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Searching for Security: Boundary and Immigration Enforcement in an Age of Intensifying Globalization

Nevins provides an overview and critique of the various interpretations of U.S.-Mexico border policing beginning in the early 1990s. By situating the topic globally, Nevins demonstrates that despite current notions of the demise of nation-states and the emergence of “borderless economies,” the forces of globalization have served to strengthen territorial boundaries. This is especially true along the divides between the relatively rich and poor. Such developments lend credence to the contention that boundary maintenance goes hand in hand with efforts to reproduce inequalities across space. In a context of growing socioeconomic inequality internationally, some analysts have discussed a “global apartheid” that is characterized by extreme hierarchy and unevenness of circumstances and acute deprivation and mass misery among the poor. Such socioeconomic divisions most often correspond to race. According to Nevins, these analyses fail to demonstrate how control of residence and movement serves to maintain and enhance the inequality embodied in the metaphor “global apartheid.”

immigration, security, immigration enforcement, globalization, immigrants — transnational migration, immigrants — undocumented immigrants, Mexican-American border region, state [the]

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 28, No. 2 (2001): 132-148