In addition, Messmer also acts as managing editor of the series Interamericana: Inter-American Literary History and Culture, published by Peter Lang, as vice president of the International American Studies Association (IASA), and is a founding member of the European Network for for the Study of Minor Mobilities in the Americas (ENMMA).

Notes 1. In his study of the rise of the United States’ immigration detention system, Lindskoog (2018: 1–2) notes that until 1954, the detention of unauthorized immigrants was actually quite common and was applied to “almost all those seeking to enter the United States until a determination could be made on their admissibility.” But, according to Lindskoog (2018: 2), this approach was abandoned and replaced by a policy focusing on parole from 1954 on, until the large numbers of Haitian and Cuban asylum seekers during the 1970s and 1980 led to its formal reinstatement in 1981. In Lindskoog’s (2018: 2–3) words, it was the “Caribbean refugee crisis” that provided an opportunity for the United States “to experiment with detention as a tool of immigration enforcement.” 2. Cf. also chapter 6 in this volume, by Jon Wiebel, who argues that prior to the mid1990s, undocumented immigrants’ value as enterprising, hard workers outweighed their action of illegally entering the United States or overstaying their visas. 3. The BOP nonetheless refers to immigrant detainees as “criminal aliens,” even though this is technically not correct (ACLU 2014: 20). According to Lindskoog (2018: 6), this largely rhetorical differentiation between administrative custody and criminal detention highlights the extent to which “a technically administrative procedure masks the punitive effects of the system.” 4. Because noncitizen prisoners are “not expected to return to U.S. communities or BOP custody, the BOP does not require private prison companies to provide these prisoners with the same vocational training, drug treatment, or other beneficial programs offered to U.S. citizen prisoners at BOP-run prisons” (ACLU 2014: 16–17). 5. BOP “does prescribe limits on when prisoners can be placed in the SHU [Special Housing Unit] for administrative detention (when they pose a threat to themselves or to other prisoners) or for disciplinary segregation (when they are punished for violating prison rules)” (ACLU 2014: 29). 6. “CCA’s contract for Eden, MTC’s contract for Dalby, and GEO Group’s contract for Reeves and Big Spring each require at least 10% of the ‘contract beds’ to be SHU isolation cells” (ACLU 2014: 30). 7. Small (2016: 4–5) cites various reports about delayed or denied medical services, including several ones with potentially fatal consequences resulting in multiple deaths. 8. The countries these families and children are fleeing from “have among the highest levels of violence in the world” (“Demanding Dignity” 2014: 3). 9. DHS even referred “to the act of seeking asylum as ‘illegal migration’” in a 2015 state-

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10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

ment, “which wrongfully suggests that those fleeing threats to their life or freedom are somehow acting illegally” (“U.S.: First Step” 2015). In other words, “in an effort to deter future migration, DHS has been placing families in a results-oriented expedited removal system that robs detained families of fair and meaningful opportunities to pursue asylum” (“Stop Detaining Families” n.d.: 2). This refers to the so-called DACA program: “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status would be approved for two-year renewable terms” (Amuedo-Dorantes et al. 2015: 1826). In 2014, Obama announced an expansion of DACA, “along with the Deferred Action for Parent of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents” (AmuedoDorantes et al. 2015: 1826). In February 2015, a motion to enforce these regulations was brought forward. When President Trump took office in 2017, he announced his intention to end the program in March 2018, but the deadline has meanwhile expired while renewals are still being accepted (as of July 2019), yet no one knows for how long. For a detailed discussion of the Southern Plan and some of the follow-up agreements, see Messmer 2016. According to Lakhani (2016), this plan was implemented “just days after Barack Obama declared the surge in unaccompanied Central American child migrants seeking refuge” in the United States “a humanitarian crisis.” The Central American Minors Program had been launched by former president Barack Obama in 2014 as a response to the heightened influx of unaccompanied minors from the northern triangle. This program had simplified the asylum application procedure by allowing Honduran, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan parents (in 2016 expanded to siblings or caregivers) with a legal residency status in the United States to request a refugee or parole status for their children still residing abroad. For a more detailed discussion of this aspect, see Fernández Campbell 2016.

References Ackerman, Alissa R., and Rich Furman. 2013. “The Criminalization of Immigration and the Privatization of the Immigration Detention: Implications for Justice.” Contemporary Justice Review 16(2): 251–63. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). 2014. Warehoused and Forgotten: Immigrants Trapped in Our Shadow Private Prison System. June. Accessed 12 May 2016. https:// www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/060614-aclu-car-reportonline.pdf. Amnesty International. 2009. Jailed without Justice: Immigration Detention in the USA. Amnestyusa.org, 25 March. Accessed 12 May 2016. https://www.amnestyusa.org/ reports/usa-jailed-without-justice/. Amuedo-Dorantes, Catalina, Susan Pozo, and Thitima Puttitanun. 2015. “Immigrant Enforcement, Parent-Child Separations, and Intent to Remigrate by Central American Deportees.” Demography 52: 1825–51. DOI: 10.1007/s13524-015-0431-0. Bhabha, Jacqueline. 2014. Child Migration & Human Rights in a Global Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chishti, Muzaffar, and Faye Hipsman. 2015. “Fierce Opposition, Court Rulings Place Future of Family Immigration Detention in Doubt.” Migration Policy Institute, 15 September. Accessed 12 May 2016. http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/fierce-oppo sition-court-rulings-place-future-family-immigration-detention-doubt. Coleman, Mathew, and Austin Kocher. 2011. “Detention, Deportation, Devolution and Immigrant Incapacitation in the US, Post-9/11.” Geographical Journal 177(3): 228–37. DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4959.2011.00424.x.

Detention for Deterrence? | 153 Darling, Jonathan. 2016. “Privatising Asylum: Neoliberalisation, Depoliticisation and the Governance of Forced Migration.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 41(3): 230–43. DOI: 10.1111/tran.12118. “Demanding Dignity: The Call to End Family Detention.” 2014. Migration and Refugee Services/United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 23 July, 1–7. Accessed 14 July 2017. http://www.usccb.org/about/migration-policy/position-papers/upload/FamilyDetention-Paper_Final_-3-19-15-2.pdf. “DHS Releases End of Year Fiscal Year 2016 Statistics.” 2016. DHS, 30 December. Accessed 12 July 2017. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/12/30/dhs-releases-endyear-fiscal-year-2016-statistics. Doty, Roxanne Lynne, and Elizabeth Shannon Wheatley. 2013. “Private Detention and the Immigration Industrial Complex.” International Political Sociology 7: 426–43. Dyer, Jocelyn, and Sandra Lopez. 2015. “Families Report Abuse in Border Patrol Detention Facilities, Despite Court Ruling.” Human Rights First, 1 December. Accessed 14 July 2017. http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/blog/families-report-abuseborder-patrol-detention-facilities-despite-court-ruling. “Ending the Use of Immigration Detention to Deter Migration.” 2015. Detention Watch Network, April, 1–5. Accessed 14 July 2017. https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/ sites/default/files/reports/DWN percent20Detention percent20as percent20a percent 20Deterrance percent20Policy percent20Brief.pdf. Etter, Lauren. 2016. “Central American Families Cross U.S. Border in Record Numbers.” Bloomberg, 17 October. Accessed 14 July 2017. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/ articles/2016-10-17/central-american-families-cross-u-s-border-in-record-numbers. Feeley, Malcolm. 2002. “Entrepreneurs of Punishment: The Legacy of Privatization.” Punishment and Society 4(3): 321–44. Fernández Campbell, Alexia. 2016. “The Truth about Undocumented Immigrants and Taxes.” Atlantic, 12 September. Accessed 25 November 2017. https://www.theatlantic .com/business/archive/2016/09/undocumented-immigrants-and-taxes/499604/. Flynn, Michael. 2005. “Where’s the U.S. Border? Portraits of an Elastic Frontier.” Global Detention Project, 9 January. Accessed 12 July 2017. https://www.globaldetentionproject .org/wp-content/uploads/2006/03/Flynn_LASA-1.pdf. Gammeltoft-Hansen, Thomas. 2011. Access to Asylum: International Refugee Law and the Globalisation of Migration Control. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2012. “Can Privatization Kill?” New York Times, 1 April, A23. Accessed 10 May 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/02/opinion/when-it-comes-to-immigrationprivatization-can-kill.html. Golash-Boza, Tanya. 2009. “A Confluence of Interests in Immigration Enforcement: How Politicians, the Media, and Corporations Profit from Immigration Policies Destined to Fail.” Sociology Compass 3(2): 283–94. Gonzalez-Barrera, Ana, and Jens Manuel Krogstad. 2016. “Apprehensions of Migrants at U.S.-Mexico Border Rose Sharply in October and November.” Pew Research Center, 21 December. Accessed 12 July 2017. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/ 21/apprehensions-of-migrants-at-u-s-mexico-border-rose-sharply-in-october-andnovember/. “Homeland Security Announces Decline in Illegal Mexican Border Crossings.” 2017. NPR, 9 March. Accessed 12 July 2017. http://www.npr.org/2017/03/09/519500026/ homeland-security-announces-decline-in-illegal-mexican-border-crossings. Human Rights Watch. 2019. “U.S. Move Puts More Asylum Seekers at Risk.” HRW, 25 September. Accessed 14 November 2019. https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/09/25/ us-move-puts-more-asylum-seekers-risk.

154 | Marietta Messmer Kretsedemas, Philip. 2012. The Immigration Crucible: Transforming Race, Nation, and the Limits of the Law. New York: Columbia University Press. Lakhani, Nina. 2016. “Human Rights Groups Sue U.S. over Immigration Payments to Mexico.” Guardian, 12 February. Accessed 12 July 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/ us-news/2016/feb/12/human-rights-group-sue-immigration-mexico. Lindskoog, Carl. 2018. Detain and Punish: Haitian Refugees and the Rise of the World’s Largest Immigration Detention System. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. “Management Alert—DHS Need to Address Dangerous Overcrowding and Prolonged Detention of Children and Adults in the Rio Grande Valley (Redacted).” 2019. DHS, Office of Inspector General, 2 July. Accessed 20 July 2019. https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/ default/files/assets/2019-07/OIG-19-51-Jul19_.pdf. McBride, Kara. 2015. “U.S. Government Still Violating Flores Ruling and International Obligations to Protect Refugees.” Human Rights First, 23 November. Accessed 7 December 2015. http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/blog/us-government-still-violatingflores-ruling-and-international-obligations-protect-refugees. Messmer, Marietta. 2016. “Outsourcing Immigration Control: A Comparison between Current US and EU Immigration Policy Measures.” In (Im)Migration Patterns: Displacement and Relocation in Contemporary America, edited by Adina Ciugureanu, Ludmila Martanovschi, and Nicoleta Stanca, 19–36. Iaşi: Institutul European. Mitsilegas, Valsamis. 2010. “Extraterritorial Immigration Control in the 21st Century: The Individual and the State Transformed.” In Extraterritorial Immigration Control: Legal Challenges, edited by Bernard Ryan and Valsamis Mitsilegas, 39–65. Leiden: Nijhoff. “Never in a Child’s Best Interests.” 2017. International Detention Coalition, June, 1–14. Accessed 14 July 2017. http://idcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/BriefingPaper_Never-in-a-childs-best-interests_June-2017.pdf. Paul, Deanna, and Nick Miroff. 2019. “UN human rights chief ‘deeply shocked’ by migrant detention center conditions in Texas.” Washington Post, 8 July. Accessed 20 July 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2019/07/08/un-human-rightschief-deeply-shocked-by-migrant-detention-center-conditions-texas/?utm_term= .42471675162b. “Policy Statement on the Incarceration of Undocumented Migrant Families.” 2016. Society for Community Research and Action. Division 27 of the American Psychological Association. American Journal of Community Psychology 57: 255–63. DOI: 10.1002/ ajcp12017. Rkasnuam, Dawy, and Conchita Garcia. 2016. “Banking on Detention.” Detention Watch Network, 1–11. Accessed 13 July 2017. https://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/sites/ default/files/reports/Banking percent20on percent20Detention percent202016 percent 20Update_DWN percent2C percent20CCR.pdf. Rudolph, Christopher. 2006. National Security and Immigration: Policy Development in the United States and Western Europe since 1945. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ryan, Bernard. 2010. “Extraterritorial Immigration Control: What Role for Legal Guarantees?” In Extraterritorial Immigration Control: Legal Challenges, edited by Bernard Ryan and Valsamis Mitsilegas, 3–37. Leiden: Nijhoff. Sacchetti, Maria. 2019. “ICE’s Chief Called Family Detention ‘Summer Camp.’ Here’s What It Looks Like.” The Washington Post, 25 August. Accessed 3 December 2019. https:// www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/the-head-of-ice-called-family-detentionsummer-camp-heres-what-it-looks-like-inside/2019/08/25/8f32609e-c679-11e9-b5 e4-54aa56d5b7ce_story.html.

Detention for Deterrence? | 155 Saleh, Maryam. 2019. “Trump’s Shutdown Offer Creates a De Facto Asylum Ban for Central American Minors.” The Intercept, 22 January. Accessed 22 January 2019. https://the intercept.com/2019/01/22/central-american-minors-trump-asylum/. Sampson, Robyn, and Grant Mitchell. 2013. “Global Trends in Immigration Detention and Alternatives to Detention: Practical, Political and Symbolic Rationales.” Journal on Migration and Human Security 1(3): 97–121. Sands, Geneva. 2018. “This Year Saw the Most People in Immigration Detention Since 2001.” CNN, 13 November. Accessed 4 December 2019. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/12/ politics/ice-detention/index.html. Semple, Kirk. 2019. “Overflowing Toilets, Bedbugs, and High Heat: Inside Mexico’s Migrant Detention Centers.” New York Times, 3 August. Accessed 15 December 2019. https:// www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/world/americas/mexico-migration-conditions.html. Small, Mary. 2016. “A Toxic Relationship: Private Prisons and U.S. Immigration Detention.” Detention Watch Network, December, 1–18. Accessed 14 July 2017. https://www .detentionwatchnetwork.org/sites/default/files/reports/A percent20Toxic percent20Rel ationship_DWN.pdf. “Stop Detaining Families.” n.d. Orpe Human Rights Advocates. Accessed 14 July 2017. https://hrorpe.org/stop-detaining-families/. Stumpf, Juliet. 2006. “The Crimmigration Crisis: Immigrants, Crime, and Sovereign Power.” American University Law Review 56(2): 367–419. “United States Immigration Detention Profile.” 2016. Global Detention Project, May, 1–24. Accessed 12 July 2017. https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/americas/ united-states. US Customs and Border Protection. 2019a. “Southwest Border Migration FY2019.” 10 July. Accessed 22 July 2019. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration/ fy-2018. ———. 2019b. “Stats and Summaries.” 21 May. Accessed 22 July 2019. https://www.cbp.gov/ newsroom/media-resources/stats. “U.S.: First Step to End Family Immigration Detention.” 2015. Human Rights Watch, 24 June. Accessed 14 July 2017. https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/06/24/us-first-stepend-family-immigration-detention. “U.S.: Trauma in Family Immigration Detention.” 2015. Human Rights Watch, 15 May. Accessed 14 July 2017. https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/15/us-trauma-familyimmigration-detention-0. Vigdor, Neil. 2019. “Pence Defends Conditions at Migrant Detention Centers in Texas.” New York Times, 13 July. Accessed 20 July 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/13/ us/mike-pence-border.html. Welch, Michael. 2000. “The Role of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Prison Industrial Complex.” Social Justice 27(3): 73–88. Welch, Michael, and Liza Schuster. 2005. “Detention of Asylum Seekers in the UK and USA.” Punishment and Society 7(1): 397–417. White, Ahmed A. 2001. “Rule of Law and the Limits of Sovereignty: The Private Prison in Jurisprudential Perspective.” American Criminal Law Review 38(111): 111–46.

PART

III National Borders, Liminal Spaces, and Permeation

chapter

8 Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora Cross-Border Relationships and Security Issues Cléa Fortuné

With the election of Donald Trump to the presidency in November 2016, the border is in the spotlight again as the United States examines its relationship with Mexico. With his executive order issued in January 2017, President Trump promised to “construct a physical wall along the southern border, using appropriate materials and technology to most effectively achieve complete operational control of the southern border” (Trump 2017). President Trump thus proposes another step in the regime of security enforcement that has been going on since the 1990s and that aims to make the US-Mexico border impermeable and militarized. In the field of border studies, the militarization of the border has received substantial attention, whether in the disciplines of geography, history, or anthropology (T. J. Dunn, R. St. John, J. McC. Heyman). Similar to other scholars, Timothy J. Dunn defines the term “militarization” as the “use of military rhetoric and ideology, as well as military tactics, strategy, technology, equipment, and forces” (Dunn 1996: 3). This military buildup is present through the physical wall imposed between US and Mexican twin cities that already exists and that takes the form of fences, pedestrian or vehicle barriers, steel fences, landing-mat fences, and so forth. The technological wall also exists, with its radars and sensors among other devices. Anything that can help Border Patrol agents in apprehending unauthorized immigrants or drug smugglers can be seen in border towns. However, Josiah McC. Heyman (2008: 305) has demonstrated the contradictions and limitations of the construction of the physical, technological, and mass law-enforcement walls and how they “insult Mexico by treating it as a threat rather than a partner.” My goal here is to widen this demonstration by focusing on Douglas, a border town in Cochise County,

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Arizona, in order to show that despite the buildup at its border, Douglas still maintains its relationship with its Mexican sister city Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico. Their relationship is one of history, economy, and culture. I begin this essay by delineating how the militarization of the border in Douglas has occurred and what the border looks like. Following that I explore the historical, economic, and cultural relationship that Douglas maintains with Agua Prieta. If the buildup aims to make the border impermeable, can the two communities continue developing their relationship? Then, in the final section I examine opposing views on the security buildup among border residents and how they try to rally citizens to their ideas. Douglas, Arizona, is a small border town of about seventeen thousand inhabitants. Douglas is sometimes briefly mentioned in articles (J. McC. Heyman, R. Rubio-Goldsmith, T. Miller) but has not been the focus of any broad studies. Yet, this town is interesting in many ways—not only because of its geography at the border with Mexico and the fact that it is a laboratory for new technology of the enforcement apparatus, but also because of its history, its culture, and its residents. Douglas was a Mexican territory until the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. Ever since, Mexican residents and workers have contributed to the development of this smelter-town throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and have maintained the relationship between the United States and Mexico. Today, some residents in Douglas live a binational life, and more than 80 percent of the residents are of Mexican origin. This chapter will show that Douglas bears the marks of its history and that the Mexican traces of this place influence the contemporary local society, the relationship with Mexico, and the inhabitants’ behaviors toward the security buildup at the border. The present essay is part of a broader project that focuses on the link between security and community in Douglas. It aims to show how the community in Douglas has evolved over the past thirty years in the context of the military buildup at its border and how the border residents feel about the security enforcement. The research will adopt a sociological and ethnographical approach as well as a geographic one.

Multiple Strategies Reshaping the Border in Douglas to Make It More Secure The US-Mexico border has been gradually militarized through security measures that have been deployed in various steps from the 1990s to today. They have reshaped the border in Douglas on a continual basis. The first fence in Douglas was built in 1997. It was made of “landing mats [that had been] deployed in South Vietnam [and] redirected to the U.S.Mexico border” (Hattam 2016: 29). It was about ten feet high. This fence ap-

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peared when immigration issues came to the forefront of the US political stage. In the 1990s, states like California and Texas were concerned with the numbers of unauthorized immigrants entering their territories. In 1994, then governor of California Pete Wilson was seeking reelection. But “he was slipping badly in the polls when he hit upon a winning campaign strategy. Taking advantage of public anxieties about immigration, he blamed the state’s economic troubles on immigrants” (Capoferro and Massey 2010: 29). He proposed a referendum to vote in favor of Proposition 187, also called “SOS: Save Our State,” that aimed to deny unauthorized immigrants free access to public benefits. He also wanted to launch the same kind of operation as Operation Blockade that chief Border Patrol agent Silvestre Reyes had launched in 1993 in El Paso, Texas, to stop “illegal immigration.” At first, President Bill Clinton was opposed to these operations. However, because the proposition was seen as the government’s failure to address immigration issues and because the majority of voters supported it, Bill Clinton decided to launch Operation Gatekeeper in 1994 in San Diego, California. As geographer Joseph Nevins (2010: 113–14) explains, “Efforts by the White House and the INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] to maximize coverage of the implementation of the operation demonstrate that Washington, DC, was acutely aware of the importance of the operation for purposes of public consumption.” The Border Patrol—part of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) since 2003, one of the US law enforcement organizations that considers Border Patrol agents as vigilant protectors of the nation’s borders—used these operations as a national strategy called “Prevention through Deterrence.” This strategy aimed to deploy more Border Patrol agents at the Southwest border and to use new surveillance technology, such as radar, to detect movement of unauthorized migrants and drug smugglers. This US immigration control strategy created a “funnel effect,” shifting the routes of migration: because it was more difficult for unauthorized migrants to cross in California or Texas, they used more dangerous routes such as the Sonoran Desert to cross to Arizona (Goldsmith et al. 2007). Beside the human-made barriers, the area around Douglas also acted as a natural barrier with its arid and mountainous terrain. According to Joseph Nevins (2010: 114), these events and strategy represented a significant change in public perception in the United States of the boundary with Mexico, at least in terms of immigration, and in governmental practices in regards to the international division. They were a manifestation of a shift from the divide being a border, or a zone of transition within which the peoples and places have much in common, to a boundary that represents a stark, linear demarcation between a strongly differentiated “us” and “them”—both territorially and socially.

However, the prevention through deterrence strategy did not have the impact intended. Quite the contrary, unauthorized migration increased, which

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was also the consequence of the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This agreement was signed in 1994 by Canada, the United States, and Mexico to eliminate barriers for free trade and investment, ending tariffs on various goods and services. As political scientist Peter M. Siavelis (2009: 102–3) explains, “The idea was that rapid economic development based on trade would transform the Mexican economy, providing enough wealth and jobs to encourage would-be immigrants to stay put.” But in 1994 Mexico suffered devaluation of the peso that led to the collapse of the country’s economy. Mexican workers lost their jobs, and Mexico increased its dependence on the US economy. As journalist David Bacon (2008) puts it The rosy predictions of NAFTA’s boosters that it would slow migration proved false. Between just 2000 and 2005, Mexico lost a million and a half jobs, mostly in the countryside. Since 1994, 6 million Mexicans have come to live in the United States. In just five years, from 2000 to 2005, the Mexican-born population living in the United States increased from 10 million to nearly 12 million. With few green cards or permanent visas available for Mexicans, most of these migrants were undocumented.

