De Genova, Nicholas; Picozza, Fiorenza; Castillo Ramírez, Guillermo. (2020). Postcolonial borderwork, migrant illegality and the politics of incorrigibility. Interview with Nicholas De Genova. América Latina en Movimiento, 15 de diciembre de 2020. (original) (raw)

2020, América Latina en Movimiento

Against the background of changing capital/labour relations, extractivism, climate change, warfare and generalised violence across the globe, contemporary migratory movements have increasingly been characterised by specific processes of violence, exclusion and subordination, such as the virtual sealing of borders and transit corridors across the world, the criminalisation of undocumented migrants and refugees, and the sheer deaths and disappearances of uncountable people, particularly at the US-Mexican borders and in the Mediterranean. We'd like to ask you some questions relating to the specific mechanisms of this violence as you have framed it within your own academic work. The first question we'd like to ask you relates to a theoretical proposition that has been crucial for you own work in-between anthropology and geography, that is to say the understanding of borders not merely as geographical lines but rather as processes of political, legal and social production. What is the relationship between the productivity of borders and the spaces of death crossed by undocumented migrants and refugees on both sides of the Atlantic in which you have conducted research? Not only do I reject the simplistic and superficial cartographic notion of borders as geographical lines, I contend that we cannot think of borders as things (De Genova 2016). The common assumption is to imagine that the border is an objective place, a site, and in that sense, a kind of real thing. Consequently, we begin to associate the border with the other things that populate such a space-things such as border fences and checkpoints, but also therefore border guards. This latter detail is instructive, because once we recognize that Search