The routes then shifted from the Tijuana–San Diego border sector eastward to the Mexico-Arizona sector, such as in Cochise County, which became a major crossing point for unauthorized migrants during this period. Before crossing to Douglas, Mexican migrants stopped in Agua Prieta and stayed in this border city before continuing their journey to the north. The population in Agua Prieta grew from around 37,600 in 1990 to an estimated 110,000 people in 1996. Businessmen “converted dozens of Agua Prieta clinics, auto shops and stores into makeshift hotels, charging $25 to $40 for a bed and a hot shower” (Dillon 2000). The number of hotels went up from six to sixteen in 1999. A second step in the militarization of the border in Douglas occurred in 2006 as new technology was added to the border: towers equipped with radar and sensors to detect unauthorized migrants and drug smugglers. This “virtual wall” (Heyman 2008: 305) was set up in the context of the Secure Fence Act and SBInet (Secure Border Initiative network) signed by George W. Bush in 2006. This program to secure US borders was “responsible for developing a comprehensive border protection system through a mix of security infrastructure (e.g., fencing), and surveillance and communication technologies (e.g., radars, sensors, cameras, and satellite phones)” (US Government Accountability Office 2017). The images collected by the towers are sent to the Border Patrol station, where agents collect them. After an analysis of the images, the agents are dispatched on the ground to intercept migrants and drug smugglers. Then, in 2012, the infrastructure in Douglas changed again. The wall doubled up near the Douglas Port of Entry and in the town center by adding a new and more robust ten-foot chain-link fencing, separated from the first fence by a moat and barbed wire. Moreover, a six-mile outdated portion of the landing-

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mat fencing was replaced by an eighteen-foot-high bollard fence made of reinforced bars or steel (Walb News 10 ABC 2011). This fence separating Douglas from Agua Prieta ends about two miles west of both towns and becomes a vehicle barrier intended to stop cars. As for the virtual wall, new towers were added. They are called integrated fixed towers and are “stationary and located . . . in Arizona to help the U.S. Border Patrol do video surveillance and detect human movement with radar and other sensors” (Miller 2012). US CBP awarded a contract to the private military company Elbit Systems to design these towers adapted to the rugged terrain of the Sonoran Desert. Elbit was chosen among other companies—such as the Tucson-based military manufacturer Raytheon—because of its experience with the Israel-Palestine border: “In its role as lead system integrator for Israel’s border technology plan, the company [had] already installed smart fences in the West Bank and Golan Heights” (Miller and Schivone 2015). A last step in the militarization of the border in Douglas occurred recently. In July 2017, US CBP awarded another contract to this same military company for the Douglas area of responsibility. The new border security apparatus consists of a new tower equipped with better radar, day and night cameras, and thermal imaging. The company claims that this technology is more effective and enables Border Patrol agents to make the distinction between a human being carrying a weapon or a backpack. Moreover, if Border Patrol agents had to analyze the images they received on several screens with the former technology, one screen is now enough for the synthesized data. This contract cost the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—of which US CBP is a part—$145 million (Moxley 2016). Thus, as Josiah McC. Heyman (2008: 305) argues, “the virtual technological wall offers corporations huge governmental contracts, drawing Homeland Security into the costly military-industrial complex.” The strategy to secure the US border does not stop at the border. Indeed, the Arizona border surveillance has developed its strategy about a hundred miles inland as well (Blum and Barrios 2017). First, this strategy has encompassed the hiring of more Border Patrol agents. In the Tucson Sector—the biggest sector, which covers most of Arizona from the eastern part of the state to Yuma County—the number of Border Patrol agents has increased fivefold since 1994, and they patrol not only at the border, but also outside the town of Douglas. The Border Patrol is now one of the largest employers in Douglas, along with the school district (Dillon 2000). They can be seen at the top of a hill on the road between Bisbee and Douglas, using truck-mounted mobile sensors to detect movement in the surrounding mountains. They also use an aerostat surveillance balloon that has been floating over Sierra Vista (fifty miles northwest of Douglas) for over thirty years. This balloon goes up ten to twelve thousand feet to see over the mountains and looks for small planes carrying illegal drugs. DHS is currently looking to add new technology to the balloon

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(News 4 Tucson KVOA 2015). Apart from the hiring of more Border Patrol agents and the use of technological devices, journalists Todd Miller and Joe Nevins (2017) argue that “the apparatus of exclusion . . . includes a 100-milewide ‘border zone’ inside the territorial perimeter of the United States, an area in which U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has certain extraconstitutional powers, such as the authority to set up immigration checkpoints.” For example, north of Douglas, on the I-19 checkpoint, Border Patrol agents are allowed to stop a vehicle to question its occupants and make sure the vehicles do not transport unauthorized immigrants. This acts as a second line of questioning, after the security displayed at the Douglas Port of Entry. In August 2017, the Trump administration allowed the development of new partnerships between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and state and local law enforcements through the 287(g) program, which permits local law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration law. This program began under George W. Bush and continued under the Obama administration. But it was canceled in 2011 in Maricopa County, Arizona, because former sheriff Joe Arpaio was accused of using discriminatory policing practices, such as racial profiling (Mark 2017). Thus, the security apparatus in Douglas at the border and in its surroundings is very present physically and technologically. Political scientist Damien Simonneau (2015) even talks of “war landscapes” because of the military equipment displayed in this urban area. However, though it aims to make the border impermeable to unauthorized immigrants, is it impermeable to the movement of border commuters? What has been the relationship between Douglas and its Mexican sister city Agua Prieta over history?

US and Mexican Residents Fostering the Relationship between Border Communities From its very creation, Douglas has been linked to Mexico, and especially to Agua Prieta, in historical, economic, and cultural ways, thanks to different categories of commuters who have contributed in maintaining the border permeable. From a historical point of view, Douglas was part of the Mexican territory until the mid-nineteenth century. Following the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 that put an end to the Mexican-American War (1846–48), the United States seized control of almost half of Mexico, including Arizona north of the Gila River. It established a new frontier between the United States and Mexico, but Douglas still remained part of Mexico. Five years later a new border was established. During the development of the electrical age, the US government wanted to connect all its southern railroads to the Pacific. Engineers found that the most direct route for this connection was

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south of the then US boundary. US president Franklin Pierce sent railroad promoter James Gadsden to buy territory from Mexico, and the latter negotiated a $10 million selling price with Mexican dictator Santa Anna. The Gadsden Purchase was signed in 1853, and what would become Douglas became part of the US territory. As historian Thomas Sheridan (2012: 65) explains, most Mexican inhabitants of the region welcomed the change and participated in maintaining and developing the relationship between the United States and Mexico. As for the Mexicans who went to live in Mexico, they formed a workforce and contributed to the economy of Douglas that owes its development to the mining industries, and especially to Phelps Dodge Corporation. Indeed, as prospectors discovered copper in Arizona and started to settle in the state to extract it, the mines attracted the attention of James Douglas, a metallurgist working for the Phelps Dodge Corporation. After buying the copper mines of the area, James Douglas had to find a place near the mines to transform the extracted copper. He founded Douglas as a copper smelting town in 1901, so that copper from the mine of Bisbee, Arizona, could be transported and transformed there. On the other side of the border, the mining town of Agua Prieta was created in 1899. The town was destined as a crossing point and a transit stop for transporting mining products to the smelter town of Douglas. In 1901, a highway was built to connect the mines in Mexico with the US markets. Copper led to the boomtowns of both Douglas and Agua Prieta, which established an economic relationship from their very creations. Besides, Douglas and Agua Prieta established a relationship of labor over time. If Douglas owes its development to the mines and to Mexican workers, its prosperity also depended on agriculture and on Mexicans populating and working in the fields and ranches over the twentieth century. Starting in 1910, the Mexican Revolution led Mexican farmers who had lost their land to settle in Arizona not far from the border, where US employers hired them. In the year 1942, the Bracero Program was implemented to increase the labor supply during World War II; this allowed Mexican nationals to work legally in the United States, where they ran cattle and picked cotton (Ngai 2004: 139–47). The border between Douglas and Agua Prieta became permeable to braceros. However, as Joseph Nevins (2010: 43) explains, Grower practices significantly facilitated the rise in extralegal migration. Through its actions, moreover, the INS actually encouraged unauthorized migration. The legalization of unauthorized migrants by U.S. authorities (popularly known as “drying out the wetbacks”) served to increase extralegal immigration from Mexico as the news spread that the easiest manner to obtain a bracero contract was to enter the United States without authorization.

With this program, anti-migrant sentiments increased, and in 1954 Attorney General Herbert Brownell launched “Operation Wetback” to increase the

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number of Border Patrol agents who could deport unauthorized migrants. Because braceros were considered a threat to the labor market after World War II, the “Wetback Bills” were introduced in Congress. One of them aimed to punish employers hiring unauthorized migrants, but none of them became law, mainly because Southwest employers had allies in Congress. According to Joseph Nevins (2010: 44), “Powerful agricultural interests played a significant role in producing and maintaining a yawning gap between state rhetoric championing strong boundary policing, and actual practice, one that characterized U.S. enforcement efforts through most of the twentieth century.” The Bracero Program ended in 1964, and the mechanization of agriculture led to massive unemployment among Mexican workers. To offset it, the Mexican government launched the Border Industrialization Program (BIP) in 1965, which made it attractive for maquiladoras to locate at its northern border. The maquiladoras—twin plants with facilities on both sides of the border that import raw material on a duty-free basis for assembly, processing, or manufacturing and export the assembled goods on a duty-free basis to the country of origin—developed in 1994 with the implementation of NAFTA. When the smelter closed in 1987, Douglas turned to manufacturing to boost its economy, and its maquiladoras set up production with cheap labor in Agua Prieta. Douglas served as the warehouse distribution center, and Agua Prieta served as the manufacturing center. There are still more than twenty maquiladoras at the Douglas–Agua Prieta border, which employ nine thousand Mexicans— almost 12 percent of the Agua Prieta population (“Our Communities” 2017). Thus, the border still provides an economic opportunity for Mexican workers who have the legal documents to cross. Sergio Chávez has analyzed the way Mexican residents are able to live in Mexico and cross the border on an everyday basis. He explains that the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 provided Mexican border residents with access to green cards and border crossing cards (BCCs)—permits that allow residents of border communities to work and to cross legally to the United States to shop or visit family: “The key factor that US immigration officials take into consideration when deciding to approve a BCC is whether the applicant has permanent ‘ties to Mexico’ that will discourage the cardholder from overstaying their visit” (Chávez 2016: 65). According to Chávez, having the legal documents is a key strategy to transform barriers into a source of opportunity, especially as some border residents obtain BCCs or tourist visas as an extralegal method to access US employment. Mexican consumers having a BCC constitute another category of commuters who develop the economic relationship between the two border towns, since about 82 percent of Mexican residents entering Douglas do so for the purpose of shopping (“Our Communities” 2017). Indeed, after the smelter

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closed in 1987, Douglas had to find a new source of revenue and decided to build a mall at walking distance from the border. When the border was fairly open before the security buildup, full buses of people came to the shopping center in Douglas, whose biggest income became the sales tax. According to the current mayor, Robert Uribe (elected in 2016), Mexican crossers contribute to 80 percent of the town’s economy. Agua Prieta residents spend $43 million each year in Douglas, which amounts to almost twice the annual budget of the city. To make it even easier for Mexican crossers driving through the Douglas Port of Entry (PoE) and to avoid traffic congestion, a SENTRI Lane (Secured Electronic Network Traveler Rapid Inspection Lane) was created in 2013. Officials of the twin cities considered this lane as “an example of how . . . two countries came together to address an issue of great importance to the welfare of the residents of the two communities [who] celebrate the results of a true collaborative binational . . . partnership” (Maldonado 2013). To continue making the border an advantage, economic actors also argue for the modernization of the Douglas PoE, which is the second largest commercial port in Arizona by total value of imports and exports—it represents more than $1 billion in trade a year. An Arizona-Mexico Commission was thus designed in 2015, named the Douglas–Agua Prieta Joint Vision for the future, to improve the existing Douglas–Agua Prieta PoE facilities, to develop a new one in order to increase trade and commerce, and to prepare both cities for future economic growth. That would mean higher demand for services, such as diesel for trucks, lodging, and food (Trevizo 2013). However, the commission mentions the fact that it is hard to have the budget because “there are many uncertainties at the state level (and more importantly at the federal level)” (Cochise College Center for Economic Research 2016). The US government stated that no federal money is available because there are other priority needs across the Southwest border that must be addressed ahead of Douglas. In other words, the security of the border comes before the economy of the town, as shown by the contract that was awarded to Elbit Systems of America for the implementation of the new towers. The limits to the economic development of Douglas are also displayed through the political tensions that affect business along the border. The value of the peso has plummeted since the election of Donald Trump, meaning that Agua Prieta residents have less money to spend in Douglas, resulting in loss of city sales tax and “decreasing revenues and jobs in border states” (Escobar 2017). Besides the economy, border crossers participate in maintaining the cultural relationship between border towns. The example of schoolchildren is particularly telling and exemplifies the cultural permeability of the border. In the mornings and afternoons, hundreds of students can be seen crossing the border. One of them is Laura, a seventeen-year-old student. She used to live

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in the United States until her parents were deported to Mexico because they were undocumented. As a family, they decided to live on the border, in Agua Prieta, so that their US-born daughter could still go to school in the United States. This is a common feature on the border. Families in Mexico decide to send their children to US schools not only because they are US citizens, but also because families living in Agua Prieta often have relatives in Douglas, which enables “border-crossing students [to be] enrolled in the school as a member of the household of extended family members in the United States” (Wells 2013: 56). However, before going to school in the United States, the children who live in Mexico do not necessarily speak English. This is what Maria Moreno experienced as a child when she and her sisters first went to school in Douglas and struggled in the all-English educational setting. Now a teacher, she opened the Cri-Cri Kindergarten in 1972 in Agua Prieta to give children the opportunity to learn English before going to school in the United States (Trevizo 2016). This is all the more necessary since about 23 percent of the students in Douglas Unified School District 27 are considered as English language learners (ELL) or limited English proficient (LEP), meaning that they are not fluent in English. Thus, the schools have developed these English immersion programs where Spanish-speaking students are regrouped in specific classes to learn English (Douglas USD 27 2017). To make no distinction between the students, the organizers of the Douglas Care Fair that occurred in August 2017 gave free school supplies to students from Douglas and from Agua Prieta because according to them, both cities are sisters and share the same border (Lagarda 2017). Schoolchildren constitute a category of commuters who make the border dynamic and who develop the cultural ties between the border towns. However, they are affected by border security enforcement since it takes a long time for them to cross. Laura explains that every morning she has to wake up at 5:30 a.m. to take the bus that brings her to the border, where she has to wait in line to cross. Once she has entered the United States, she has to take the bus on the other side to go to the community college a few miles away from the PoE, so as to be on time in class at 8:00 a.m. “New government policies implemented since 9/11 create further constraints, particularly as increased border-crossing times require . . . families to adjust already tight schedules as they go about their daily activities” (Mattingly and Hansen 2008:10). Despite the border enforcement apparatus between the two cities, the border is permeable to the daily commuters who live a binational life and who enable Douglas and Agua Prieta to maintain and further develop their historical, economic, and cultural relationship. However, if some residents turn the border into an advantage, others associate it with negative discourses and with fear. The last section of this paper focuses on these opposing views regarding the militarization of the border between Douglas and Agua Prieta.

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Border Residents’ Opposing Views on the Security Buildup At the state, county, and local levels, a range of actors express various opinions about what they feel security is and should be for border towns. Border ranchers are often in the forefront of immigration issues in the media and speak publicly as experts about how to improve border control. When a journalist asked John Ladd—a rancher in Cochise County—what it is like to live and work at the border, Ladd explained how his ranch had become a major corridor for drug smugglers and unauthorized migrants since 1999, making him fear for his family’s security (FireThunderTV 2017). Though he is not sure that the border wall is an effective solution, he gives his support to Donald Trump and agrees with him on the need to hire more Border Patrol officers to be dispatched on the ground (Wall Street Journal 2017). He explains that in thirty years “half a million people” were caught by the Border Patrol on his ranch and that since the election of Donald Trump border crossings have dropped by 90 percent on his property thanks to the wall on his ranch that had been replaced with an eighteen-foot bollard fence, steel, tubing, and concrete (Moore 2017). However, though he attributes the replacement of the wall to Donald Trump, its construction had already begun under the Obama administration (Wall Street Journal 2017). Through his numerous interviews by journalists over the years, John Ladd wants to appear as an expert in border security and on how life is on the border. Besides, he is part of an infomercial cast in a video production company called Border Cowboys. It is a series “based on the true life stories of American ranchers/cowboys who face unique obstacles living and working along the US-Mexico border” (Border Cowboys 2017). Since they get the attention of average American citizens, politicians partner with them for political reasons. This is what US Representative Martha McSally did when she was running for Congress in 2016. She chose John Ladd to appear in one of her campaign ads because he “embodies the character, uniqueness, and strength of Southern Arizona” (Martha McSally U.S. Congress 2017) and because he claims that she tries to make the border secure. John Ladd also partners with other Arizona ranchers to improve border control. In 2010, they developed the Restore Our Border Security Plan (ROB), following the death of rancher Rob Krentz—said to have been killed by an undocumented immigrant or a drug smuggler. Their plan encompasses eighteen actions to implement, such as military deployment, forward operating bases every twelve miles, improvement of communication technology in rural areas, and better cooperation between CBP and the ranchers (Simonneau 2015). The ranchers are not the only ones to use the death of Rob Krentz to promote their security plans. It was also used by Cochise County sheriff Mark Dannels, who was named Immigration and Border Security Chairman in March 2017. This role requires him “to coordinate with Sheriffs through-

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out the United States and the Department of Homeland Security/President Trump’s leadership team to be the voice of all Sheriffs regarding border security and other border issues” (DeHoff 2017). Mark Dannels emphasizes his role in fighting drug and human trafficking organizations and often talks of an “unsecure border.” He claims that “these groups became more reckless, aggressive and violent bringing unrest to the citizens living on the border. Examples of this include reckless high speed pursuits, assaults on citizens, rapes, kidnappings, murders and home invasion to steal one’s private and personal possessions” (“Messages from Sheriff Dannels” 2015). The murder of Rob Krentz was used as an example of how insecure the border is, though the event remained unique, and it had an impact at the local level, for gun and ammunition sales exploded at the local gun store in Douglas, climbing by 20 percent (Whetten 2010). It also had an impact at the state level: then governor Jan Brewer implemented the controversial law S.B.1070, also called Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, in April 2010. It allowed law enforcement officials to determine the immigration status of someone arrested when there was “reasonable suspicion” that they were not in the country legally. Critics said it encouraged racial profiling and that it threatened human rights. Local events can have an impact on decisions at the state level, reinforcing the idea that border towns are not secure because of unauthorized migrants. And Sheriff Mark Dannels concludes, “My biggest fear is another loss of life to one of my citizens and/or law enforcement officers/agents contributed to a border that is NOT secure.” He thus contributes to the association of border towns with fear, crime, and insecurity. However, not all the residents want the border impermeable. On the contrary, social actors in Douglas who have ties with Agua Prieta want to promote another kind of security, one that fosters the cooperation between the two communities and that makes the border permeable to cross-border relationships. Regarding undocumented immigration, Frontera de Cristo—a local ministry of the Presbyterian church devoted to promoting better community life at the border, based in Douglas and Agua Prieta—argues that it would be better to build bridges across the two communities. According to its coordinator, Mark Adams, border issues are framed in an inadequate way: “Until this issue is adequately resolved, hopefully humanely, we will not be able to change the realities at our border—no matter how high or how long the fence” (Adams and Bassett 2009: 16). When Mark Adams arrived in Agua Prieta, he noticed that many residents came from Chiapas, one of the poorest states in Mexico. So he went to Chiapas to meet the residents in order to understand what would be a good solution to shift the tide of migration at the US-Mexico border. When visiting coffee growers in Chiapas, he understood that the main incentives that drew them north of the border was a need for work to support their families, though they did not want to leave their homes. Announcements

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for bus trips to Agua Prieta made it easier for them to go and work in maquiladoras at the border. Thus, one solution Mark Adams and two associates developed to help Mexican coffee growers in Chiapas stay in their home place rather than migrating to the United States was to create the Café Justo Cooperative. Instead of selling their coffee beans to coyotes (smugglers), coffee farmers in Chiapas sell them to Frontera de Cristo, where they are roasted in a facility in Agua Prieta and sold in the United States and Canada. The revenues earned go to the growers’ cooperative in Chiapas. This solution has been successful for more than fifteen years, so much so that Frontera de Cristo created other cooperatives in Chiapas and Veracruz. In their book Just Coffee: Caffeine with a Conscience, Mark Adams and Tommy Bassett (2009) conclude that this solution is less costly than deporting an unauthorized migrant. Indeed, according to sociologist Douglas S. Massey (2005) in his study about the security buildup, “the cost of making one arrest along the US-Mexico border increased from $300 in 1992 to $1,700 in 2002, an increase of 467 percent in just a decade.” Securing the local economy is another essential aspect for border residents. To “build . . . mutual aid among neighbors in order to reduce dependency on weak job markets, government assistance . . . and border crossing” (DouglaPrieta Works 2019), a group of grassroots women created a cooperative called DouglaPrieta Trabajan/DouglaPrieta Works in 2003. The name of the co-op is a combination of the names of the two border towns, emphasizing the binational and bicultural aspect of the initiative. The Mexican and US women who launched the cooperative want to develop the local economy to become self-sufficient, and they offer classes to women of the colonias (the poor neighborhoods in Agua Prieta) to learn horticulture, sewing, and English, among other activities. Thus, they learn sustainable food production techniques and sell what they sew, so that “the little extra the women make at DouglaPrieta is enough that their husbands and sons don’t have to go to the United States to make a living” (Blust 2019). This binational effort is a way to secure the livelihoods of the community. Border residents also understand security as fostering the binational cultural cooperation between border communities. Thus, “art and culture is used as a catalyst of change” (SFA Staff 2017). In Douglas/Agua Prieta, local-born artist Jenea Sanchez plays a crucial part in developing border art. She formed the Border Arts Corridor (BAC), which acts as a platform dedicated to understanding the complexities of living in the borderlands. She believes that “through art and cultural programming social borders may fall and bridges may materialize” (Border Arts Corridor 2017). She often works with the cultural organizations in Agua Prieta and holds binational events to encourage cross-border relationships. For example, she organized a projection on the border that brought together Agua Prieta and Douglas residents on both sides.

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The aim was to forget the barrier for the time of the projection and to allow every border resident to participate in this event, even those who do not have the documents to cross. The goal is to “change the border narrative about [the] city and focus on the beautiful nature of living on the border and the binational experience unique to [the] region” (SFA Staff 2017). Douglas is not the only border town to use art to raise awareness of the binational culture at the border. In Tecate, Baja California, artist JR “created a 65-foot-tall image of a baby looking over the wall in Tecate, California” that attracts non-border residents who see the wall for the first time (Narang 2017). Also, in Ambos Nogales (Arizona and Sonora), local residents organized a binational event in November 2017 called “Beyond the Wall” to celebrate borderlands culture. They created giant puppets that waved at each other on each side of the border, leaning their heads against the fence. One of the local participants said, “We want to bring the city together like it was in the past . . . so that we remain united like the humans that we are, and like it used to be” (Blust 2017).

Concluding Remarks Since the 1990s, the physical and technological wall between Douglas and Agua Prieta has been constantly reshaped under the successive US governments. If almost ten years ago Josiah McC. Heyman (2008: 326) said, “It is . . . difficult to tell where the question of American borders will go,” today we can add that the militarization of the wall goes a step further under the current US government, as well as the economy around it. Indeed, DHS issued calls for new technological prototypes to be designed by September 2017. Between four and eight contractors worked on them in order to be chosen by DHS and be awarded the multibillion-dollar contract (Smith 2017). The Cochise County sheriff and some ranchers agree with the political discourse of making the border more secure. When talking about border towns, they use the rhetoric of fear and insecurity, contributing to negative stories about the border. This acts as a threat to the development of border communities. Positive stories of border residents and commuters living a binational life—and who contribute in fostering the historical, economic, and cultural relationship between US and Mexican border towns—often go unheard of in media coverage and political discourse. The discrepancy between the rhetoric at the national level and what border residents try to achieve for the development of their towns harms border communities. The federal government invests no money in border towns, except when deploying technological devices and installing more fences. It does not listen to economic actors who want to modernize border towns in order to boost the economy, give border residents more jobs, and attract new citizens to contribute to the population growth that other US cities experience. In-

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stead, the population in Douglas in 2015 was declining, the unemployment rate was higher than the state average (respectively 8.4 percent and 5.3 percent), and the poverty level was also higher than the state average (respectively 31.5 percent and 18.2 percent). Moreover, border residents are under constant surveillance, so much so that they refer to the international boundary as a “police state,” with its surveillance towers, radars, checkpoints, drones, airborne surveillance, lighting, and so on (Dear 2015). Meanwhile, residents of Douglas and Agua Prieta continue to pursue lives and livelihoods that reflect how human relations are undeterred by physical barriers. Shopping across the border benefits merchants and consumers, while the maquiladoras similarly offer economic benefits to people on both sides of the border. Mexican children pursue education in Douglas, maintaining important ties while developing important cross-cultural and cross-linguistic skills that contribute to binational relationships. Finally, important economic and social relationships have been created through the Café Justo cooperative that not only benefits Mexican coffee growers and American coffee drinkers, but actually alleviates some of the pressure of undocumented immigration. United States policy may persist in dividing Americans and Mexicans, but Douglas and Agua Prieta demonstrate that much is to be gained from working together rather than working separately. Cléa Fortuné is a PhD candidate in American studies and a member of the Center for Research on the English-Speaking World (CREW) at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, where she teaches American history. Her research centers on the notions of security and community in the border towns of Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora. She is also a member of the editorial board for Revue Interdisciplinaire de Travaux sur les Amériques (Interdisciplinary Journal of Papers on the Americas) and the author of the maps in Argàn Aragon, Migrations clandestines: d’Amérique centrale vers les Etats-Unis (Presses Sorbone Nouvelle, 2014).

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174 | Cléa Fortuné Blust, Kendal. 2017. “Giant Puppets Frolic at the Border Fence.” Nogales International, 28 November. Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.nogalesinternational.com/news/ giant-puppets-frolic-at-the-border-fence/article_b1921cfe-d3c5-11e7-bb7c-7b54b0365 f30.html. ———. 2019. “Untold Arizona: DouglaPrieta Co-op Empowers Women, Keeps Families Together.” Fronteras, 10 April. Accessed 14 August 2017. https://fronterasdesk.org/ content/866546/untold-arizona-douglaprieta-co-op-empowers-women-keeps-famil ies-together. Border Arts Corridor. 2017. “Home.” Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.bacaz.org/. Border Cowboys. 2017. “About Border Cowboys.” Accessed 14 August 2017. http://border cowboys.com/about/. Capoferro, Chiara, and Douglas S. Massey. 2010. “The Geographic Diversification of American Immigration.” In New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration, edited by Douglas S. Massey, 25–51. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Chávez, Sergio. 2016. Border Lives: Fronterizos, Transnational Migrants, and Commuters in Tijuana. New York: Oxford University Press. Cochise College Center for Economic Research. 2016. “Douglas Economic Outlook 2016.” Accessed 11 August 2017, http://nebula.wsimg.com/5b893f055586dde30b 4f9c94f0ad8db9?AccessKeyId=6206F29E9883B3474EEC&disposition=0&allowori gin=1. Cochise County. 2015. “Messages from Sheriff Dannels.” Accessed 14 August 2017. https:// www.cochise.az.gov/sheriff/messages-sheriff-dannels. Dear, Michael. 2015. “Beware of the Growing U.S.-Mexico Border Industrial Complex.” Huffington Post, 7 October. Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.huffingtonpost .com/michael-dear/beware-of-the-growing-usm_b_8252586.html. DeHoff, Faye. 2017. “Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels Named as Immigration and Border Security Chairman.” News 4 Tucson KVOA, 24 March. Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.kvoa.com/story/34724236/cochise-county-sheriff-mark-dannelsnamed-as-immigration-and-border-security-chairman. Dillon, Sam. 2000. “Agua Prieta Journal: Boom Turns Border to Speed Bump.” New York Times, 18 January. Accessed 14 August 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/18/ world/agua-prieta-journal-boom-turns-border-to-speed-bump.html. DouglaPrieta Works. 2019. “About DouglaPrieta Works.” DouglaPrieta Works. Accessed 26 July 2019. https://douglaprietaworks.org/about/. Douglas USD 27. 2017. “Douglas Unified School District #27.” Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.dusd.k12.az.us/?PN=AboutUs. Dunn, Timothy J. 1996. The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978–1992. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. Escobar, Veronica. 2017. “How Trump Will Hurt My Border Town.” New York Times, 1 March. Accessed 14 August 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/opinion/ how-trump-will-hurt-my-border-town.html. FireThunderTV. 2017. “Face of Fear at the Border.” YouTube. Posted 27 May 2010. Accessed 14 August 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoRfn4i3WHc. Hattam, Victoria. 2016. “Imperial Designs: Remembering Vietnam at the US-Mexico Border Wall.” Memory Studies 9(1): 27–47. DOI: 10.1177/1750698015613971. Heyman, Josiah McC. 2008. “Constructing a Virtual Wall: Race and Citizenship in U.S.-Mexico Border Policing.” Journal of the Southwest 50(3): 305–33. DOI: 10.2307/40170393. Koenig, Kailani. 2017. “Nancy Pelosi: Border Wall Is ‘Immoral, Expensive, Unwise.’” NBC News, 23 April. Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/ nancy-pelosi-border-wall-immoral-expensive-unwise-n749841.

Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora | 175 Lagarda, Brenda. 2017. “Care Fair Saturday, Event for Douglas and Agua Prieta Students.” Douglas Dispatch, 11 August. Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.douglasdispatch .com/features/care-fair-saturday-event-for-douglas-and-agua-prieta-students/article _86370e92-7872-11e7-913d-eb5fe44b1918.html. Maldonado, Trisha. 2013. “U.S., Mexico Officials Announce Grand Opening of Douglas/ Agua Prieta SENTRI Lane.” Douglas Dispatch, 7 August. Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.douglasdispatch.com/news/u-s-mexico-officials-announce-grand-openi ng-of-douglas-agua/article_3a6dfc1c-1daa-5203-836b-b3a4749eac15.html. Mark, Michelle. 2017. “ICE Is Partnering with 18 More Sheriff ’s Departments to Ramp Up Its Deportation Machine.” Business Insider France, 1 August. Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.businessinsider.fr/us/ice-announces-18-texas-287g-agreements-de portation-immigration-news-2017-8/. Martha McSally U.S. Congress. “McSally Campaign Releases New Ads, ‘Helen,’ ‘John Ladd.’” Accessed 14 August 2017. https://mcsallyforcongress.com/mcsally-ad_hel en_johnladd/. Massey, Douglas S. 2005. “Beyond the Border Buildup: Towards a New Approach to Mexico-U.S. Migration.” Issue Lab, 6 September. Accessed 14 August 2017. http:// www.issuelab.org/resource/beyond_the_border_buildup_towards_a_new_approach_ to_mexico_u_s_migration. Mattingly, Doreen J., and Ellen R. Hansen. 2008. Women and Change at the U.S.-Mexico Border: Mobility, Labor and Activism. Arizona: University of Arizona Press. Miller, Todd. 2012. “Secure the Border: The Sonic Barrier Consensus.” NACLA, 13 April. Accessed 14 August 2017. https://nacla.org/blog/2012/4/13/secure-bordersonic-barrier-consensus. Miller, Todd, and Joe Nevins. 2017. “Beyond Trump’s Big, Beautiful Wall.” NACLA, 9 June. Accessed 14 August 2017. https://nacla.org/news/2017/07/12/beyond-trump %27s-big-beautiful-wall. Miller, Todd, and Gabriel Schivone. 2015. “Bringing the Battlefield to the Border.” TomDispatch, 25 January. Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/ 175947/tomgram percent3A_miller_and_schivone,_bringing_the_battlefield_to_the_ border/. Moore, Gary. 2017. “Fox News: Ranchers Living on the Border Fire Back at Nancy Pelosi; 4/25/2017.” YouTube. Posted 28 April 2017. Accessed 14 August 2017. https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=3m4RCyE0690. Moxley, Mitch. 2016. “Better Than a Wall: A New Detection System Can Help Monitor the U.S.-Mexico Border.” Popular Mechanics, 28 January. Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a18622/bordercontrol-integrated-towers-system-invisible-wall/. Narang, Sonia. 2017. “Mexicans and Americans Bond over a Giant Baby and a Border Wall.” PRI’s The World, 15 September. Accessed 14 August 2017. https://www .pri.org/stories/2017-09-15/mexicans-and-americans-bond-over-giant-baby-and-hisborder-wall. Nevins, Joseph. 2010. Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War on “Illegals” and the Remaking of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge. News 4 Tucson KVOA. 2015. “Thirty Years above the Ground: Sierra Vista Aerostat Could Be Getting New Technology.” KVOA.com, 5 June. Accessed 11 August 2017. http:// www.kvoa.com/story/29139186/thirty-years-above-the-ground-sierra-vista-aerostatcould-be-getting-new-technology. Ngai, Mae M. 2004. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

176 | Cléa Fortuné “Our Communities.” 2017. SAEDG. Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.saedg.org/dou glas.html. Rubio-Goldsmith, Raquel, Melissa M. McCormick, Daniel Martinez, and Inez Magdalena Duarte. 2007. “A Humanitarian Crisis at the Border: New Estimates of Deaths Among Unauthorized Immigrants.” American Immigration Council, 1 February. Accessed 14 August 2017. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/ humanitarian-crisis-border-new-estimates-deaths-among-unauthorized-immigrants. SFA Staff. 2017. “Sparking More Than a Conversation: The New Young Mayor of Douglas Has a Creative Vision for Change.” Southwest Folklife Alliance, 26 March. Accessed 14 August 2017. https://www.southwestfolklife.org/sparking-conversationnew-young-mayor-douglas-creative-vision-change/. Sheridan, Thomas E. 2012. Arizona: A History, Revised Edition. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Siavelis, Peter. 2009. “Beyond Push and Pull: Neoliberalism, NAFTA, Immigration Policy, and the Structural Incentives for Mexican Immigration.” In Getting Immigration Right: What Every American Needs to Know, edited by David Coates and Peter Siavelis, 97– 114. Washington, DC: Potomac Books. Simonneau, Damien. 2015. “Il nous faut une barrière!: sociologie politique des mobilisations pro-barrière en Israël et en Arizona (Etats-Unis).” PhD thesis, Université de Bordeaux. Accessed 14 August 2017. https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01277853/ document. Smith, David. 2017. “Prototypes for Trump’s Mexico Border Wall to Be Built by September.” The Guardian, 27 June. Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.theguardian.com/ us-news/2017/jun/27/donald-trump-border-wall-mexico-prototypes-september. Trevizo, Perla. 2013. “Douglas, Agua Prieta May Go It Alone on New Crossing.” Arizona Daily Star, 14 July. Accessed 14 August 2017. http://tucson.com/business/douglasagua-prieta-may-go-it-alone-on-new-crossing/article_6874b10c-2bb2-50a2-8600707e9c70e0bf.html. ———. 2016. “Beyond the Wall: Generations on Both Sides Learned English at Agua Prieta Kindergarten.” Arizona Daily Star, 11 July. Accessed 14 August 2017. http://tucson .com/special-section/beyond-the-wall/beyond-the-wall-generations-on-both-sideslearned-english-at/article_7cec64b8-399e-11e6-91e4-0749b10a2a36.html. Trump, Donald. 2017. “Executive Order: Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements.” The White House, 25 January. Accessed 14 August 2017. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/25/executive-order-border-sec urity-and-immigration-enforcement-improvements. US Government Accountability Office. 2007. “Secure Border Initiative: Observations on Selected Aspects of SBInet Program Implementation.” US Government Accountability Office, 24 October. Accessed 11 August 2017. http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-131T. Walb News 10 ABC. 2011. “Outdated Fencing Being Replaced along Border in Douglas.” Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.walb.com/story/15675596/outdatedfencing-being-replaced-along-border-in-douglas. Wall Street Journal. 2017. “Arizona Border Ranchers Torn in Support for Trump’s Wall.” YouTube. Posted 16 March 2017. Accessed 14 August 2017. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=508RmYu2hNI&t=82s. Wells, Barbara. 2013. Daughters and Granddaughters of Farmworkers: Emerging from the Long Shadow of Farm Labor. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Whetten, Bruce. 2010. “Local Gun Sales on the Rise.” Douglas Dispatch, 7 April. Accessed 14 August 2017. http://www.douglasdispatch.com/news/local-gun-sales-on-the-rise/ article_dd29b1ca-927d-5d6f-a0be-fb982f90c407.html.

chapter

9 (Dis)Continuities of the Border Spectacle An Analysis of a Binational Park in San Diego, California Marko Tocilovac

When we think about the border fence between the United States of America and Mexico, we usually imagine it as an impassable boundary, a state-controlled infrastructure exclusively designed to defend the homeland against a multiplicity of threats. This image, mainly produced by state actors, is challenged at several locations along the two thousand miles of international boundary, letting us consider new dimensions and dynamics of the US-Mexico border. Friendship Park is one of those places. Friendship Park is located at the western tip of the US-Mexico border, a few steps away from the Pacific Ocean, where the border fence actually starts. In 2008, when I visited the park for the first time, the border fence started in the ocean and was composed of ten-foot-tall iron bars, slightly separated from each other. As it extends over the beach, the barrier gets denser and taller and then follows the slope of a small hill, where it is transformed into a succession of opaque metal plates that prevents visual and physical contact between people from both sides. At the top of this hill, called Monument Mesa,1 the border becomes a fence again, around which some space has been laid for the gathering of people from both the Mexican and the American side. This is the place called Friendship Park (see figure 9.1). Technically speaking, Friendship Park is not a park but rather a small plaza of about two thousand square feet, divided into two halves by the borderline. From this place, you can see the Playas de Tijuana neighborhood, its lighthouse, and its imposing bullfighting arena on the one hand and on the other the marshy landscapes of Border Field State Park, a California state park located in southwest San Diego. At the center of Friendship Park lies the first historical marker of the US-Mexico border, a stone obelisk—Boundary Mon-

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Figure 9.1. Diagram of Friendship Park, by Marko Tocilovac.

ument No. 2582—placed by a binational commission at the end of the nineteenth century and physically delimiting the territorial limits specified by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.3 Inaugurated in 1971 by Pat Nixon, First Lady of the United States, Friendship Park was originally built to celebrate Mexico–United States relations in this specific site, where numerous binational interactions were taking place on a daily basis. Friendship Park has nevertheless witnessed the evolution of US migration and border policies, and it experienced a dramatic change when a first border fence, called the “primary fence,” was built in the early nineties. The construction of this infrastructure was followed by the launching of Operation Gatekeeper in California, and the radical change it implied in the state’s relationship to its boundary strongly split a site previously merely delimited by some barbed wire. The installation of a secondary fence in 2009 followed the unprecedented expansion of border infrastructure after the Secure Fence Act was signed into law in 2006 and closed the entrance to the park on the American side, leaving the authorization of its use at the discretion of the United States Border Patrol. It is the singularity of this space and the practices that shape it that I propose to explore here. Both a park and a part of the border fence, place of meeting and of division, this ambiguous entity produces a variety of border images. Questions of the specificity of this space—in what way is it a unique modality

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of the border—as well as of its generic dimension—what makes this particular place a part of the border infrastructure—will then guide us through our reflection. I will begin by focusing my analysis on the physical structure of Friendship Park, before addressing the militant activities that take place there, and finally reflecting upon the production of border narratives and the staging of the border wall. In order to achieve a better understanding of the spectacular dimension of the US-Mexico border, I propose to start from an exceptional occurrence of the border, in order to isolate and better understand the generic mechanisms involved in the construction of border imaginaries. For this essay, I will use ethnographic data I collected during fourteen months of fieldwork in San Diego, California, between 2009 and 2011 as part of my doctoral research in anthropology (Tocilovac 2015). During this time, Friendship Park was the scene of many events organized by a coalition of San Diego activists called the Friends of Friendship Park. Formed in response to the radical reconfiguration of this space by the US federal state, or more specifically, by the United States Customs and Border Protection, the coalition actively campaigned for a modification of the border infrastructure and of the usage rules of Friendship Park. The coalition regularly called for demonstrations in front of the border fence, carried out the planting of and promotional campaigns for native plants around the plaza, directed “binational masses” every Sunday, and organized various artistic “cross-border workshops.” I was able to study the three phases of the Friendship Park transformation: first, when the international division was materialized by a single (primary) fence; second, when the park was closed in 2010; and third, when it was opened with its new configuration, a double fence, in 2011. I observed the park as it was used by individuals on both sides and patrolled by Border Patrol agents. I conducted semi-structured interviews with a majority of the members of Friends of Friendship Park as well as informal talks with Border Patrol agents on line duty and formal interviews in their San Diego headquarters.

The Ambiguous Nature of Friendship Park Today, Friendship Park is neither a place where many illegal practices occur nor a site visited by many people. According to Friends of Friendship Park activists, the number of visitors has declined over the past two decades as the border control and security system has been strengthened. The families who used to visit the park before it was crossed by one and then two fences have given way to a sparser audience: on average five individuals per weekend on the American side during the period of ethnographic observation. Seemingly deserted and permanently guarded by the US Border Patrol, like the rest of the international boundary between San Diego and Tijuana, Friend-

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ship Park is fully enclosed by the two border fences. At first glance, it is in fact very difficult to distinguish the specificity of this space, as it is fully part of what is commonly known as the border wall. Mainly used by political actors who oppose it, often to denounce a disproportionate, dangerous, or threatening device, the term “border wall” refers to the series of heterogeneous border fences, constructed from various materials, and whose configuration, as much as the objectives, diverge greatly depending on their location. Between the cities of San Diego and Tijuana, the materialization of the fourteen miles of international border is particularly heavy compared to other border regions, including cross-border conurbations. In fact, there are two fences, separated by an asphalt road made for US Border Patrol vehicles, and to which must be added the lighting, the cameras, and other sensors. Around Friendship Park, the primary fence is ten feet tall and composed of old military landing mats, while the secondary fence, placed forty yards north of the primary fence, is eighteen feet tall and is made of large steel beams set in the ground (see figure 9.2). These two fences come from two major initiatives undertaken by the US federal state, first in the early 1990s and then in the mid-2000s, which have transformed the US-Mexico border into a highly controlled area particularly exposed to political attention. And it was in San Diego in particular that the latter crystallized in the mid-1990s, making its common border with Tijuana

Figure 9.2. The secondary border fence at Friendship Park, June 2011; also the shorter fence visible between it and the bullring on the left. Photo by Marko Tocilovac.

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ground zero for immigration debate (Nevins 2001). According to international studies scholar Peter Andreas (2000), this shift from the margin to the center of the national stakes has been achieved through a constant political escalation, leading within a few years to a generalization of border fences coupled with the exponential increase of the Border Patrol budget. Completed in 1993, the primary fence was designed by the Border Patrol as part of the implementation of a new strategy to combat illegal cross-border flows. This “prevention through deterrence” strategy, which consisted of a new management of border control by placing a maximum of agents and visible resources on the borderline, just preceded the establishment of the largest local operation against the illegal entry of people and goods into the United States: Operation Gatekeeper. For geographer Joseph Nevins (2001), it is in its symbolic effectiveness that lies the heart of Operation Gatekeeper, thus creating the image of a more orderly border around particularly visible or urbanized areas. The notion of “regain[ing] control” of the border is a key element for understanding the nature of the Border Patrol discourses concerning changes occurring at the border. Indeed, the state is perceived as responding to a form of threat resulting from the multiplication of images of a chaotic border in an attempt to restore an order that has never existed (Andreas 2000). The strengthening of the material and human control of the border in San Diego is thus the product of an escalation fueled by the nature of the public debate on migration and border issues. Following this logic, the primary fence was quickly judged as not satisfying the objectives assigned to it. The secondary border fence project, accelerated in 2002 by Republican Representative Duncan Hunter, was stopped in 2004 when only eight miles of double fencing had been built. Numerous lawsuits filed by the California Coastal Commission have interrupted the work for noncompliance with environmental laws. Friendship Park, located within a California state park and being part of the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, was protected from the new fence. However, in 2005, the US Congress passed a law—the REAL ID Act—which allowed the federal state to derogate from any law preventing the construction of border infrastructure. This major legislative change just preceded the 2006 Secure Fence Act, which allows the construction of seven hundred miles of border fences on five segments of the US-Mexico border and the increase of technological means such as sensors, cameras, satellites, and drones. The construction of the secondary fence, which started east of San Diego in 2008, finally finished covering the fourteen-mile border with Tijuana in 2010. In this sense, the construction of Friendship Park is not different from that of surrounding barriers. Obeying the same evolutions and the same political logic, the border fences of Friendship Park also serve the same functions. A meaning-making and meaning-carrying entity (Donnan and Wilson 1999), the border fence can be considered as a way of managing border images

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(Andreas 2000). More generally, the border can be understood as a political scene (Balandier 1980), characterized by its spectacular dimension (Foucher 2007), where “political power intervenes, daily, on its own representation” (Amilhat Szary 2012: 76), thus participating in the production of border imaginaries. Many researchers have claimed that borders perform a function that is more theatrical than mechanical (Brown 2009) and serve less to deter than to manage the image of the border (Andreas 2000). In the construction of the border lies the materialization of the state, which aims to assert a territorial sovereignty whose recognition is at the foundation of the political unity necessary for the existence of the state (Nadel 1942). To oppose the relative porosity of the border, the image of an impermeable wall is to show above all a form of control, even a symbolic one, of the territory. And it is this border wall conception, “both structures and symbols of a state’s security and sovereignty” (Donnan and Wilson 1999: 15), that we find at Friendship Park. But if Friendship Park is fully part of the border infrastructure, it is nonetheless a particular modality of the border—not so much in its external appearance, but rather in its specific structure and in the uses that it implies. Indeed, the American half of Friendship Park is situated between the two fences (see figure 9.3), in an area exclusively used for Border Patrol operations. To reach it, visitors must go through a door, incorporated in the secondary fence, which allows them to enter this intermediate space. After crossing the Border Patrol service road, they enter the small plaza, which is encircled by a small barrier whose objective is to keep visitors three feet away from the primary fence. The secondary fence has completely transformed this place and consequently the experience of the individuals who use it. Friendship Park had been relatively open and easy to access, although divided by the primary fence, and it became a closed and highly controlled space. The new access door in the secondary fence is only open on Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and is monitored by a Border Patrol officer. The visitor must show identification to the agent and can only stay in Friendship Park for a maximum of half an hour. Any physical contact with individuals on the other side of the fence is strictly prohibited, such as the exchange of objects through the fence. In addition, getting to Friendship Park is itself a relatively difficult operation. To reach the park, visitors first have to drive for about twenty miles from downtown San Diego, as there is no public transportation there. Once the vehicle is parked at Border Field State Park, visitors have to walk, except during summer months,4 about forty-five minutes before reaching its destination. Access to Friendship Park from the Mexican side of the fence cannot be more different. As a vibrant point of the Playas de Tijuana neighborhood, it can be easily reached with public transportation, taxi, or private vehicle. Around Friendship Park, the bullring—often used as a concert venue—the bars and restaurants, and the crowded beach attest to the popularity of the place.

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Figure 9.3. Inside Friendship Park, June 2011. Boundary Monument No. 258 can be seen in the upper right. Photo by Marko Tocilovac.

Friendship Park itself is a curiosity for many visitors, eager to see “la esquina de la nación” (the nation’s corner)—as written on a big sign hanging on the primary fence—and to watch, through the border infrastructure, downtown San Diego’s skyscrapers. Back on the American side, the small number of people who use the park can be classified in two categories: tourists whose main motivation is to “see” the border fence and persons who go there to communicate with relatives on the other side of the fence. The latter category is composed exclusively of Mexican or Mexican-American men, who reside lawfully in the United States but cannot leave the United States for judicial reasons. For each group, the use of Friendship Park is therefore substantially distinct. Once they have shown their identification to the Border Patrol officer and entered the plaza, individuals who come as tourists, often with their families, usually spend only a few minutes in Friendship Park and rarely speak with individuals on the other side of the border. As for the latter group of users, they frequently use the full half hour authorized by the Border Patrol to talk to their relatives in Tijuana. In this case, Friendship Park assumes a function that is much more similar to a prison parlor than that of a park. The use of Friendship Park after 2010 has therefore become a direct experience of the border infrastructure, not by mi-

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grants but by visitors. Further, the specificity of this use of the border lies in the fact that visitors do not pass through it, legally or illegally. They enter a liminal space, between two fences, and thus penetrate the border infrastructure. We have therefore an entity that can be distinguished by its ambiguity. Indeed, the different conceptions of Friendship Park conveyed by the actors thus depict a specific installation that has the characteristics of a place of confinement for the users on the one hand and of a device for generating imaginaries on the other. As a place of interaction, control, and spectacle, Friendship Park can be defined and perceived as a square, a prison parlor, or simply another modality of the border infrastructure. As a place of both division and gathering, Friendship Park—and by extension, the whole border—is an ambiguous construction. This is particularly true with respect to the border infrastructure, which makes the study of the Friendship Park case so important to understand the mechanisms of the US-Mexico border. Profoundly similar and different from the rest of the wall, Friendship Park allows us to rethink the characteristics of the border fence, beyond the unequivocal image of division that the infrastructure conveys.

Activism at Friendship Park In 2009, as the secondary fence was nearing completion, a few individuals gathered to protest the construction of this new border infrastructure. Composed of members of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), local association members, and nonaffiliated activists, this group first formed a watching committee focused on the progress of the new border infrastructure construction. Then they began to organize activities around Friendship Park, while inviting several members of the media from San Diego and Tijuana. Despite the growing visibility of their actions, the group has seen the implementation of stricter rules for the use of Friendship Park without being able to change it, and they could do nothing to avoid its closure in February 2009. The group then formed as a coalition and continued to organize events in order to reach local and national media and to negotiate with Customs and Border Protection for a reopening of the park. One of the characteristics of the Friends of Friendship Park coalition is the heterogeneity of its organizations and consequently the different issues at stake for their members. Thus, the opposition to the construction of a new border infrastructure includes the freedom of movement and the protection of migrants, the rights of Mexican immigrants within US territory, and prevention of environmental damage caused by the fence. The coalition is nevertheless almost exclusively composed of American-based organizations. While NGOs in Tijuana can be very active and diverse, they don’t work on the same issues as

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the American groups concerned with Friendship Park. During my fieldwork, the deportation of Mexicans and Central Americans to Tijuana, and therefore their protection and care, was the primary focus of political border-related activism. Friendship Park, very open on the Mexican side, didn’t present an important issue for the members of Mexican NGOs, although they did show solidarity with their American counterparts by occasionally participating in events organized on both sides of the fence. For Christian Ramírez, a member of the American Friends Service Committee NGO, a very active member of the Friends of Friendship coalition, and a regular user of Friendship Park, the park was characterized by its “humanity” before the secondary fence was built, fueled by the numerous “encounters” that took place there. But these interactions, considered as “threats” and forms of “disorder” by a San Diego Border Patrol spokesman, also served to justify the new organization of the park. Those two opposing visions reveal the positions of these two groups of political actors. If the Border Patrol qualifies the new Friendship Park as a “secure space for the public and for the agents,” the coalition members describe the construction of the new infrastructure as “an assault by the federal government” that put the users in “a cage.” “Trapped” between two fences, users emphasize the aggressive dimension of the new infrastructure—the “cage” (la jaula)—especially since it is built not exclusively to prevent illegal flows from entering the United States, but also to manage access to the site for individuals already in the country. During my ethnographic observation, the actions organized by the coalition took place mostly in three contiguous areas, named by its members as “the monument,” “the beach,” and “the garden.” “The monument” refers to Friendship Park in its narrowest sense, that is, the circular plaza divided by the border fence. The second area is the beach adjacent to the Friendship Park. The third is a small cultivated garden of about two hundred square feet, just a few steps from the park and divided by the primary fence. These three sites, which have their specific issues, are characterized both by the presence of the border fence and by the transnational interactions that take place there. The actions of Friends of Friendship Park, according to their nature, are organized at various frequencies: regularly, in the case of the transnational dance and yoga workshops, singing, religious celebrations, and maintenance sessions of the “binational garden,” and periodically, in the case of demonstrations against border policies. The existence of this political struggle for nearly ten years—in 2018, the negotiations on the future of Friendship Park were still ongoing—shows us the exceptional character of this locality. Friendship Park, like no other place on the border, concentrates political activities of non-state actors. We can conclude two important points regarding activism at Friendship Park. On the one hand, the use of the symbolic power of the border is not the sole purview of the state, but is also exercised by NGOs and others, making the

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park a unique setting in which to do so. It is true that other forms of protesting border policies exist outside of Friendship Park. For example, one of the most important is operated by sets of individuals on both sides of the border via artistic performances. Whether by the extent and the transnationality of these practices—throughout and on both sides of the US-Mexico border—as well as by its long-term existence—since the creation of border infrastructure— border art is a fundamental factor in the study of forms of symbolic transformation of the border. Since the erection of the border fence, many individuals and collectives have used the border wall as a support for the realization of creative works with messages related to border issues, thus forming part of a more general movement of border art strongly influenced by the Chicano movement (Amilhat Szary 2012; Amilhat Szary and Giraut 2012; Iglesias Prieto 2007). But these forms of expression do not enjoy the same quantity and density as the events organized at Friendship Park. The unique infrastructure of Friendship Park—there is no similar entity along the entire border—can help explain such a concentration of political actions. On the other hand, as it is a unique case, the Friendship Park study cannot allow us to search for general characteristics of the border. We can only say the border has the ability to catalyze political struggles. When in a specific configuration, the opportunity offered by the infrastructure is seized. The existence of these events at the Friendship Park confirms the strength of the symbolic dimension of the border, highlighting another modality of expression, while confining the latter to specific circumstances.

The Production of Border Narratives In his study of the US-Mexico border in Nogales, Arizona, anthropologist Randall H. McGuire demonstrates that the border is built through a “dialectic of fortification and transgression” (Donnan and Wilson 1999), thus continuing the ideas of sociologist Georg Simmel (Chavarochette, Demanget, and Givre 2015: 15). The inhabitants of Nogales, through “human agency, emotions and experience” (Amilhat Szary and Giraut 2012), actively participated in the construction of border imaginaries, which in turn led to modifications to the border wall’s design by the federal state. Similarly, the new border infrastructure at Friendship Park has modified existing cross-border practices and has created new practices, thus generating new representations. In this case study, we distinguish two types of concomitant processes: the “daily dividing practices over the physical territory and the people” (Cuttitta 2015; Wilson and Donnan 2012) and a de-bordering process characterized by practices aimed at opening the border and uniting the individuals separated by the fence. These phenomena of opening and closing have often been addressed

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separately by the academic field of border studies, which first emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of new communication technologies, which many considered a significant step toward a borderless world. Then, after 9/11, the multiplication of walls and control procedures represented the closing of borders around the globe (Amilhat Szary and Giraut 2015; Chavarochette, Demanget, and Givre 2015). At Friendship Park, these bordering and de-bordering processes concerns “the same border at the same time” (Donnan and Wilson 1999). The regular organization of binational activities by members of the coalition that create new border narratives takes various forms. Dan Watman founded Border Meetup/Border Encuentro in 2004, with the goal of “making people interact” across the US-Mexico border. The organization’s main mission is to organize cross-border workshops at Friendship Park approximately ten times a year. Individuals on both sides of the border participate in an activity and interact across the fence. In addition to organizing what he calls “binational workshops,” Watman is one of the initiators of the “binational garden of native plants,” a strip of land approximately sixty feet long and barely six feet wide, located in the immediate vicinity of Friendship Park and divided in two parts by the border fence. It was planted in 2007 by Watman with the participation of students from two public schools, one in Tijuana and the other in San Diego, with the aim of “fostering friendship between the two countries and creating a green zone without borders that becomes an educational space that promotes the characteristics and reproduction of the native plants of the region.”5 In 2009, twelve organizations based mainly in Tijuana formed a coalition named G12, which subsequently obtained permission from the ecological department of the Tijuana City Council to ensure the maintenance of the garden throughout the year. On the American side, however, access to the garden has evolved after changes occurred to the border infrastructure. While it was possible for anyone to approach the primary fence, and therefore the binational garden, before 2009, since the construction of the secondary fence access to the park required active involvement by Watman and his volunteers. The Mexican side of Friendship Park, which was the object of a major renovation in 2010, is an area valued by the city of Tijuana for its tourist activity and the income it generates. On the other side of the border, access to the garden is very irregular and depends on the authorization given by the US Border Patrol. During the course of my ethnographic fieldwork, Watman had to negotiate almost every intervention on the American side of the binational garden and was regularly faced with refusals by federal agents. The binational garden is not an area where events are organized, as the plaza around the obelisk might be, and only gardening sessions constitute collective moments. For Watman, the significance of this garden lies in its symbolic power, the images of cross-border interactions on the one hand and respect for

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the local ecosystem on the other. To illustrate these meanings, Watman uses the image of the roots of plants, which do not recognize the border and which extend indistinctly on either side. This cross-border entity, despite the asymmetries related to its access, represents the possibility of binational initiatives around—and thus across—the border fence. As for the ecological dimension, it must be understood in relation to the environmental specificity of the locality and to the multiple demands that have accompanied the construction of the secondary fence. The Tijuana River Estuary is part of the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, in which lies the Border Field State Park and thus the Friendship Park. It is a salt marsh that is a natural habitat for several hundred bird species, some of which are endangered, as well as for specific flora. The building of the secondary fence has generated strong criticism from environmental organizations and has led them, along with other public and private actors, to try to stop it by engaging legal proceedings against Customs and Border Protection (Andreas 2000). For these organizations, the construction of the secondary fence profoundly altered the estuary ecosystem and destroyed many natural habitats specific to these marshes. Placing the native plants and this specific ecosystem at the center of the binational garden is then a way of bringing to light those demands and symbolically reaffirming the importance of local flora and fauna. Religious ceremonies are another form of actions from the Friends of Friendship Park coalition. Within the coalition, this religious dimension is mainly driven by Methodist minister John Fanestil, who is recognized as one of the leaders of Friends of Friendship Park and was also, at the time of my research, the executive director of a foundation specialized in social justice projects in San Diego and Tijuana. Before Friendship Park was closed in 2009 and the secondary fence was installed, Rev. Fanestil went there every Sunday for more than eight months to conduct a binational Communion service through the border fence. The number of participants varied from a few individuals to fifty people. They were mostly activists attending the Mass on the American side, a few Mexican and Central Americans wishing to cross the border on the Mexican side, and tourists and journalists on both sides of the border. During the Sunday Mass, participants used to take each other’s hand on both sides of the border to form a circle and pray together before the Communion wafer—a Mexican tortilla—was given by the pastor through the wire mesh to the participants on the Mexican side. Fanestil placed the chalice and the paten at the foot of the border fence and broke the wafer in front of the individuals who came to attend the Mass on both the Mexican and American sides. The minister and the liturgical objects were thus located almost in the middle of Friendship Park (positioned a few inches north of the international border), while the border fence was at the center of the ceremony. The presence of the fence produces a similar effect on the participants: the two groups face each other, and they face

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the minister. By a symmetrical distribution of the participants on either side of the fence and a quasi-central position of the sacraments, Fanestil insisted on the binational dimension of the event, reinforced by a sermon offered in two languages. These ceremonies tended to produce two impressions: a barrier that divides a community of believers but also a border transcended by faith and transnational communion. For Fanestil, these binational Communions are a continuation of the practices of sharing that characterized this space. He also refers to a form of “solidarity” with the regular and historical users of Friendship Park. These actions and statements foreshadowed the nature of his political commitment against the establishment of a new border infrastructure. Regarding the religious ceremonies held at Friendship Park or the gardening sessions taking place in the binational garden, we can draw a main interpretation. Through these interventions in the border landscape, the members of Friends of Friendship Park produce a different kind of narrative, not strictly of the fence but more generally of the border and the values it should bear. The emerging representations are part of a production of a de-bordering narrative in which the border is depicted as a place of transnational interactions. Hospitality is at the center of this conception of the border, opposing with the idea of solidarity the rejection of the other. Freedom of movement is highlighted in response to the confinement suggested by the new configuration of Friendship Park. As a zone of interaction, the border must be an open, permeable, and transparent area, in contrast to the existing infrastructure. Finally, it is thought to be situated in the continuity of specific ecological spaces, not as a disruptive entity. Border discourses produced by members of the Friends of Friendship coalition are structured around two types of images of the border, one shaped by the US federal state and the other as they believe it should exist. Although this does not constitute a re-materialization of the barrier, since the operations of the coalition do not materially modify the border fence, these interventions nevertheless produce a form of modification of the border landscape. As a result, they can be seen through the prism of what Robert J. Kaiser called “border performatives” (2012: 522) the ephemeral realizations of the border ideals carried by its members. In this precise place and modality, we therefore have a competition of border images. The symbolic potential of the border is grasped by non-state political groups that produce political border performatives. At the same time, these border performatives contribute to the construction of the exceptionality of Friendship Park. This staging of transnational interactions carrying humanistic values must also be understood as a political strategy to make the singularity of the park visible. Its low attendance and its apparent similarity with the rest of the border infrastructure are masked by these operations. Thus, it exists as a unique modality of the border because of the uses it produces. Consequently, these border narratives must be primarily

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thought of as means of political action, which participates in a production of alternative imaginaries.

Staging the Border Wall On several occasions during the ethnographic observation period, some members of the coalition organized public events and spoke to many Mexican and American media. Friendship Park was then used as a media scene to denounce the existence of the new border infrastructure. On 9 November 2009, as the new Friendship Park had just reopened, the world was commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. For many activists in the US-Mexico border area, this international event, widely relayed in the United States, had to find a local echo. The striking differences in the policies promoted by the US State Department on the one hand—the opening of the borders of the Soviet bloc—and Homeland Security on the other—the creation of new barriers on its own territory—were used to denounce the incompatibility of the wall with certain values supposedly defended by the United States. Thus, on that day, in front of the entrance of the new Friendship Park and with many American and Mexican media covering the event, fifty people gathered for a silent vigil. On this occasion, the Friends of Friendship Park coalition, which initiated the event, invited participants to write their messages on signs and then to sit down near the secondary fence. Here, the goal of the activists was the production of a border image different from that generated by the state. Indeed, the border as shown by the American state is that of a protective barrier built to prevent illegal flows from penetrating the national territory. Using those signs, the members of Friends of Friendship Park sought to associate the border with notions of war, poverty, and confinement. In front of the Friendship Park entrance gate, coalition members spoke about the installation of the secondary fence and the configuration of the new Friendship Park. Pastor Fanestil, for instance, spoke at this press conference to the journalists attending, referring to the border infrastructure as “altering the spirit of Friendship Park,” where one can “make friends only at a certain distance, at certain hours, under surveillance, and without even being able to touch each other.” Christian Ramírez, from the NGO American Friends Service Committee, took the floor to criticize the “militarization” of the border area, comparing the newly established border infrastructure with a war zone. In the case of this press conference, as for the sit-in, activists used the park as a media scene in which the border fence played a central role. The presence of the imposing secondary fence was constantly within the frame of the images captured by photographers and cameramen who covered the event, thus serv-

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ing the activists’ goals of showing the image of a disproportionate, oppressive, and inhumane infrastructure. This event, as well as all the periodic events at the Friendship Park, is clearly distinguishable from the more regular actions such as the religious ceremonies or the gardening sessions. The border fence is depicted by the coalition’s interventions as an entity that divides communities, whether they are believers, activists, or cross-border friends. Considered as an opaque and discriminatory structure, the border fence generates a separation that is perceived as violent and as responding to an unjustified threat. Indeed, activists compare the border infrastructure to a military device that overestimates the threats to which it claims to respond and that leads to the death of individuals attempting to use more dangerous migratory routes. In this view, it also symbolizes the migration policies of the United States, referring to the confinement of irregular migrants and those awaiting deportation. Although these types of events clearly differ from those organized on a regular basis at Friendship Park, they have in common the staging of the border fence. The latter is then always shown as a hostile entity, whether directly or indirectly. Friendship Park is used as a theater stage, where the border fence serves both as a backdrop and as a staged object. Built by the federal state to produce control images, the border fence as portrayed by the Friends of Friendship Park coalition perpetuates those control images. In a way, what happens at the Friendship Park is quite similar to the rest of the border: we are facing deserted, controlled areas that produce media images of state sovereignty. Friendship Park, an exceptional occurrence of the border wall, with clearly differentiated uses, is fully in line with the rest of the border infrastructure.

Concluding Remarks Despite a diversity of actors with clearly distinct strategic objectives for it, the border proves to be an extraordinary political scene, where relatively similar imaginaries are produced. The study of the border dispositif at Friendship Park helps to understand the logics, mechanisms, and strategic objectives of the border infrastructure. Both the construction of the border by the state and the argument of protecting the national territory from different forms of threats evoke a multiplicity of dangers from the outside and the inside. The transformation of the simple markers that designated the boundaries of the territory around the cities of Tijuana and San Diego into a double fence thus constituted a strong symbolic break with past constructions of the border. The study of Friendship Park—both rupture and continuity of the border wall—highlights the specificities and the more general characteristics of the

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US-Mexico border. The first point we could highlight is that the state does not have a monopoly on the symbolic use of the border. The existence of these regular protests resulted from a unique architectural opportunity that was seized by non-state actors. Through their actions, members of the Friends of Friendship Park coalition not only provided a strong criticism of the border infrastructure, but also proposed an alternative image of the border based on values they distinguish from those carried by the state. During the religious ceremonies, the cross-border workshops, the binational garden maintenance sessions, or the various events organized by the coalition members, the strategy has been consistently the same: a staging of the border fence and, at the same time, of its transgression, in order to produce another border narrative. It is hard to say to what extent these border narratives effectively change the border itself. On the material/infrastructural level, progress made by the coalition of activists is real, even if it could be considered as marginal. As a member of Friends of Friendship Park puts it, “Customs and Border Protection got 99 percent of what they wanted, and we got 1 percent of what we wanted.” On the symbolic level, the influence of border activism is even harder to evaluate. Do these actions really change the mental image that people have of the border? How dominant is the state’s point of view on the making of these borderscapes? Answering those questions would imply a new survey, focused on the multiplicity of border images in the public space. Nevertheless, what we can say is that the mere fact there is an opposition of border imaginaries is meaningful. These disputes are indeed part of the continuity of the border as a machine that produce images. They are constructed as different but share a staging of state control on a territory. Regardless of the political actors who invest in it, the border proves to be, at its core, a spectacle, a privileged place, and an object of politics, whose function is fundamentally symbolic. Marko Tocilovac holds a PhD in social anthropology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (France) and is a research associate at the Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur les Amériques (CREDA, UMR 7227 Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle/CNRS). His research is focused on borders, migration, and the state. He has done fieldwork in San Diego, California, where he examined the way the US-Mexico border is shaped as a specific political space by a heterogeneous assemblage of local and national actors. His current research is on the external borders of Europe in southern Spain.

Notes 1. A mesa is a geological phenomenon typical of the southwestern United States. It is a relatively wide and small hill with a flat top.

(Dis)Continuities of the Border Spectacle | 193 2. At the end of the nineteenth century, 258 border markers were placed all along the border by the International Boundary Commission, a binational commission formed after the treaties of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) and Gadsden (1853), from which the present line of the US-Mexico border is drawn. 3. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is a peace treaty between the United States and Mexico. It was signed in 1848 and ended the Mexican-American War. For $15 million, it gave the United States a large area of Mexican territory, including California, most of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. 4. The rest of the year, the park is closed to vehicles due to possible flooding of the road. 5. PFEA.org, http://pfea.org/plantasnativas/about/, accessed 27 August 2015.

References Amilhat Szary, Anne-Laure. 2012. “Que montrent les murs? Des frontières contemporaines de plus en plus visibles.” Études internationales 43(1): 67–87. Amilhat Szary, Anne-Laure, and Frédéric Giraut. 2012. “Walls and Border Art: The Politics of Art Display.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 27(2): 213–28. ———. 2015. “Borderities: The Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders.” In Borderities and the Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders. London: New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Andreas, Peter. 2000. Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Balandier, Georges. 1980. Le pouvoir sur scènes. Paris: Fayard. Brown, Wendy. 2009. Murs: Les murs de séparation et le déclin de la souveraineté étatique. Paris: Les prairies ordinaires. Chavarochette, Carine, Magali Demanget, and Olivier Givre, eds. 2015. Faire frontière(s). Raisons politiques et usages symboliques. Paris: Karthala. Cuttitta, Paolo. 2015. “La ‘frontiérisation’ de Lampedusa, comment se construit une frontière.” L’espace Politique 25: 1–16. Donnan, Hastings, and Thomas M. Wilson. 1999. Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State. Oxford: Berg. Foucher, Michel. 2007. L’obsession des frontières. Paris: Perrin. Texte imprimé. Iglesias Prieto, Norma. 2007. “Le mur à la frontière entre le Mexique et les Etats-Unis: flux, contrôle et créativité de l’esthétique géopolitique.” Outre-Terre 1(18): 123–141. Kaiser, Robert J. 2012. “Performativity and the Eventfulness of Bordering Practices.” In A Companion to Border Studies, edited by Hastings Donnan and Thomas M. Wilson, 522–537. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Nevins, Joseph. 2001. Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Remaking of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge. Nadel, Siegfried F. 1942. A Black Byzantium: The Kingdom of Nupe in Nigeria. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Nugent, Paul. 2012. “Border Towns and Cities in Comparative Perspective.” In A Companion to Border Studies, edited by Hastings Donnan and Thomas M. Wilson, 557–72. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Tocilovac, Marko. 2015. “La fabrique politique de la frontière mexico-américaine: Etat, ONG et expériences frontalières à San Diego (Californie, Etats-Unis).” Thèse de doctorat sous la direction de Giorgio Blundo. Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Wilson, Thomas M., and Hastings Donnan. 2012. “Borders and Border Studies.” In A Companion to Border Studies, edited by Thomas M Wilson and Hastings Donnan. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

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10 A Durable Permeation Imagination, Motion, and Differentiation at the Border between Canada and the United States Victor Konrad

In late 2016, as Donald Trump emerged as president of the United States, some Americans and most Canadians immediately became concerned about how he might alter the Canada-US relationship and how the border regime would change between the countries. Trump’s campaign rhetoric about building a wall at the southern border with Mexico alarmed Canadians as well as Americans living along the northern border. Whereas most borderland residents assumed that Trump would not go as far as building a US-Canada wall, they did imagine a more formidable border burdened with enhanced security and longer wait times to cross. Also, Canadians feared more emphasis on profiling minorities for greater scrutiny at the border. Important as well, Canadians and their neighbors in the northern border areas of the United States were uncertain of economic impacts of proposed American trade protectionism and “America First” policies. In essence, fears were heightened, on one hand, concerning the extension and expansion of border transformation already in process since the beginning of the twenty-first century. On the other hand, anxiety increased, particularly in Canada, about how Canada’s massive trade with the United States and economic reliance on America would be affected. A new “imaginary,” not just a “reflective,” “specular,” or “fictive” perception, emerged. It was “essentially [an] undetermined creation of figures/forms/ images, on the basis of which alone there can ever be a question of ‘something.’ What we call ‘reality’ and ‘rationality’ are its works” (Castoriadis 1997: 3). The encompassing imaginary may be viewed as a complex and multifaceted bundle of concerns about how the United States and Canada would intersect in this strangely unpredictable and potentially chilling political setting. In 2017, the pendulum of concern moved from great relief as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

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gained assurances from President Trump, to trade scares related to American protectionism, and ultimately to acknowledgment that NAFTA was in trouble. Imaginaries of how the border may materialize and hopefully stabilize still vary and remain in motion. Certain, however, is the consensus among both Canadians and Americans that the border between the countries remains in a state of transformation and that the process of continual change is already a hallmark of the twenty-first-century border between the United States and Canada. Yet, this change, like others that have occurred since the boundary was established, is but another incarnation of the durable permeation of the Canada-US border. The border remains porous and allows mixture and passage as it prevails as a stable, continual, persevering, and preserved construct between the countries. In this last chapter, I will argue that the border between the United States and Canada has been and continues to be permeable. Although the heightened security measures after the events of 9/11 and, more recently, the “wall” rhetoric of the Trump administration have complicated and delayed border passage, the border remains among the most open borders in the world. The border is a durable permeation because it allows and enables a broad range of “imagination” (new ideas or concepts of externalities not present to the senses), it is characterized by motion (what Hegel termed Flussigkeit), and it works to differentiate Canada and the United States in various ways at scales from the local to regional, national, and international. The early twenty-first-century transformation of border governance was sudden and sweeping along the world’s ostensibly “longest undefended border” between Canada and the United States (Andreas 2003). In the aftermath of the events of 9/11, border governance was shaken, as tenets of power and influence were tested at the border and, moreover, governments’ capacity to order, moderate, and manage the border was questioned. The basis of evolved systems of border governance—mutual trust, minimal surveillance, port autonomy and authority—that had worked for most of the twentieth century were abrogated in favor of more strident security controls and central authority, mainly by the US government through its newly established Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (Konrad and Nicol 2008a: 161–88). The DHS has sought to control flows of people and goods by reinforcing territorial control primarily through “top-down” security enhancement, but increasingly, the DHS and other border governing agencies in both the United States and Canada have acknowledged that effective border management of flows also requires devolved governance through “bottom-up” allowances. A scalar optimum in border governance remains to be achieved between federal and local levels (Alper and Hammond 2011). The deeper concern, however, is that governing the borderline in an era of globalization is not successful and is not adequate to meet the challenge of governing the increasing and diverse flows of people, goods, and communications across borders.

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Meanwhile, flows of cultural representations, and sharing and expression of cultural ideas and expressions across the border, rather than being sublimated by an incised Canada-US border and virtual walls, have re-emerged more sharply defined, and this cultural production has reinvented itself differentially in places along the border and spaces in the borderlands (Konrad 2012). The “thickening” of the border (Ackleson 2009) has extended and deepened the zone of cultural interaction across the border, expanded resistance to enhanced security, and grown the borderlands. Indeed, the business of the border is populating the borderlands, but also it is garnering resistance expressed in cultural production including literature, art, and film (Amilhat Szary 2012, 2013). As Alm and Burkhart (2013b) emphasize in their analysis of narratives from border communities on Lake Superior, cross-border culture as expressed in the stories of ordinary people is integral to understanding the border and theorizing how it works. Throughout the twentieth century, borderland narratives have informed and enriched “border confluences” along both the Mexico-US and Canada-US borders (King 2004). Newly formed cross-border culture since 9/11 embraces imaginaries of how the border is in need of stiffer controls on the one hand, but is over-fortified and mismanaged on the other. These imaginaries lead to resistance as well as constructive engagement to develop remedies for governing the border. Border governance and border culture, then, are conceptualized as intertwined and inter-related in such a way that changes in one will impact the other. Brunet-Jailly (2005) has identified both governance and culture as among four key interactive components in the understanding of border dynamics. The governance-culture-identity relationship has been explored and elaborated by Konrad and Nicol (2011). In this chapter, I suggest that “cross-border culture” (traits and representations that extend across boundaries) materializes and essentializes governance in cultural production, and in so doing, it underlines that governance of borderlines is ultimately less important in globalization than governance of the more extensive borderlands or cross-border dynamic and interactive zone. Furthermore, I suggest that ever more Americans and Canadians, now thinking and speaking more about borders and bordering as evidenced in a wide range of media, are reimagining the border between them in various ways and that these imaginaries are guiding and shaping the border of the twenty-first century. As the border changes, imaginaries of how the border will evolve direct and lead thinking about what the border is indeed becoming. Among these imaginaries, as I have suggested elsewhere (Konrad 2020), are a secured border, a bio-political border, a border with directed flows, a managed border, an unbalanced border, a uni-cultural border, and, finally, an inadequate border. The current chapter examines some of these imaginaries but focuses primarily on reimagining the Canada-US border through the lens of border culture to explore how imaginaries of the border position and code

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a complex, varied, and plural bordering between peoples. Border imaginaries are explored in the context of a conceptual framework that accommodates mobile and fluid borderlands of US-Canada interaction and helps to differentiate two countries and many regions and places along the permeable border. The concept of a durable permeation is sufficiently extensive and flexible to encompass the consideration, intersection, and differentiation of imaginaries of border security and permeability.

Security, Imagination, and the Permeable Border Predictably, a central component in most of the contemporary research on the Canada-US border is the issue of border security. The emergence of “security primacy” (security trumps all other border considerations such as trade and sustainability) has introduced a new order in border relations between constituencies and people across the border and throughout the borderlands. Security primacy also has invaded all other cross-border functions and aligned them within a new security paradigm that now prevails in North America (Konrad 2014). This security imperative articulates as well the new cultural production of landscapes of resistance and imaginaries of governance in the post-9/11 “securityscape” (Appadurai 1996) of the Canada-US borderlands. As a securityscape came to prevail along the boundary between the United States and Canada, federal governments on both sides of the border emphasized territorial sovereignty while increasing security infrastructure and surveillance capabilities at the boundary (Alm and Burkhart 2013a). The result has been the expansion of insecurity, because the achievement of total security and the complete elimination of the risk of compromising the border are avowedly impossible. Yet, territorial sovereignty and security imperatives have become intertwined, and federal governance now requires this aligned commitment. Herein is found the fallacy of contemporary Canada-US border governance: both the United States and Canada remain committed to aligned territorial and border control even as borders become less based on territorial demarcations. Almost 25 percent of Canadians and Americans cross the border into the neighboring country through airports. In Canada, the entry into the United States is actually at the Canadian airport where US border officials screen travelers before they board planes destined to the United States (Hiller 2010). This pattern of pre-inspection and preclearance has been codified by the recent Beyond the Border Accord and Action Plan (Canada, Foreign Affairs and International Trade 2011; Canada 2015b). Beyond the Border initiatives extend to control the movement of both people and goods at the border as well as away from the boundary line. In many instances, this extension of border space has moved from the borderline to one hundred kilometers and more

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away from the border. The US Border Patrol has gained enhanced territorial jurisdiction, more personnel, expanded infrastructure, and greater powers than ever before in its history (United States Customs and Border Protection 2015). Beyond the Border may take the border away from the boundary line to a certain extent, but the border continues to follow and interdict people, often in a more clandestine way than direct intervention at the boundary. Border security Canada-US style is essentially securing against the outside both at the outside and on the inside. Although the non-border of the late twentieth century has emerged as the super-border of the twenty-first century, replete with technological advances for identity verification, dangerous materials screening, and contraband detection, the Canada-US border is most of all a filter of goods, people, practices, and some information. It is unlike the Schengen perimeter around the European Union, which is highly visible and finite, and the “in” or “out” line between increasingly integrated members of the European Union and the states that lie outside the EU, predominantly east and south (EUR-Lex 2015). Although Schengen has moved several times in recent decades with new accessions to the EU, the line remains the ultimate defining border between the EU and the outside, whether it is encountered at the actual perimeter or in Europe’s airports. The Canada-US border appears more permeable, and it still functions to enable seasonal and permanent migrations between the countries. The anachronism that Canada and the United States continue to rely on aligned territorial control whereas borders are less based on territorial demarcations spawns a series of perceived realities of border governance among observers and policy makers. Each of these perceptions has an impact on how border governance is viewed by authorities and the public and how governance is then developed at the border and in the borderlands. One perception is that control of the border ensures control of the territory. Although this assessment was strident during most of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the position has softened somewhat as both the United States and Canada acknowledged the need for Beyond the Border strategies to enhance security. Another feeling related to this is that borders are most effectively governed by federal authorities, not the local constituencies that develop and maintain cross-border flows, relationships, and controls. This position was invoked vigorously by both the United States and Canada immediately after the events of 9/11 with the establishment of the US DHS and Public Safety Canada. Both of these imaginaries are linked to the territorial trap: “states as fixed units of sovereign space, domestic/foreign polarity, and states as ‘containers’ of societies,” all conceptualizations that have been eroded to various degrees in globalization (Agnew 1994). Other imaginaries of border governance extend beyond the territorial trap. One is the prevailing notion among both Americans and Canadians that the

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distance from the border calibrates with a reduction of border governance. Yet, airports and ports of entry by sea and rail have long been part of the borderlands no matter what distance they are situated from the border. In Canada, US preclearance of people and goods has been routine at major Canadian airports for almost fifty years (Hiller 2010). The recent Beyond the Border Accord (Canada, Foreign Affairs and International Trade 2011) aims to acknowledge, construct, and codify other preclearance procedures, spaces, and places at some distance from the border in both countries. Among these aspects are cargo container inspection at points of origin, more intensive immigration clearance at source, and authorization of security personnel to work across the border as well as on the line. Another prevailing imaginary is the distinction of security and non-security spaces and places, when in fact many components and sections of the Canada-US borderlands remain unsecured or partially secured. At border crossing points this distinction usually remains firmly in place: a place or space is either secured or it is not secured. This is true of airports and other primary port-of-entry facilities, but degrees of security are evident in a host of other facilities related to cross-border transfer, including border patrol depots, brokerage firms, and border communication facilities. An additional imaginary describes the complication of governance resulting from the interaction of multiple agencies and the rapid introduction of technologies and new procedures. This results in confusion and uncertainty at the border and rapidly escalates into expressions of resistance, such as complaints from transportation companies and associations, and stories about border injustices in the media. Perhaps most unsettling for most Canadians and many Americans is the specter of militarization as the unifying governing principle, particularly on the US side of the border. Military-style uniforms, guns, military protocols such as more delineated line of command and prescribed interrogation procedures, and other aspects of an overall military stance at the border build this imaginary, and ultimately it becomes portrayed in cultural productions such as the television series The Border and Hollywood’s Border Wars. Undoubtedly, there are other imaginaries of cross-border governance that have emerged, but further research is required to identify these components and the cultural production and production through “culture” (Schimanski and Wolfe 2010) that resist these imaginaries. The goal is to evaluate both governance imaginaries and resistance to them as facets of cultural response to a rapidly changing border milieu between Canada and the United States. Understanding of borders has always emphasized the central role of governance in control and management of territory up to and at its edges. In this conception, governing borders becomes a show of territorial control that is at once serious and on the other hand infused with pomp, pageantry, humor, and, ultimately, cultural display. Increasingly, borders in globalization, and

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the Canada-US boundary among these, are governed with a moderate touch even in an era of increased border security. Imaginaries of border governance are produced by authorities and people living near and interacting with the border, in order to comprehend the changes at the border and, increasingly, changes related to the border, away from the border. Border governance is not just the articulation of power and control at the border; it also engages border stakeholders in borderlands who develop their assessments of how the border works and how it falls short of meeting their needs. These imaginaries lead to resistance and in some instances to dialogue among stakeholders, as in the case of the International Mobility and Trade Corridor project (IMTC 2009) in the Cascade Gateway linking Washington State and British Columbia. In this instance border governance actually manifests in part as cross-border governance where states and municipalities cooperate in the cross-border region to reduce wait times at the border through enhancement of roadways to alternative crossings and electronic wait-time displays along approaches to the border. The expression of territorial control at the border remains, yet border governance has also advanced to engage government and nongovernment stakeholders, at federal to local levels, within a cross-border region. Rethinking border governance in globalization requires encompassing the role of cross-border culture, the imaginaries produced and performed by the people who inhabit the borderlands, as well as those who would impose their imaginaries of how the border should work. The current paradigm of border governance focused on the borderline provides insufficient space for the articulation and integration of all constituencies that meet at and across borders in globalization. One growing necessity and tendency of bordering in globalization is precise identification of humans crossing the border. The “biopolitical” border is, in effect, taking the border to every person everywhere whether people approach the borderline or not (Vaughan-Williams 2009). In the years since 9/11, most Canadians and Americans, as well as travelers elsewhere, have encountered the biopolitical border that is essentially bordering people beyond space and place (Muller 2010). Borders have approached people with new technologies, accumulated data, and assessments of who they are and whether they are admissible, whereas in previous decades people approached borders, where they were obliged to identify themselves. Fingerprints, iris scans, and other forms of digitized information now confirm identities beyond the capabilities of passports and alternative forms of identification such as enhanced driver’s licenses, NEXUS lane crossing cards, and passport cards (Konrad and Nicol 2008b). In the wake of the events of 9/11, airport security was enhanced substantially both in the United States and in Canada, where new US standards of surveillance and security procedures were adopted (Salter 2008, 2010). Land and water borders, and the travelers who cross them, do not receive the same

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level of scrutiny, although since 9/11 both land and water borders have been subjected to heightened surveillance and more time-consuming interrogation of all travelers. Trusted traveler programs have been established to expedite crossing for frequent and routine travelers, particularly business and elite travelers (Sparke 2006). In essence, the biopolitical border is the new way of defining territory and sovereignty (Coleman and Grove 2009). For example, in both the United States and Canada, immigration detention currently engages space in centers established for this purpose and at existing detention centers for domestic incarceration. In the United States, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operates or authorizes 128 facilities and incarcerates detainees in spaces “bought” at more than 100 public and private detention facilities in all regions of the country (United States, ICE 2015, 2019). In 2012, over 400,000 people were detained in about 250 facilities at an annual cost of $1.7 billion (Detention Watch Network 2015). In 2018, the Global Detention Project (GDP) recorded a daily average of 42,188 immigrant detainees in US facilities (GDP 2019). For Canada, GDP (2019) identifies three major centers operated by the Canada Border Services Agency in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, with immigration detainees also held at 43 provincial prisons throughout the country. Immigration detention and quarantine facilities have a long history in the United States, with the establishment of facilities like Ellis Island in New York harbor, and in Canada at Grosse Isles (Saint Lawrence River near Quebec City) and Pier 21 (Halifax harbor). Once located at entry points, these facilities have migrated throughout Canada and the United States (and elsewhere around the globe) to illustrate how domestic and international space, legal borders, and geopolitics have become intertwined in a biopolitical space that is neither here nor there, but somewhere in between (Nethery and Silverman 2015; Coleman 2012). Legislation in Canada sought to codify this in-between space and to suspend the sovereign rights of terrorists and potential enemies of the state. Bill C-51 became law as the Anti-terrorism Act of 2015, which enacts security information sharing, further secures air travel, and amends the Criminal Code, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, and other acts of Parliament in Canada (Canada 2015a). Whereas informed observers acknowledge that it is important for border security issues to be addressed by law and not extrajudicial government power, there are concerns including abuses with preventative detention, abusive interrogation, detaining the wrong people, privacy rights, and more. Particularly troubling are prohibitions on free and open speech and the potential for driving terrorism underground, with no open and candid forum for discussion. The state may now censor the internet and seize propaganda, and CSIS gains new kinetic powers. In response to critics of the law, Canada’s Liberal government tabled amendments on 6 June 2017, repealing or amending

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components deemed unconstitutional. The biopolitical border is an uncertain boundary with troubling implications for the definition and acknowledgment of sovereignty and the right to occupy territory in mobile and selectively controlled space.

Prevailing Border Flows and Motion Contemporary borders are increasingly about directing flows and motion (Konrad 2015; Nail 2019). Much of the movement of goods, capital, services, and people in Canada is either linked to or expressed as cross-border flows and broader international motions and flows. The United States, with the largest economy in the world, is clearly the destination of most flows, although the backflow into Canada is also significant, either as a link in supply chains or as a final destination for goods, services, capital, and people. Whereas the border of the twentieth century focused primarily on the control of cross-border flows of goods and people, the border of the twenty-first century seeks to direct and manage all flows at all scales. Given the massive volume, number, and type of these flows and the continual growth and velocity in their movement, borders have been challenged to provide adequate control of flows. During the last decade and a half, a new geography of the Canada-US border has emerged that seeks to move beyond the objective of flow control through interdiction to the alignment and management of motion through systemic change (Konrad 2015). Two major changes have emerged in efforts to manage the system of flows. The first is the focus on alignment and development of funnel constructions to channel flows approaching the border and at the border. This focus began to gain momentum with the FTA and NAFTA agreements, and it was expedited after the events of 9/11. The second change has been a rationalization of crossing points at the border into a system of flow management with larger volume ports growing even more important at the top of the hierarchy and the smallest ports losing business and significance. Also, the crossing system now extends into borderlands in both countries (Konrad and Nicol 2004). The result is the articulation and enhancement of cross-border corridors, gateways, and terminals in the cross-border system of spaces and places. The cost of this systemic change has been substantial. Billions of dollars have been spent by governments at all levels, the private sector, and organizations to reorganize and expedite the border-crossing system between Canada and the United States. Numerous adjustments have been required of industry, government, and people crossing the border. Although some of this reorganization was initiated in the 1980s and prompted by the FTA and NAFTA, the catalyst for rapid and thorough reorganization was clearly 9/11 and the move

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toward security enhancement. Several outcomes are evident. The twentyfirst-century border is focused more than ever on expediting market flows while enhancing border management in a “just in time delivery economy.” The flows are even more decidedly regional in their geographic distribution because regions are more aligned with corridors. Transportation networks and supply chains are even more critical to the timely sustenance and alignment of flows. Human migration is linked more than ever to changing labor markets. New governance regimes at international, regional, and local levels are emerging to deal with cross-border flow management. Some of these outcomes are evident at local through international scales, yet the flow systems are in most instances still emerging as Canada and the United States both engage in globalization measures, attempt to sustain their own economies, and maintain their own special bilateral exchange.

Permeability, Permeation, and Permanence: Differentiation at the Border The border between Canada and the United States may be reinvented to accommodate more flows and security requirements, yet the uneven size of economy, population, and other measures between the countries remains articulated at the border. This prevailing condition of an unequal relationship sustains border permeability as it confirms the permanence of differentiation at the border. Hegemonic power of the United States has always impacted the border between the countries, yet this impact has grown substantially since the events of 9/11 and the focus on securing the border. Border policies and border politics are driven by US interests. Since 2012, the Beyond the Border Accord appears to have established a more cooperative and balanced approach to border policy. Yet, even this move toward greater emphasis on perimeter security, and moving border business away from the border, may be interpreted as injecting greater US presence and influence in Canada. Interventions by the Trump administration have advanced the differentiation of Canada and the United States at the border. In this sense, the border may be viewed as a Canadian sovereignty reduction strategy employed by the United States and allowed by a Conservative government in Canada intent on aligning with the US securitization strategy. More recent moves by the Liberal government in Canada have not reduced the differentiation but rather extended it in contradiction to the conservative Trump regime. Whether this assessment is warranted or not will require more detailed study and hindsight, but it is clear that bordering uneven states becomes more problematic in an era of enhanced security. Also, this unbalanced border impacts other aspects of the cross-border relationship, including infor-

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mation flows and tourism. The twenty-first-century border between Canada and the United States is arguably more heavily loaded with US interest and influence due to the security agenda and attention directed toward Canada as a potential gateway for negative forces entering the United States. Characterizations of Canada compared to the United States have emphasized traditionally the “mosaic” versus “melting pot” conceptualizations of Canadian and American societies. Although this post–World War II characterization has maintained a long shelf life, other descriptions have emerged to clarify how values and institutions maintain the continental divide between the United States and Canada, particularly as the two countries drew closer to each other in freer trade (Lipset 1989, 1990). Yet, Canada retained and codified the multicultural society as a signature of identity, whereas the United States continued to claim a more mainstreamed sense of identity. During the twenty-first century, US security and bordering practices have prevailed along the Canada-US border to narrow the definition of admissibility to the United States and into US society. Canadian multiculturalism is at odds with this sense of American identity and the continued growth of American exceptionalism that parallels it (Lipset 1997). This juxtaposition of Canadian multiculturalism and American uni-culturalism and exceptionalism clearly incises the border, and, probably more significant in the context of day-to-day border work, the acknowledged cultural diversity of Canada and Canadians complicates and slows the process of establishing identity at the border. Moreover, some Canadians are treated differently than others by American and even Canadian officials, with alleged profiling of inadmissible persons and targeting of certain ethnicities for greater scrutiny. The result is that the border is more and more a uni-cultural border and multiculturalism stops at the border. Also, a uni-cultural border emerges in Canadian deference to the American hegemon. In the post-9/11 era, perhaps the most prevailing imaginary to emerge about the Canada-US border is that it is simply inadequate as a twenty-first-century border. A “thick” border has emerged between friends and substantial trading partners, and this security border has been enhanced progressively since 9/11 in an effort to make it even more secure and reduce risks of any incursions by terrorists as well as to enhance border management. As the border has thickened, the discourse surrounding the border has become more negative, and criticism has mounted. “Thick” is now too much, yet it is also deemed not enough by many border stakeholders, particularly those in the burgeoning security sector (Konrad 2010). The US-Canada border is crossed annually by millions of travelers in uneven migration patterns. A recent estimate is an annual exchange of 33 million tourists between the countries, but more specific statistics show that there were over 39 million trips to the United States by Canadians in 2009 and more than

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20 million trips to Canada by Americans in 2010. Over 22 million people flew on scheduled flights between the United States and Canada in 2016 (Canada, StatsCan 2017). More than 300,000 people cross the border daily (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC News 2011), and an average of more than 2.5 million vehicles have crossed the border monthly so far in 2019 (Canada, StatsCan 2019). Canadians and Americans cross in seasonal migrations, with Canadian “snowbirds” flocking to states across the south in winter, and Americans vacationing in Canada during all seasons (Kelly 2020). Both Canadians and Americans cross more frequently when currency exchange rates are favorable. Borderland residents exhibit regional, seasonal, and sectoral patterns of migration that vary from year to year. All of this unpredictable cross-border travel needs to be accommodated by a finite border management force operating under the weight of a larger rulebook, with heightened security and more public and particularly media scrutiny (Alper and Hammond 2011). The result has been measured in excessive and sometimes growing wait times facing travelers who feel entitled to cross. Trusted traveler programs have mitigated the situation somewhat, but these programs remain undersubscribed and sometimes problematic to operate. An increasing number of travelers are actually mistrusted and identified through data sets such as no-fly lists. The cost of all of this increased security, digitization, scrutiny, and militarization has been billions of dollars, with no end in sight to escalating costs for rebuilding the border and developing beyond the border initiatives. All of these components have become a magnet for criticism as privileged travelers claim there is too much of a border, most people complain about waiting and inconvenience, and refugees encounter a complex and formidable barrier. Accordingly, even as it grows in prominence and visibility, the border is deemed essentially inadequate to its purpose by most people who cross it.

Border Culture of Canada and the United States: Imagination, Motion, and Differentiation Border imaginaries need to be understood before evaluating cultural production and cultural identities that manifest in borderlands and at the border. Once these imaginaries are known, cultures of border control and resistance become evident in a world of mobile and evolving borders. Border imaginaries link with the cultural meaning of landscape, aesthetics, identities, belonging, settlement, community, migration, work, play, stories, and other forms of border experience. Canadians develop their imaginaries about the border, and Americans develop theirs, and some inhabitants of the borderlands share imaginaries. In addition to evaluating these in the context of themes such as border governance, flows, security, and sustainability, extensive research sug-

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gests the imaginaries are tied to levels of viability. Life-securing imaginaries relate to survival in the borderlands. For example, a rapid drop in the value of the Canadian dollar may lead American border business owners to imagine a sharp decline in revenues. The imaginary may lead to mitigation strategies by American business owners, particularly if they have experienced such currency fluctuations previously. Other imaginaries are life-sustaining—that is, they are part of cultural perspectives developed by borderland residents to facilitate everyday interaction across the border. These often lead to programmed reactions such as characterizations of Americans as potentially dangerous carriers of handguns. Life-enriching imaginaries involve the mutual engagement and linkage of creative people and agencies across the border, such as collaborative and interpretive theater in border communities, among them Stanstead, Quebec, and Niagara, Ontario. In Stanstead and its American neighbor Derby Line, there is a common understanding of cross-border community and shared facilities, yet Americans and Canadians ascribe different meanings to border landmarks and practices. Borderland inhabitants play a “border game” to establish their intimate knowledge of the border and their ownership of cross-border territory and practice. The border police may have the authority, but the locals own the border through “occupance” and “continuity” (Vandervalk 2017). Such examples illuminate cultural production (Schimanski and Wolfe 2010). In assessing the interactions between Canada and the United States, it is helpful to acknowledge that cultural interactions are complex and multidimensional rather than binary, as might be expected. This is due in part to multicultural realities that manifest at the border. For example, Lynden, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest, at once displays and celebrates the town’s Dutch heritage, the community’s American nationalism, and the extension of Dutch heritage across the border into the Fraser Valley of British Columbia (Konrad 2010). Culture is being decolonized with transnationalism everywhere, but at borders this process is accelerated as cultures express multiple allegiances and plural meaning. In the case of the Canada-US border, and its numerous local and regional border situations, several questions need to be addressed. What kinds of borders encourage more cultural production? How does cultural production at borders convey and expand cultural meaning in transnationalism and globalization? Researchers generally acknowledge that cultural identities at the border are socially constructed (Paasi 1998). Also emerging is the understanding that multiple identities converge at borders in globalization as borders become the filters and traps in the enhanced movements of people worldwide. The Canada-US border is no different in this regard as the border becomes the flashpoint for identity expression by indigenous cultures, visible minorities, and recent immigrants. Numerous questions remain to engage researchers.

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How do multiple identities enable and reduce belonging in contemporary borderlands? How does cultural meaning derive from transnational identities and national identities in globalization? Research at the Canada-US border, with its rich interaction and juxtaposition of indigenous, immigrant, and heritage cultures, promises substantial dividends of understanding related to such questions. Of more urgent concern, given polarization of views about securitization in the United States and the conservative political position on the need for more walls and barriers, are the emerging cultures of border control and resistance. The point that culture is related to and influenced by power is well-developed in geopolitical writing (Mitchell 2000; Elden 2009). Also, culture is influenced increasingly by transnational regimes of knowledge that are, in effect, power (Foucault 2007). Power at borders is border control (Newman 2006). Border control produces cultures of border control (Konrad and Nicol 2008a, 2011; Konrad 2012). In Europe, Schengen border culture has evolved to enforce and maintain the increasingly significant and problematical borderline around the European Union, in the face of heightened attempts by undocumented immigrants and the entrepreneurs conveying them to confront the culture and cross the line. Security primacy at the Canada-US border has created two parallel yet still distinct border cultures at US Homeland Security (the name says it all) and at the Canadian Border Services Agency. Although the control cultures vary in their characteristics and intensity, the orientation toward use of barriers, fences, and ultimately walls continues to grow in both. Also, border culture impacted by power resists through a variety and richness of cultural imaginaries and cultural productions. Resistance is often strident and usually symbolic. The resulting cultural expression is conveyed in protest, violence, and often artistic representation. Although cultures of border resistance between the United States and Canada are not as violent and extreme as those in the Afro-Mediterranean interaction zone and along the border between Mexico and the United States, expressions of protest are found in blockades at the border by indigenous groups and occasionally labor organizations affected by border policy. Most resistance along the Canada-US border, however, is found in literature and artistic expression (Amilhat Szary 2012). The process of planning a new border regime between Canada and the United States has focused on immediate security imperatives. As this chapter has shown, the focus on security primacy has evolved a border that is inadequate in many ways to deal with current requirements at the border and to prepare for a border that will serve both countries in the vanguard of globalization. The existing border is essentially “uni-cultural,” imbalanced, and ultimately inadequate because security primacy has been the guiding vision. Americans have imagined a border that is totally secure, and although authorities acknowledge that total security is not attainable, efforts have been

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made to reach this goal in several ways. One is to create the biopolitical border and to focus on the border between each person and the state. Another is to manage the border by addressing imaginaries of governance through such avenues as digitization technologies and militarization of the borderlands. This directed border is imagined, as well, as a hierarchy of corridors and gateways to channel and expedite flows. Reimagining the border between the United States and Canada is appealing because the contemporary border, despite massive investment, planning, reconstruction, and reorientation, has failed to produce a better border. I argue that although many of the components of a new and better border have been imagined and developed, the components for a better border need to be reconsidered in concert with each other to produce a multicultural, balanced, and efficient border. Foremost among the changes required is the need to move away from security primacy and align security with other border imperatives. This alignment of security with other border imperatives, such as trade, tourism, information exchange, human rights, and employment, would result in a more transparent focus on the biopolitical in accordance with human rights and state charters, coordinated and scaled management, and rationalized flows. In effect, the border reimagined by people living in the borderlands would be combined with the border required by state authorities. In order to achieve this balanced border, it is necessary to identify and understand imaginaries of the border before policies of border management are implemented.

Conclusions: New Visions of the Border in the Trump Era Whereas it is enticing to reimagine the US-Canada border as a line diminished in geopolitical significance, where aligned security, transparent biopolitical screening, coordinated and scaled management, and rationalized flows mesh at a multicultural, balanced, and efficient border, this imaginary remains unrealized three years into the Trump presidency. Indeed, prospects for such realization remain limited. On the surface, there appears to be alignment of security, with sharing of information, joint enforcement measures, and even arming of border officers on both sides. Also, there are extensive measures to expedite flows of goods and people across the border. Yet, a balance is not evident between concerns for security and the acknowledgment of constantly increasing flows of people, goods, and information in a myriad of interactions characteristic of globalization. By all accounts, President Trump would like to turn back the process of globalization, but not acknowledge that capitalism and neoliberalism fuel the process (Panitch and Gindin 2012), and use the “wall” as enclosure of US interests and values. Consequently, security primacy continues to prevail. Border policy and management remain directed by cen-

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tralized authorities amid realizations that scaled-down borders work better. Images of a predominant American culture continue to shape border enforcement despite the evident multiculturalism of the United States. Ultimately, the border is imagined quite differently in the United States and in Canada, and this difference, instead of decreasing with the advent of globalization, is in fact increasing, with strident positions on border enhancement and enforcement advocated by the Trump administration. This great misalignment of the United States and Canada at the border may become both a short-term difficulty and a long-term benefit for the countries as globalization continues to unfold and North America becomes reconfigured. At first, both countries may struggle to redefine commonalities and points of juncture, as they did in renegotiating NAFTA and creating an “America First” USMCA trade collaborative. Yet, hopefully, as North American considerations are contextualized globally, a more plural and multifaceted direction may become evident to benefit both the United States and Canada, in North America, as well as in the global system. Despite Trump’s refusal to engage the global dynamic, the United States continues to participate in it. Globalization is not a US force, although the United States is among the foremost of countries engaged in its realization (Panitch and Gindin 2012). Accordingly, the United States cannot halt or substantially redirect globalization. The sidelining of the United States in the G20 meeting in Germany and Trump’s inability to return from the 2019 Japan summit with a resolution to the China-US trade war underscored that the United States has actually become less powerful and relevant in directing world policy. Also, Canada and Mexico are diversifying their relationships with other parts of the global community and vowing to rely less extensively on their connections to the United States. The impact of these measures may well afford opportunities to renegotiate North America, not just as envisioned by the United States, but also as anticipated by other North American partners with a more global outlook. Indeed, American exceptionalism and hegemony may well fade after the Trump administration’s strident burst of efforts to overinflate these imaginaries. The growing discontinuity at the border between Canada and the United States, just like the even more alarming disjuncture of the Mexico-US border, is a sign of upheaval and change in North America. Yet, considered in the context of global adjustments and the many efforts and processes of North American integration and alignment of energy, trade, investment, environment, communication, and governance, the misalignment at the Canada-US border is more reminder than harbinger of an overdue redefinition of North America. Victor Konrad teaches geography at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He is author of more than one hundred publications in cultural geography, border studies, and Canadian studies, including Beyond Walls: Reinventing the

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Canada–United States Borderlands. Konrad is past president of the Association of Borderlands Studies and the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States and recipient of the Donner Medal. In recent years he has been a visiting professor at universities in China, the United States, Finland, and the Netherlands.

References Ackleson, J. 2009. “From ‘Thin’ to ‘Thick’ (and Back Again?): The Politics and Policies of the Contemporary U.S.-Canada Border.” American Review of Canadian Studies 39(4): 336–51. Agnew, J. 1994. “The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory.” Review of International Political Economy 1(1): 53–80. Alm, L., and R. Burkhart. 2013a. “Bridges and Barriers: The Lake Superior Borderlands.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 28(1): 47–60. ———. 2013b. “Canada-U.S. Border Communities: What the People Have to Say.” American Review of Canadian Studies 43(1): 86–106. Alper, D., and B. Hammond. 2011. “Bordered Perspectives: Local Stakeholders’ Views of Border Management in the Cascade Corridor Region.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 26(1): 101–14. Amilhat Szary, A.-L. 2012. “Walls and Border Art: The Politics of Art Display.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 27(2): 213–28. ———. 2013. “Le ‘conte de deux frontiers’: que nous dit la difference des voisinages frontaliers americains?” (A “tale of two borders”: What do we learn from the different North American border neighborhoods?) L’Information geographique 77(2): 13–25. Andreas, P. 2003. “A Tale of Two Borders: The U.S.-Canada and the U.S.-Mexico Lines after 9/11.” In The Rebordering of North America, edited by P. Andreas and T. J. Biersteker. New York: Routledge. Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Brunet-Jailly, E. 2005. “Theorizing Borders: An Interdisciplinary Perspective.” Geopolitics 10: 633–49. Canada. 2015a. “Anti-Terrorism Act,” May 4, 2015. Bill C-51. An act to enact the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act and the Secure Air Travel Act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and make related and consequential amendments to other acts. ———. 2015b. “Border Action Plan.” Accessed 16 September 2015. http://www.actionplan .gc.ca/en/content/beyond-the-border-action-plan. Canada, Foreign Affairs and International Trade. 2011. Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness. Ottawa: Queen’s Printer. Accessed 23 February 2012. http://www .borderactionplan.gc.ca. Canada, StatsCan. 2017. “Scheduled Air Passenger Origin and Destination: Canada-U.S.,” 2016. Accessed 12 June 2017. https://www150.statscan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/17 0816/dq1708166-eng.htm. ———. 2019. “Travel and Tourism Statistics, Canada.” Accessed 28 April 2019. https:// www150.statscan.gc.ca/n1/en/subjects/travel_and_tourism. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC News. 2011. “The Canada-U.S. Border by the

A Durable Permeation | 211 Numbers.” Accessed 17 December 2011. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/the-Can ada-U-S-border-by-the-numbers-1.999207. Canadian Civil Liberties Association. 2015. “Understanding Bill C-51: The Anti-terrorism Act, 2015.” Accessed 21 November 2015. https://ccla.org/understanding-bill-c-51the-anti-terrorism-act-2015/. Castoriadis, C. 1997. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Coleman, M. 2012. “Immigrant Il-legality: Geopolitical and Legal Borders in the U.S., 1882–Present.” Geopolitics 17(2): 402–22. Coleman, M., and K. Grove. 2009. “Biopower, Biopolitics and the Return of Sovereignty.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27(4): 489–507. Detention Watch Network. 2015. “About the U.S. Detention and Deportation System.” Accessed 22 November 2015. http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/resources. Elden, S. 2009. Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. EUR-Lex. 2015. “The Schengen Agreement.” Document 42000A0922(01). Accessed 22 November 2015. http://www.eur-lex.europa.en/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX: 42000A0922(01). Foucault, M. 2007. Security, Territory, Population. New York: Palgrave. Freedom for Immigrants. 2018. “Detention Map and Statistics.” Accessed 27 April 2018. https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/detention-statistics/ Global Detention Project. 2019. “Canada Detention Profile” and “United States Detention Profile.” Accessed 28 April 2019. http://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/ americas/canada/introduction.html. Guardian. 2019. “Immigration Detention Centers Nearly Empty as Trump Claims Border Crisis.” Guardian, 23 April. Accessed 28 April 2019. https:/www.theguardian .com/us-news/2019/apr/23/immigration-detention-centers-almost-empty-as-trumpclaims-border-crisis/. Hiller, H. 2010. “Airports as Borderlands: American Preclearance and Transitional Spaces in Canada.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 25(3–4): 19–30. IMTC. 2009. International Mobility and Trade Corridor Project Resource Manual. Accessed 13 May 2009. www.wcog.org/imtc. Kelly, M. 2020. “The ‘Snowbirds’: A Cultural Movement across Borders.” In Culture, Borders in Globalization, and Canada’s Borders, edited by V. Konrad and M. Kelly. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press (in press). King, R. A. 2004. Border Confluences: Borderland Narratives from the Mexican War to the Present. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Konrad, V. 2010. “‘Breaking Points’ but No ‘Broken’ Border: Stakeholders Evaluate Border Issues in the Pacific Northwest Region.” Border Policy Research Institute Research Report 10, BPRI, Western Washington University. ———. 2012. “Conflating Imagination, Identity and Affinity in the Social Construction of Borderlands Culture between Canada and the United States.” American Review of Canadian Studies 42(4): 530–48. ———. 2014. “Borders, Bordered Lands and Borderlands: Geographical States of Insecurity between Canada and the United States and the Impacts of Security Primacy.” In Borders, Fences and Walls: State of Insecurity?, edited by E. Vallet. Aldershot: Ashgate. ———. 2015. “Toward a Theory of Borders in Motion.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 30(1): 1–18. ———. 2020. “Re-imagining the Border between Canada and the United States.” In North American Borders in Comparative Perspective, edited by G. Correa-Cabrera and V. Konrad. Tucson: University of Arizona Press (in press).

212 | Victor Konrad Konrad, V., and H. N. Nicol. 2004. “Boundaries and Corridors: Rethinking the Canada– United States Borderlands in the Post-9/11 Era.” Canadian-American Public Policy 60. ———. 2008a. Beyond Walls: Re-inventing the Canada–United States Borderlands. Aldershot: Ashgate. ———. 2008b. “Passports for All.” Canadian-American Public Policy 74. ———. 2011. “Border Culture, the Boundary Between Canada and the United States of America, and the Advancement of Border Theory.” Geopolitics 16: 70–90. Lipset, S. M. 1989. Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada. Toronto: C. D. Howe Institute. ———. 1990. North American Cultures: Values and Institutions in Canada and the United States. Borderlands Monograph Series 3. Orono: University of Maine Press. ———. 1997. American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. New York: Norton. Mitchell, D. 2000. Cultural Geography: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Muller, B. 2010. Security, Risk and the Biometric State: Governing Borders and Bodies. New York: Routledge. Nail, T. 2019. Being and Motion. New York: Oxford University Press. Nethery, A., and S. J. Silverman, eds. 2015. Immigration Detention: The Migration of a Policy and Its Human Impact. New York: Routledge. Newman, D. 2006. “Borders and Bordering: Towards an Interdisciplinary Dialogue.” European Journal of Social Theory 9(2): 171–86. Paasi, A. 1998. “Boundaries as Social Processes: Territoriality in a World of Flows.” Geopolitics 3(1): 69–88. Panitch, L., and S. Gindin. 2012. The Making of Global Capitalism. London: Verso. Salter, M. B., ed. 2008. Politics at the Airport. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———, ed. 2010. Mapping Transatlantic Security Relations: The EU, Canada, and the War on Terror. London: Routledge. Schimanski, J., and S. Wolfe, 2010. “Cultural Production and Negotiation of Borders: Introduction to the Dossier.” Journal of Borderlands Studies 25(1): 39–49. Sparke, M. 2006. “A Neoliberal Nexus: Citizenship, Security and the Future of the Border.” Political Geography 25(2): 151–80. United States, Customs and Border Protection. 2015. “Border Patrol Overview.” Accessed 22 November 2015. http://www.cbp.gov/border-security/along-us-borders/overview. United States, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 2015. 2019. “Detention Facility Locator.” Accessed 22 November 2015 and 29 April 2019. http://www.ice.gov/ detention-facilities. Vandervalk, S. 2017. “Line Dancing: A Performative and Phenomenological Study of the Borderlands Region of Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont.” MA thesis in Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Vaughan-Williams, N. 2009. Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.

Afterword Permeability and the Making and Unmaking of Borders David C. Atkinson

Permeability is an essential characteristic of bordering. Despite the urgent state imperative to demarcate and territorialize, interstate borders have rarely functioned as hermetic barriers. Instead, they have more commonly served as selectively porous epidermises that mediate—through active administration and oversight—the transmission of people, goods, and more. While contemporary political discourse tends to accentuate their ostensive impermeability—typified by a language of inviolability and security, and buttressed by walls and partitions—the reality is that borders are designed to facilitate movement, just as they can be modulated to prevent it. As historian Paul Kramer (2018: 399) puts it, “In this sense, modern state boundaries are best imagined not as walls but as filters, usually seeking less to block human movement entirely than to select, channel, and discipline it.” Whether we consider literal boundaries— such as the one that Cléa Fortuné illustrates both enmeshes and divides Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora—or more figurative ones—such as the vivid border imaginary that Victor Konrad argues exemplifies the northern boundary—the essays in this volume reinforce that borders in all their forms are always more porous than we might assume. This should not surprise us, even as it seems to astonish every new generation of nativists and xenophobes. Borders and the ideas that sustain them are constructions of the human imagination, after all, and not unassailable bequests of nature or providence. Advocates of border impermeability like to imagine that sovereignty, for example, represents an abiding natural fact, one that somehow lay hidden in the fabric of the universe until the Westphalian peace of 1648 teased it from the hand of creation. But sovereignty—much like the borders it inspires and bounds—is not the infallible will of a heavenly architect. It is an invention of human beings, designed to legitimate territorial state formation and protect domestic authorities against the claims of outsiders.

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F. H. Hinsley ([1966] 1986: 1) renders it this way in his formative treatise on the subject: “Although we talk of it loosely as something concrete which may be lost or acquired, eroded or increased, sovereignty is not a fact. It is a concept which men in certain circumstances have applied.” With this in mind, as James Sheehan (2006: 3) argues, it is necessary to remember that “state-making . . . is the ongoing process of making, unmaking, and revising sovereign claims.” Sovereignty’s connotation of absolute territorial integrity and authority has long served to reify the notion of border impermeability, and it is frequently intoned in contemporary discussions of immigration restriction, national security, and unilateralism (Kallis 2018: 285–302). But there is nothing inevitable or immutable about the borders that people have made for themselves, as many of the essays in this volume demonstrate. Indeed, borders are constantly made and remade by the relentless mobility of people and the commodities they crave, and the sovereign claims that reinforce those boundaries inevitably fluctuate in response to shifting power dynamics, new economic realities, or new interpretations of geography. As Roger L. Nichols’s essay on Native Americans’ nineteenth-century engagement with the northern border illustrates, shifting alliances, sudden boundary changes, and unstable economic and political contexts both required and enabled Indian peoples to take advantage of the border’s permeability and occasional tractability. While that in itself was no panacea for the constant assaults on their sovereignty, it did allow Iroquois, Potawatomi, and Sioux peoples to resist subjugation in the short term. Both Jeffrey Swartwood and Victor Konrad also provide keen insights into this process of border construction in the southern and northern borderlands respectively. As they both elucidate, border construction is not simply a matter of placing physical markers on the ground. It is also a notional process that requires conceptual as well as physical manufacture. The numerous identities, myths, and ideologies that constitute our national existence derive in large part from Americans’ encounter with their nation’s borders. Indeed, they are mutually constitutive. Both historically and contemporaneously, our borders make our culture and politics even as our culture and politics make our borders. In Swartwood’s case, the nineteenth-century political culture of Manifest Destiny—embodied in the mobility of American settlers in California, even as they ostensibly and indefinitely shed their American identity—was predicated on permeability and the axiomatic right of Americans to annihilate and remake Mexican sovereignty. As Konrad shows, the tendency of borderland residents to permeate the border remains an extraordinarily robust notion, even in an era characterized by stark appeals to nationalism and enclosure. In the case of the northern border, this derives less from the two centuries of racial arrogance that animated Swartwood’s subjects in the South and West, but rather from the construction of multiple cross-border cultures and imaginar-

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ies that evolve and persevere in relation to the social, cultural, and economic imperatives of the borderlands and the people who live there. As these examples also show, borders are not only historically constructed, they are also historically contingent. Boundaries are not inert. Their purpose and meaning change over time in response to countless incitements that derive from, and intersect with, stimuli at local, regional, national, transnational, and international scales. The shifting cultural landscape of Little Italy provides a case in point, as Marie-Christine Michaud explains in her excavation of that neighborhood’s changing place in the identity formation of multiple immigrant communities. Imagined geographic borders might retain their salience even as the ethnic and architectural terrain changes. In this case, contingencies like the expansion of local transportation infrastructure, divergent intergenerational conceptions of assimilation, national racial anxieties and antagonisms, and even global geopolitical shifts all combine to reconfigure the meanings and realities of one New York City neighborhood. This is a story of both remarkable permanence and impermanence across space and time that we cannot begin to apprehend if we remain wedded to fixed notions of border inviolability and ignorant of the contingencies that ceaselessly shape the boundaries we make for ourselves. Perhaps the most capricious contingency derives from the vacillating xenophobia of our government representatives. That fact is near ubiquitous in the essays that comprise this volume, albeit sometimes veiled in the background like a sinister ghoul in the machine. But as the authors in this collection also show us, American borders have long reflected the discriminatory whims and purposes of our political leaders. Not to diminish the particular malevolence of our present moment, but Donald Trump is not the first to emphasize the impermeable and exclusionary functions of the nation’s borders over their absorptive and inclusionary qualities. Our immigration system was first designed to keep migrants at arm’s length during the national origins era, with the introduction of immigration visas and ethnic quotas managed by consulates abroad. Perhaps nothing better illustrates that shift than the transition of Ellis Island from the proverbial “golden door” to a detention center following the passage of the Emergency Quota Act in 1921. As Marietta Messmer shows us, however, things can always get worse. The introduction of the profit motive and an intensification of extraterritorial detention have served to further the legal and humanitarian voids that are encouraged by the recent outsourcing, offshoring, and privatization of immigration control beyond US borders. It is hard to permeate a border you cannot even reach, the logic seems to insinuate. Indeed, there is something especially appalling about this system of what Aristide Zolberg (2006) has called “remote control.” It is as if we cannot abide to confront the reality of our policies on our own doorstep, even as we are

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willing to monetize the trauma and desperation that so often drive migrants northward to our border. The logic of who belongs inside and who belongs outside the nation also illustrates the fundamentally contingent and often paradoxical nature of our borders and the discourse that constitutes them. As Jon Wiebel elucidates in his discussion of two landmark acts of public policy in 1996, the domestic and the foreign were increasingly conflated in debates over welfare and immigration. Wiebel’s analysis of these debates shows how migrants can be simultaneously conceived as both job-stealing others and as enterprising aspirants to the American Dream. History is replete with similar examples of this contradictory dynamic. The qualities that made Chinese immigrant labor attractive to railroad barons in nineteenth-century North America—qualities laden with essentialized racial assumptions—simultaneously made them anathema to the white European laborers with whom they allegedly competed. To borrow a useful metaphor from the historian Kornel Chang (2012: 158–59), in this respect we see that the border has “the quality of a selective membrane, permeable to certain people and groups but not to others, calibrated by race,” and in Wiebel’s case, by perceptions of economic worthiness. But that membrane is inherently unstable and subject to myriad vagaries, which are in turn stoked by the ebb and flow of political, economic, and cultural apprehensions and resentments. These incessant instabilities constantly unmoor the lives of the individuals they ensnare. At the same time, however, it is clear that more mundane contingencies can engender significant challenges to these conceptions of border impermeability. Cléa Fortuné’s study of cross-border connections between Douglas and Agua Prieta illustrates how even the most militarized border can be rendered permeable by history, culture, commerce, labor, and the quotidian lives of its residents. The lives and livelihoods of southern borderland residents can sometimes mitigate against the most vicious and totalizing imperatives of border making, something Konrad also elucidates on the northern frontier. This also illustrates the extent to which borders are constituted as much by the people that live on and around them as by acts of state agents. It is a conceit of our national leaders that theirs is the final word on what people do around the edges of the nation. Heather Fryer’s essay on Omaha’s small Japanese American community during World War II offers another fascinating window into this process and the permeability of borders within borders. The federal government in this case fashioned an aperture in its own internal border, imposed by Franklin Roosevelt’s infamous Executive Order 9066 in February 1942. This episode defies much of what we think we know about the totality of Japanese exclusion during the war, and it challenges our assumptions about mobility in a broader framework of visceral, racially prescribed wartime immobility. It also provides a fascinating example of the social construction and

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contingency of borders, which in this case yielded to the empathy of Catholic clergy, the discomfort of troubled federal bureaucrats, and the ingenuity and resistance of immigrants themselves. Many of these essays have at their center a concern with transgression, a concept that animates much of the way we think about borders, as well as the people and things that cross them. But as social theorists like Michel Foucault (1978) and Giorgio Agamben (1998) have explored, state sovereignty and state power are deeply concerned with the most intimate details of our lives, and they exert themselves upon us in ways we may not even recognize. This is especially true at the literal and figurative borders of human experience. But people challenge those impositions at every turn, and transgression is a key expression of this resistance. Claudie Servian’s exploration of aesthetic borders suggests that transgression can be both a conduit for—and a mode of—border permeability. Administrators of interstate borders are obsessively vigilant against unauthorized infringements, whether it is the transgressive mobility of undocumented migrants or illicit commercial and criminal activity. Yet intriguingly, in this case the transgression of European artistic boundaries actually served to reinforce a new form of American nationalism and exceptionalism, Servian argues. That theme of liminality and ambivalence stands at the center of Marko Tocilovac’s interrogation of San Diego’s Friendship Park. There is something deeply poignant about the way this monument to cross-border connection becomes enmeshed in the border itself and comes to encompass a multitude of apparent binaries. It is at once an opening and a closing, facing inward and outward, representing both an opportunity and a foreclosing. In that respect, it is perhaps a most fitting monument to the bordering idea. Finally, the essays in this volume also contribute to an ongoing effort to bring the US-Canadian borderlands into the same analytical frame as the US-Mexican border. For a long time in both the public and scholarly imagination, the two borders have been conceived in very different terms. Writing in 1944, for example, New York Times Pulitzer Prize–winning foreign correspondent Anne O’Hare McCormick declared that “the frontier between Canada and the United States is as nearly invisible as any boundary yet established between nations. In some respects it is as imaginary as the Equator.” McCormick envisioned an almost imperceptible border that united rather than divided Canada and the United States. In her view, the degree of political and cultural permeability between the United States and Canada was such that “the differences between this side and the other are hardly as noticeable as those between North and South and East and West in the United States” (McCormick 1944: 12). This vision of the Canadian-US border, rendered intangible by innumerable transnational connections, stands in contrast to the Mexican-US border’s visceral tangibility. Just six years after McCormick’s positive reflection on the “invisible” northern frontier, her fellow Times reporter Gladwin Hill

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sparked a national uproar with his reports on the southern border. Hill’s (1950: 1) revelation that hundreds of thousands of “wetbacks” illegally crossed the Rio Grande every year spurred intense debate, fears of disease, crime, and subversion, and finally congressional action. While McCormick’s imagined Canadian-American border receded before the mutually beneficial possibilities of cultural, economic, and political exchange, Hill’s image of the Mexican-American boundary evoked delinquency, degeneration, and debilitating economic competition. Whereas McCormick (1944: 12) advocated “shading [borders] down and scaling them down to fit the facts of modern life,” Hill’s reporting on the southern frontier suggested the exact opposite. Scholarship on the North American borderlands long reflected a similar dichotomy. Since the publication of Herbert Eugene Bolton’s The Spanish Borderlands: A Chronicle of Old Florida and the Southwest in 1921, the Mexican-American boundary has been the quintessential—and most visible— North American borderland. Its conspicuousness as a site of interchange and discord has long encouraged innovative transnational scholarship. This is perhaps unsurprising, since that frontier’s inhabitants have experienced centuries of imperial competition, the violence of manifest destiny, capricious immigration policies, and the malleability of identity, as many of the authors in this volume show. Moreover, the Southwest’s heterogeneity invites borderlands scholars to construct and test their analytical frameworks against a fluid and absorbing backdrop. The Canadian-American frontier, conversely, remains stubbornly and quietly invisible. It appears culturally and politically homogenous: static yet fluid, obvious yet obscure. As McCormick (1944: 12) observed, “It is difficult for the American to realize that he is away from home” when sojourning above the forty-ninth parallel. Thanks in part to the essays in this volume, we can no longer maintain that conceit. Nor can we ignore the fact that borders are themselves expressions of our fears, our hatreds, and our collective national vanity. But as such, they can also be made to succumb to our hopes, our dreams, and our yearning for connection, if we ask them to. David C. Atkinson is an associate professor of history at Purdue University. He is the author of The Burden of White Supremacy: Containing Asian Migration in the British Empire and the United States (2017) and In Theory and in Practice: Harvard’s Center for International Affairs, 1958–1983 (2008). In addition to these book projects, Atkinson has also published articles on Asian migration in the Pacific Northwest, on the international resonances of American immigration restriction in the 1920s, and on the imperial and international implications of Australian immigration policy. He is working on a new project that explores how nineteenth-century Americans interacted with imports.

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References Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bolton, Herbert Eugene. 1921. The Spanish Borderlands: A Chronological of Old Florida and the Southwest. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Chang, Kornel. 2012. Pacific Connections: The Making of the U.S.-Canadian Borderlands. Berkeley: University of California Press. Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1, The Will to Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books. Hill, Gladwin. 1950. “Mexicans Convert Border into Sieve.” New York Times, 27 March. Hinsley, F. H. (1966) 1986. Sovereignty. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kallis, Aristotle. 2018. “Populism, Sovereigntism, and the Unlikely Re-emergence of the Territorial Nation-State.” Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 11(3): 285–302. Kramer, Paul A. 2018. “The Geopolitics of Mobility: Immigration Policy and American Global Power in the Long Twentieth Century.” American Historical Review 123(2): 393–438. McCormick, Anne O’Hare. 1944. “Abroad: Empire Policy at the Canadian-American Border.” New York Times, 22 April. Sheehan, James. J. 2006. “The Problem of Sovereignty in European History.” American Historical Review 111(1): 1–15. Zolberg, Aristide R. 2006. A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Index

Note: Page references noted with an f are figures. Abruzzi Social Club, 110 activism at Friendship Park, 184–86 Adams, Mark, 171 administrative custody, 139 adopted nationality, 44 aesthetic borders, 57–76; creating a new dance, 70–74; crossing cultural borders, 63–70; transgressing European artistic borders, 59–63. See also dance Afro-Mediterranean interaction zones, 207 Agamben, Giorgio, 217 agency of American Indians, 20 Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, 213, 216; border resident views on security buildup, 169–72; cross-border relationships, 159–76; fostering relationships, 164–68 Aguirre, Adalberto, Jr., 47 Alley, Ahmed, 67 All the Pretty Horses (2000), 51 America First, 1, 194, 209. See also Trump, Donald American Association of Teachers of Italian, 110 American Bar Association (ABA), 139 American California, 44. See also California American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 89, 139, 140 American Dream, 127, 216; living, 50; moving to the suburbs, 102; pursuit of, 5, 38 American Friends Service Committee, 185, 190 American Immigration Council, 147

American Immigration Lawyers Association, 142 American Indians: agency, 20; crossborder support, 23–27; retreat and refuge, 27–33; US-Canada transborder migration, 19–36. See also Native Americans Americanism, 81, 82 American Italian Studies Association, 110 American Revolution (1775–1783), 19, 23 Americans and the California Dream (Starr), 38 American Society of Newspaper Editors, 45 American Southwest: borders in the, 37–56; California, 48–52 (see also California); conquest of, 52; expansion into, 39–44; US-Mexico border, 37 (see also US-Mexico border) American theatrical dance, 57–76; creating a new dance, 70–74; cultural borders, 63–70; transgressing European artistic borders, 59–63 American trade protectionism, 194 American West. See West (American) America Oggi, 110 Amnesty International, 139–40 Andreas, Peter, 181 Anglo-American expansion, 38. See also Manifest Destiny Anna, Santa, 165 Anti-terrorism Act of 2015, 201 Apache, 79 Appalachian Mountains, 22 Appia, Adolphe, 62 Arapaho, 49 Arizona: cross-border relationships, 159– 76; Douglas (see Douglas, Arizona) Ashcroft, John, 143

Index | 221 Asia, 104 Associated Retailers, 90 asylum seekers, 9, 10, 138, 139, 143, 144, 146, 147, 151 Atkinson, David C., 14 attacks: Pearl Harbor, 6; terrorists, 136 Au, Susan, 61, 62, 64 Ausdrücktanz, 74 authenticity, 57–58, 70, 71 Bacon, David, 162 ballet, 62, 67, 72. See also dance Ballet and Modern Dance (Anderson), 64 Bancroft, Hubert, 39 Bandini, Arcadia, 43 Banks, Stephen, 51 Bassett, Tommy, 171 Battle of Bear Paw (1877), 32 Battle of Fallen Timbers (1794), 25 Battle of the Thames (1813), 26 Bear Flag Revolt (1846), 40 Bendetsen, Karl, 84 Bent, William, 49 Berlin, Germany, 64 Berlin Wall, 187, 190 Beyond the Border Accord and Action Plan, 197 Bhabha, Homi, 5, 6, 58, 72–73, 78–79, 147 Binational Park (San Diego, California), 177–201 biopolitical borders, 200 Bisbee, Arizona, 165 Blackfoot, 30 Black Hawk War (1832), 26–27 Black Hoof, 23 Black Moon, 29 Blanket Detention Order of 2003, 143 Blue Jacket, 23, 24 Bolton, Herbert Eugene, 218 Boone, Daniel, 49, 50 The Border, 199 Border Arts Corridor (BAC), 171 border confluences, 196 border crossing cards (BCCs), 166 border fences, 177; Friendship Park [San Diego, California], 179, 185 (see also Friendship Park [San Diego, California]); US-Mexico border, 180 Border Field State Park (San Diego, California), 177, 188

border flows and motion (US-Canada border), 202–3 Border Industrialization Program (BIP), 166 borderlands, 6, 12; movement of Indigenous peoples and, 20; populating, 196; residents, 205; US-Canada, 199 (see also US-Canada border). See also borders borderlines, 196 Border Meetup/Border Encuentro (2004), 187 Border Patrol agents, 178, 181, 183; authorization, 187; border resident views of security buildup, 169; strategies, 161; unauthorized crossings, 159 (see also unauthorized crossings); video surveillance, 163 borders: aesthetic, 57–76 (see also aesthetic borders); in the American Southwest, 37–56 (see also American Southwest); Berlin Wall, 187, 190; Binational Park (San Diego, California), 177–201; biopolitical, 200; Boundary Monument No. 258, 177; California, 48; concept of, 78; crossing systems, 202; cultural, 37, 96; cultures, 205–8; definition of permeable borders, 2; eliminating welfare magnet, 128–32; geographic, 96; governance, 13, 198–200; governing conduct, 122–28; immigration and the 104th Congress, 120–22; immigration-welfare policies, 118–20; infrastructure, 183–87, 190; Israel-Palestine, 11, 163; liminal (see liminal borders); Mexican California, 42; narratives, 179; New York City, NY, 96–113, 97–99; notional, 2, 5; open, 195; performatives, 189; permeable (see permeable borders); policing insiders and outsiders, 117–35; political, 2, 37; role of, 38; porous (see porous borders); security, 149, 159–76 (see also crossborder relationships); securityscape, 197; social, 96; Tijuana–San Diego, 162; transgressions, 38; in United States of America, 2; US-Canada border, 12–14, 194–212 (see also US-Canada border); US-Canada transborder migration (American Indians), 19–36; US-Mexico

222 | Index border, 4, 79, 91 (see also US-Mexico border); vanishing (Lower East Side), 111 border walls, 179, 190–91, 208, 209. See also border fences Border Wars, 199 border work (theory), 78–80 boundaries: categorization of, 3; definition of, 2; physical, 20. See also borders Boundary Monument No. 258, 177 Bourdelle, Antoine, 65 Bowron, Fletcher, 86 Boxer, Barbara, 127, 130 Boys Town orphanage, 6, 77–93; founding of, 80; housing Nikkei, 83–84 Bracero Program (1942), 165–166 Brant, Joseph, 3, 21, 24 British Museum, 66 Bryant, John Wiley, 121, 124 Buddhists, 73, 84 Bureau of Prisons (BOP), 138, 139, 140, 141 Bureau of the Census, 100 Bush, George W., 162 Butterfly, The (1892), 69 Byrd, Robert, 123 Café Justo Cooperative, 11 Caffin, Caroline, 70 Caffin, Charles, 70 California, 4; American, 44; borders, 48; border work, 79; conquest of, 40; governance, 39; incorporation of, 47; Mexican, 40, 42; mid-nineteenthcentury, 48; Proposition 187, 120–21, 161; role of borders, 38; San Diego (see San Diego, California); Southern, 37; Tijuana–San Diego border, 162; unauthorized crossings, 161 campanilismo, 98, 99 Canada, 3–4, 10, 13, 33; border culture of, 205–8; multiculturalism, 204; North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 162, 166, 195, 202; securityscape, 197; US-Canada border, 194–212 (see also US-Canada border); US-Canadian border, 12, 13–14; USMCA trade collaborative, 209 Canadian Border Services Agency, 201, 207

Canadian dollars, 206 Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Act, 201 Carelton, Guy, 24 Carillo, Josefa, 43 Carson, Kit, 42, 48; baptism of, 49; example of homogenized tales, 50 Cascade Gateway, 200 Catholicism, 80, 81, 85, 87, 108 Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), 148 Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, 146 Central American migrants, 136–137, 143, 145 Central American Minors Program, 147 Chabot, Steve, 124, 125, 126, 128 Chabot/Conyers Amendment, 125–126, 128 Chaos on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 148 cheap laborers, Nebraska, 83 Cheyenne, 49 Chief Joseph, 32, 33 chiefs (Indian). See Native Americans: leaders children: Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), 143–44; detained in private facilities, 141 China, 105. See also Chinese Americans Chinatown (New York City), 7, 96 Chinese Americans, 216; geographical borders of, 105; immigration of into Little Italy, 104–7; integration of, 102; in Little Italy, 97 (see also Little Italy); populations, 101–2, 106f; virtual borders, 108–11 choreographers, 5, 58–59, 63, 70–71, 73–74, 75. See also dance choreography, 60–62, 67, 69 Christianity, 65, 71, 84, 188, 189 Ciao Mott Street Center, 110 City of Little Men, 81. See also Boys Town civil disobedience, 78 civil liberties, Japanese Americans, 89 Claus, William, 25 Clinton, Bill, 10, 145 The Cobras (1906), 69 Cochise College Center for Economic Research 2016, 167 Cochise County, Arizona, 162, 169, 172

Index | 223 Coleman, Mathew, 148 collecting welfare (in USA), 117 colonial wars, 19 The Comanche Empire (Hämäläinen), 50 Communion (Christianity), 12, 188–189 Contract with America, 120, 122 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), 143–44 Conyers, John, 124, 125, 126, 128 Coolidge, Calvin, 45 copper mines, 165 CoreCivic, 138–39 Correctional Services Corp. v. Malesko (2001), 141 Cotton, Tom, 117 Craig, Edward Gordon, 62 Cree, 28, 30 Cri-Cri Kindergarten, 168 Criminal Alien Requirement (CAR) prisons, 138 cross-border relationships, 159–76, 203; border resident views on security buildup, 169–72; fostering relationships, 164–68 crossing systems, borders, 202 Crow, 31 Cuba, asylum seekers, 138 Cuccinell, Ken, 1 cultural borders, 37, 96; American theatrical dance, 57–76, 63–70; in Little Italy, 100–104 cultural representations, flows of, 196 cultural values, 99 cultures, borders, 205–8 Custer, George Armstrong, 29 Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 161 Dakota Sioux War (1862), 27 Dallas, Alexander, 27, 28 dance, 5, 57–76; creating a new American, 70–74; cultural borders, 63–70; experimentation, 73; German expressionism in, 63; history of, 72; transgressing European artistic borders, 59–63 Dance of the Lily (1892), 61 Dannels, Mark (Sheriff ), 169–70 Darling, Jonathon, 149 Davis, William Heath, 42, 43–44

de-bordering processes, 187 Delsarte, François, 72 Dempsey, Timothy, 80 Denishawn School, 69, 71–73 Department of Homeland Security (DHS), 142–44, 163, 190, 195, 198, 207 deportations, 171 detention centers, 10, 139–42, 146, 201 DeWine, Mark, 128 Dies Committee on Un-American Propaganda Activities, 86 differentiation at the border, 203–5 Dilley, Texas, 139 Divine, Richard, 31 dollars, Canadian, 206 domestic incarceration, 201 Douglas, Arizona, 10–11, 213, 216; border resident views on security buildup, 169–72; border security, 160–64; crossborder relationships, 159–76; fostering relationships, 164–68 Douglas, James, 165 Douglas Port of Entry, 162, 164, 167 Drier, David, 131 drug smugglers, 162 Ducret, Guy, 60, 61 Dufoix, Stéphane, 7, 108 Duncan, Isadora, 5, 57, 59–60, 62, 63–65, 70, 75 Dunn, Timothy J., 10–11, 159 durable permeation, 13–14, 195 East Harlem (New York City), 97 Egypt, 57, 66, 71 1830 Indian Removal Act, 3, 22 Elbit Systems, 163, 167 Elektra, 60 Elliot, Matthew, 24 El Salvador, 141, 146 Emergency Quota Act in 1921, 215 employment, governing conduct, 122–28 England, E. J., 7 English language learners (ELL), 168 enhanced driver’s licenses, 200 Estudillo, Maria de Jesus, 43–44 ethno-territories, 108 Europe, transgressing European artistic borders, 59–63 European migrants, 97 European modernism, 63

224 | Index European Union (EU), 198, 207 Executive Order 9066 (1942), 216 expansion into American Southwest, 39–44 expeditions, 40, 46 experimentation, dance, 73 extraterritorialization of immigration control, 137 Facebook, 110 families, detained in private facilities, 141 family detention complexes, Dilley, Texas, 139 Fanestil, John, 12, 188–89 Feast of San Gennaro, 103 Feeley, Malcolm, 150 filibustering expeditions, 46 Fire Dance (1895), 61 First Red Scare, 58 Fitch, Henry, 42, 43 Flanagan, Edward J. (Father), 6–7, 77–93 Flanner, Janet, 62 Flores v. Lynch (2016), 144 flow control, borders, 202–3 Flynn, Michael, 148 Fokine, Michel, 61 Ford, John, 50 Fort Miami (Ohio), 24 Fortuné, Cléa, 10–11, 213, 216 Foucault, Michel, 37, 217 Foucher, Valérie, 7, 108 Four Horns (Chief), 29 Frank, Barney, 126, 127 Freedom of Information Act, 141 free white males, definition of (1790), 47 Frémont, John C., 40, 41, 42, 46, 48 Friendship Park (San Diego, California), 11–12, 177, 177f, 179, 180f, 183f, 217; activism at, 184–86; ambiguous nature of, 179–84; border fences, 185; border walls, 190–91; narratives, 186–90 Friends of Friendship Park, 179, 185, 188, 189, 192 Frohman, Charles, 61 Frontera de Cristo, 170–171 Fryer, Heather, 6, 216 Fujian region (China), 105 Fuller, Loïe, 5, 57, 58, 59–61, 65, 75 Furman, Rich, 150

Gadsden Purchase (1853), 11, 160 Gallegly, Elton, 131 Gallegly Amendment, 122, 129, 130 Gammeltoft-Hansen, Thomas, 149 Gee, Dolly, 144 Gellner, Ernest, 44 geographic borders, 96; Chinese Americans, 105; Little Italy, 96, 97; New York City, NY, 97–99. See also borders German expressionism in dance, 63 Germany, 64, 74 Gila News-Courier, 90 Gingrich, Newt, 129–30, 131 globalization, 13, 150, 195, 199–200, 206, 209 Gold Rush of 1849, 38 governance: borders, 13, 198–200; California, 39; United States of Mexico, 41 Graham, Bob, 122 Graham, Martha, 63, 71 Great Britain, 20, 22 Great Lakes, 20, 22 Great Sauk Trail, 26 Great Sioux War of 1876–77, 29 Greece, 57, 64, 65, 71 Griswold, Dwight, 81, 83 Group II Labor Market, 90 Guardian, 146 Guatemala, 141, 146 H2495, 131 habeas corpus, 89 Hai, Ambreen, 79 Haiti, asylum seekers, 138 Haldimand, Frederick (Sir), 21 Hale, Calvin, 31 Hämäläinen, Pekka, 50 Harlow, Neal, 41 Harmer, Josiah, 24 Hart Cellar Act of 1965, 119 Hashii, Jerry, 85–86, 88, 90 Hastings, Lansford W., 46 hegemonies, 13 Hiemstra, Nancy, 128 Hinduism, 65, 68, 73 hiring illegals, 123 History of California (Bancroft), 39 Ho Chunk (Winnebago), 26 Hofmansthal, Hugo, 60

Index | 225 Holland Tunnel, 101 Honda, Henry, 77, 92 Honduras, 141, 146 Hoover, J. Edgar, 86–87, 89 Hotel for Working Men, 80 H.R. 2202, 121 Hudson’s Bay Company, 27 Human Rights Watch, 143, 146 human trafficking, 139 Humphrey, Doris, 63 Hunter, Duncan, 181 Hurons, 19 hybridity, 57–58, 70, 71 hybridization, 5 identity confirmation, 200 illegal immigration, 123, 125, 129, 132 Illegal Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA [1995]), 122–23, 125 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), 8, 10, 118, 120, 121, 129, 133, 138 Il Progresso Italo-Americano, 110 imaginaries, US-Canada border, 197–202 immigrants: building identities, 109; collecting welfare (in USA), 117; Italian, 96 immigration: and the 104th Congress, 120–22; illegal, 123, 125; immigrationwelfare policies, 118–20; policies, 91; reform, 120; reforms, 118; restriction, 214; Trump, Donald, 136 Immigration Act (1917), 73 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 164, 201 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, 96, 104 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 145 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, 201 Immigration Control and Financial Responsibility Act of 1996, 121–22, 129 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, 166 incarceration: domestic, 201; race-based, 6 India, 57, 67, 71, 73 Indiana, 25

Indians, 20. See also American Indians; Native Americans information and communication technologies (Cits), 8, 109, 111 infrastructure: borders, 12, 178–79, 184– 86, 187, 189, 190–91; detention, 145; security, 162, 197, 198; transportation, 215 INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), 161 Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 144 International Mobility and Trade Corridor project (IMTC 2009), 200 Internet, 110 Irish immigrants (San Patricios), 45 Iroquois, 20–22 Israel-Palestine border, 11, 163 Italian Americans, 7–8; Catholicism, 108; integration of, 104; neighborhoods in Manhattan, 97; populations, 100, 101f; sense of community, 97; in the suburbs, 104; virtual borders, 108–11. See also Little Italy Italian Harlem, 97, 102 Italian immigrants, 96. See also Little Italy Italian Tribune, 110 Italy, 102. See also Little Italy (New York City) Japanese American Citizens League, 87 Japanese Americans, 6; border work (theory), 78–80; Catholicism, 85; as cheap laborers, 83; civil liberties, 89; housing Nikkei, 83, 84, 85; migration, 77–93; post-incarceration, 87; secondgeneration (Nisei), 78 J. C. Robinson Seed Company, 83 Jefferson, Thomas, 50, 52 Jesuit priests, 19 jobs, 8 jobs magnet, 122–28 June 1993 Presidential Decision Directive, 145 Just Coffee: Caffeine with a Conscience (Adams/Bassett), 171 Kaiser, Robert J., 189 Kearny, Stephen W., 40, 41, 42 Kempf, Jean, 58

226 | Index Kennedy, Edward, 127, 132 Kirstein, Lincoln, 67 Kocher, Austin, 148 Konrad, Victor, 12–14, 213, 214, 216 Kramer, Paul, 213 Krase, Jerome, 103 Krentz, Rob, 169, 170 Kurashige, Lon, 84 laborers, 83, 216 Ladd, John, 169 Lake Erie, 21 Lakhani, Nina, 146 Latin America, 104 Lavery, Hugh, 6, 84, 87 Levinson, André, 63 liberal welfare states, 118 liminal borders, 2, 10, 15, 78, 79, 148, 150, 184, 217 limited English proficient (LEP), 168 Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexican Border (St. John), 46 Little Big Horn, 29 Little Crow, 27, 28 Little Italy (New York City), 7–8, 96–111, 215; Chinese Americans in, 97, 102; cultural spaces in, 100–104; gathering of Italians, 99; geographic borders, 96, 97; immigration of Chinese, 104–7; overcrowding of, 100; populations, 103; Sicilians in, 98; streets of, 107f; virtual borders, 108–11. See also New York City, NY Little Italy Restoration Association, 103 Little Knife, 29 Little Turtle, 23 Lloyd, Margaret, 74 Looking Glass, 32 López Obrador, Andrés Manuel, 147 Lopreato, Joseph, 96 Lord Dorchester. See Carelton, Guy Los Angeles, California, 77, 78. See also migration Louisiana Purchase (1803), 49 Lower East Side (New York City), 96, 97, 99; building identities, 109; vanishing borders in, 111 mainstream, American cultural, 108 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 61

management: cross-border flow, 203; US migration, 136–55 (see also US migration management) Management and Training Corporation (MTC), 138 Manhattan (New York City), 97, 104 Manhattan Bridge, 101 Manifest Destiny, 4, 38, 41, 45, 52 Manzanar Relocation Camp, 6, 77–93. See also Japanese Americans Marco Polo Festival, 105 market flows, 203 Martinez, Alex, 146 Maryknoll communities, 84, 85, 87, 90 Massey, Douglas S., 171 May, Robert E., 40 McC. Heyman, Josiah, 159, 160, 163, 172 McCollum, Bill, 123 McCormick, Anne O’Hare, 217–18 McGuire, Randall H., 186 McKee, Alexander, 24 McKnight, Robert, 49 McTavish, William, 27 Medicine Line, 20 Mendez, Juan E., 144 Menominee, 26 mental health services, 139 Mesquaki, 26 Messmer, Marietta, 9, 10, 215 Métis, 30 Mexican-American War (1846–48), 37, 45, 49, 50, 164 Mexican California, 38, 40, 42, 46, 47 Mexico, 1, 10, 147, 148; Agua Prieta, Sonora, 159–76 (see also Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico); apprehensions, 136, 137; border fences, 177; ethnic inferiority (concept of), 47; North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 162, 166, 195, 202; outsourcing migration management to, 144–47; Tijuana–San Diego border, 162; United States governance of, 41; United States relationship with, 159 (see also cross-border relationships); US immigration court hearings in, 139; USMCA trade collaborative, 209; USMexico border, 4, 79, 91 Mezzogiorno region (Italy), 102 Miami, 23

Index | 227 Michaud, Marie-Christine, 7, 215 mid-nineteenth-century California, 48 Migrant Protection Protocols (2019), 139, 145–46 migrants: Central American, 136, 137, 143, 145; European, 97; undocumented, 118, 126, 132, 147 migration, 6; border work (theory), 78–80; cross-border support, 23–27; expansion into American Southwest, 39–44; government dictation of terms, 88; Japanese Americans, 77–93; Nebraska, 80–83; retreat and refuge, 27–33; US-Canada transborder (American Indians), 19–36; US migration management, 136–55 Miles, Nelson, 30, 32–33 militarization, 11, 159, 160 Miller, Todd, 160, 164 Milligram, Josefa, 49 mimicry, 58 Minneci v. Pollard (2012), 141 missionaries, 23 Mississippi River, 22 Mitchell, Grant, 137, 144 Mitsilegas, Valsamis, 137 modernism, 74 Mohawks, 3, 21, 23 Monsky, Henry, 80 Monument Mesa, 177 Moréas, Jean, 61 Moreno, Maria, 168 Most Precious Blood Church, 8, 109 moving to the suburbs (American Dream), 102 multiculturalism (Canada), 204 Muslim bans, 136 Muslims, 73 Nakar-Sadi, Merav, 8, 119 Napolitano, Janet, 144 narratives: of borders, 179; of settlers, 44–48; US-Mexico border, 186–90 nationalism, 71, 206 nationality, adopted, 44 National Origin Quota Act (1924), 73 Native Americans, 3–4, 214; leaders, 20, 21, 29 nativists, 213 nautch dancers, 67

Nebraska: border work, 79; cheap laborers, 83; migration, 80–83 neoliberalization, 149 Nevins, Joseph, 161, 164, 166, 181 New Deal, 81 New World, 59, 102 New York City, NY: borders, 96–113; cultural spaces in, 100–104; geographic borders, 97–99; immigration of Chinese, 104–7; virtual borders, 108–11 New York City Planning Department, 97, 99, 108 New York Times, 217 NEXUS lane crossing cards, 200 Nez Perce, 4, 31–33 Nichols, Roger L., 3, 214 9/11. See September 11, 2001 Nisei (second-generation) Japanese Americans, 78 Nixon, Pat, 12, 177 Nogales, Arizona, 186 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 184–85, 190 North America, borders in, 19 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 162, 166, 195, 202, 209 notional borders, 2, 4, 5, 14, 46, 47, 51, 214 Obama, Barack, 144 Office of Inspector General, 143 Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 144 offshore resources, roles of, 136–55. See also US migration management Ohio River, 23–24 Ojibwe, 28 Okida, Katsu, 85 Okura, Lily, 7, 86–87, 88, 90 Okura, Patrick, 7, 86–87, 88, 89, 90 Old World, 59 Omaha, Nebraska, 6, 7, 77, 216 Omaha Chamber of Commerce, 90 Omaha Manufacturers, 90 Omaha Reception Committee, 90 Omaha YWCA, 88 open borders, 195 Operation Gatekeeper (1994), 161, 178, 181 Operation Global Reach (1997), 10, 145

228 | Index Oregon, 39 outsourcing migration management, 136, 137; to Mexico, 144–47; private detection centers, 138–44 Owens Valley, California, 6 Pacific Citizen, 77 Palestine, Israel-Palestine border, 163 Palmer, A. Mitchell, 58 Paris Folies Bergères, 65 Parliament (Canada), 201 Parmenter, William, 87 passport cards, 200 Pathfinder, the (John Frémont), 42. See also Frémont, John C. Pavlova, Anna, 72 Pearl Harbor, 6, 81 Pearson, Drew, 86 Peckinpah, Sam, 51 Peña Nieto, Enrique, 145, 146 Pence, Mike, 142 Pennsylvania, 142 Perdue, David, 117 permeable borders, 2–3, 6, 8, 9, 13, 14–15, 20, 70, 78, 85, 87, 88, 89, 91, 96, 97, 99, 110, 111, 118, 150, 164, 165, 167, 168, 170, 189, 195, 197, 198, 203, 213–18 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, 8, 118, 133 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, 120 Phelps Dodge Corporation, 165 physical boundaries, 20 Pico, Pío, 47 Pileggi, Nicholas, 103 pioneers, 39, 44–48. See also settlers Les Pionniers d’une danse américaine (Servian), 61 Pius XI (Pope), 81 planning border regimes, 206 Playas de Tijuana neighborhood, 177, 182 Plyer v. Doe (1982), 129 policing insiders and outsiders, 117–35; eliminating welfare magnet, 128–32; governing conduct, 122–28; immigration and the 104th Congress, 120–22; immigration-welfare policies, 118–20 political borders, 2, 37

Polk, James, 40 populations: Chinese Americans, 101– 102, 106f; Italian Americans, 100, 101f; in Little Italy (New York City), 103 porous borders, 4–5, 13, 14, 20, 37, 40, 45, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 60, 97, 99, 106, 182, 195, 213 post-incarceration, Japanese Americans, 87 Potawatomi, 3–4, 22–23, 26, 214; peaceful migrations of, 23; seeking new homes, 22 Prevention through Deterrence strategy, 161 prisons, 10, 138, 139, 141, 149, 201 private detection centers, 138–44 private facilities, roles of, 136–55. See also US migration management privatization of immigration control, 137 Promised Land, 102 Prophet, The, 25 Proposition 187 (California), 120, 121, 161 protests, 186 public assistance programs, 119, 122, 131. See also welfare public charges, 117 Public Safety Canada, 198 race-based incarceration, 6 Radha (1906), 67, 68 radicalism, 58 RAISE (Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment) Act (2017), 117 Ramírez, Christian, 185, 190 The Rangoon Daily News, 67 Raytheon, 163 REAL ID Act (2005), 181 Red River settlements, 28 reform: immigration, 118, 120; welfare, 120 refugees, 147 Remley, David, 49 residents along borderlands, 205 Restore Our Border Security Plan (ROB), 169 Rio Grande Valley (Texas), 142 Risorgimento, 99 Rocky Mountains, 20 Rodin, Auguste, 65

Index | 229 roles: of borders, 38; US migration management, 136–55 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 84, 216 Rubio-Goldsmith, R., 160 Rudolph, Christopher, 145 Russian Imperial Ballet and School, 62 Ruth St. Denis: Pioneer and Prophet; Being a History of Her Cycle of Oriental Dances (Shawn and Haweis), 60 S.1664. See Immigration Control and Financial Responsibility Act of 1996 Saint Joseph Church, 105f Sampson, Robyn, 137, 144 San Diego, California, 161, 162; activism at Friendship Park, 184–86; ambiguous nature of Friendship Park, 179–84; Binational Park, 177–201 (see also Binational Park [San Diego, California]); border fences, 185; Border Field State Park, 177, 188; border narratives, 186–90; border walls, 190– 91; Boundary Monument No. 258, 177; Friendship Park, 11–12, 177, 177f, 179, 180f, 183f, 217; international boundary between Tijuana and, 179 San Patricios (Irish immigrants), 45 Sauk, 26 SBInet (Secure Border Initiative network), 162 Schengen perimeter (EU), 198, 207 second-generation (Nisei) Japanese Americans, 78 security: border resident views on security buildup, 169–72; borders, 149; Douglas, Arizona, 160–64; US-Canada border, 197–202 securityscape, 197 self-government, 82 SENTRI Lane (Secured Electronic Network Traveler Rapid Inspection Lane), 167 September 11, 2001, 9, 13, 136, 145, 195, 201, 202, 204 Servian, Claudie, 5–6, 217 settlers, 44–48, 214 Seurat, Georges, 61 1763 Royal Proclamation, 21 Seventy Five Years in California (Davis), 43 Shankar’s pan-Indian dance academy, 69 Shawn, Ted, 5, 57, 58, 65, 71–73, 75

Shawnee, 23 Sheehan, James, 214 Sheridan, Thomas, 165 Sherman, William, 30 Sicilians, 98. See also Italian immigrants Simcoe, John Graves, 21 Simmel, Georg, 186 Simmers, Jennifer K., 47 Simonneau, Damien, 164 Simpson, Alan, 121, 123, 132 Sioux, 4, 27, 33, 214 Sitting Bull, 30–31, 32, 33 Six Nations Iroquois, 21, 22 Small, Mary, 140 Smith, Albert B., 41 Smith, John, 24 Smith, Lamar, 121, 127, 128, 132 smugglers, drug, 162 Smythe, William, 42, 44 snake charmers, 67 social borders, 96 social media, 8, 92, 110 Social Security, 150 Sonoran Desert, 161 SOSL Save Our State. See Proposition 187 (California) Souritz, Elizabeth, 61 Southern California, 37 Southern Front Plan (2014), 10 Southern Plan, El Plan Sur (2001), 10, 145 sovereignty, 213 Soviet Choreographers in the 1920s (Souritz), 61 The Spanish Borderlands: A Chronicle of Old Florida and the Southwest (Bolton), 218 Stagecoach (1930), 50 Standing Buffalo, 28 Standing Rock Agency, 30 Stanislavsky, Konstatin, 62, 63 Starr, Kevin, 38 state, building borders, 79 Statue of Liberty epitaph, 1 St. Clair, Arthur, 25 St. Denis, Ruth, 5, 57, 58, 59–61, 63, 64, 65–69, 70, 71–73, 75 Stearns, Abe, 42, 46 Steinbach, Leo, 6, 84, 87 Stenholm, Charles, 125 St. John, Rachel, 46, 79, 159

230 | Index Stockton, Robert F., 40, 41 strategies, Border Patrol agents, 161 Strauss, Richard, 60 Stumpf, Juliet, 138 suburbs: Italian Americans in, 104; moving to (American Dream), 102 Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (2010), 170 Swartwood, Jeffrey, 4–5

Takahashi, James, 85 Takahashi, Margaret, 87 Teale, Ben, 61 Tecate, Baja California, 172 Tecumseh, 25 terrorism, 9, 91, 136 Terry, Alfred, 30 Texas, 142, 161 Thornton, Billy Bob, 51 Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, 181, 188 Tijuana–San Diego border, 162, 179 Tinnemeyer, Andrea, 47 Tocilovac, Marko, 11–12 Toohoolhoolzote, 32 Topaz Times, 88 torture survivors, 139 Tracy, Spencer, 77 trade protectionism, 194 traditional ballet, 72. See also ballet transnationalism, 206 transportation infrastructure, 215 Trask, Caroline, 7 travel bans, 136 Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784), 20 Treaty of Greenville (1795), 25 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), 11, 45, 164, 177 tribal leaders. See Native Americans: leaders Trudeau, Justin, 194 Trump, Donald, 1, 9, 117, 136, 145, 147, 159, 164, 169, 194, 195, 203, 208–9, 215 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 59 Twitter, 110 unauthorized crossings, 159, 161, 169, 171; Cochise County, Arizona, 162; USMexico border, 136, 137, 138

undocumented migrants, 118, 126, 132, 147. See also illegal immigration United States Border Patrol. See Border Patrol agents United States Congress, 24; Chabot/ Conyers Amendment, 125–26, 128; governing conduct, 122–28; H2495, 131; H.R. 2202, 121; immigration and the 104th Congress, 120–22 United States Customs and Border Protection, 137, 179 United States Immigration Detention Profile, 146 United States of America, 1, 10, 13; American dream, pursuit of, 5; border culture of, 205–8; border fences, 177; borders in, 2; borders in the American Southwest, 37–56 (see also American Southwest); eliminating welfare magnet, 128–32; governance of Mexico, 41; governing conduct, 122–28; immigration and the 104th Congress, 120–22; immigration-welfare policies, 118–20; Indian claims of sovereignty, 20; nationalism, 71, 206; North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 162, 166, 195, 202; pioneers, 39; policing insiders and outsiders, 117–35; relationship with Mexico, 159 (see also cross-border relationships); securityscape, 197; trade protectionism, 194; US-Mexico border, 4; welfare system, 9 urban villages, 98 Uribe, Robert, 167 US Army, 20 US-Canada border, 12–14, 194–212; border culture of, 205–8; border flows and motion, 202–3; differentiation at the border, 203–5; security and imagination, 197–202; in Trump era, 208–9 US-Canada transborder migration (American Indians), 19–36; crossborder support, 23–27; retreat and refuge, 27–33 US Citizenship and Immigration Services, 1 US Customs and Border Protection, 137, 179 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 140, 141, 142

Index | 231 USMCA trade collaborative, 209 US-Mexico border, 4, 37, 79, 91, 192; Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico (see Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico); border fences, 177, 180; Douglas, Arizona (see Douglas, Arizona); narratives, 186–90; unauthorized crossings along, 136–38 US migration management, 136–55; outsourcing to Mexico, 144–47; outsourcing to private detection centers, 138–44 US State Department, 190 values, cultural, 99 Vecoli, Rudolph, 109 Velázquez, Nydia, 130 Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, 100 video surveillance, Border Patrol agents, 163 virtual borders: Chinese Americans, 108–11; Italian Americans, 108–11; New York City, NY, 108–11

Wartime Civil Control Administration, 82, 83, 85 Waters, Mary, 109 Watman, Dan, 187 Wayne, Anthony, 25 Wayne, John, 50 Weber, David, 39 web sites, 8, 110 welfare, 9; collecting (in USA), 117; eliminating welfare magnet, 128–32; immigration-welfare policies, 118–20; liberal welfare states, 118; reform, 120 West (American), 38 White Bird, 31, 32 Wiebel, Jon, 8, 9, 216 Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 68 Wild Bunch (1969), 51 Williamsburg Bridge, 101 Wilson, Pete, 161 World War II, 77, 100, 103, 109, 110, 165, 204 xenophobia, 58, 213

Wall Street Journal, 169 Walsh, James M., 29, 31 War of 1812, 25, 26 War on Poverty (1964), 119 War Relocation Authority (WRA), 6, 7, 77, 82, 85, 87–90, 91

Yacco, Sada, 65, 66 Zolberg, Aristide, 215 Zuccotti, John, 103