Abstract
Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) is located in southern Arizona just north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The refuge is designated as a federal wilderness area. However, in spite of conservation efforts and as a direct result of immigration policies, Cabeza Prieta faces high levels of human traffic causing environmental degradation. Together, conservation and military/security efforts seek to control the border region. I analyze conservation and security efforts through the lens of Foucault’s concept of a “disciplined space.” Ultimately, studying nature conservation along the border illuminates ways which race and racial inequality are present in the politics of conservation and security. This chapter lays out the theoretical framework scaffolding the rest of the book and explains my ethnographic and mixed-method approach to data collection and analysis.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
There is an interesting resurgence of interest in the work of Edward Abby that is relevant to this book. See, for example, “Dumping Grounds: Donald Trump, Edward Abbey and the Immigrant as Pollution” by Michael Potts (2017) and “Goodbye Abbey, Hello Intersectional Environmentalism” by Sarah Krakoff (2018) among others.
- 2.
While Border Patrol is a federal organization, not a state-managed one, it is worth pointing out that the State of Arizona has a well-documented history of using racial bias. The most well-known example is Senate Bill 1070. Passed in 2010, the law allows law enforcement officers ascertain immigration status when there is “reasonable suspicion” that someone is an undocumented immigrant. While officially law enforcement personnel are not supposed to use race in their determination of a “suspicious person,” in practice, it is a form of racial profiling.
References
Annerino, J. (1999). Dead in Their Tracks: Crossing America’s Desert Borderlands. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows.
Boyer, C., & Wakild, E. (2012). Social Landscaping in the Forests of Mexico: An Environmental Interpretation of Cardenismo, 1934–1940. Hispanic American Historical Review, 92(1), 73–106.
Brechin, S. C., Fortwangler, P., & Wilshusen, P. W. (2003). Contested Nature: Promoting International Biodiversity with Social Justice. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Brown, W. (2010). Walled States, Waning Sovereignty. New York: Zone Books.
Cartron, J.-L., Ceballos, G., & Felger, R. S. (2005). Biodiversity, Ecosystems and Conservation in Northern Mexico. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chavez, L. (2008). The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
De León, J. (2015). The Land of the Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Finney, C. (2014). Black Faces White Spaces. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Foucault, M., Senellart, M., Ewald, F., & Fontana, A. (2007). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978. New York, NY: Picador/Palgrave Macmillan.
Gilmore, R. W. (2002). Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference: Notes on Racism and Geography. The Professional Geographer, 54(1), 15–24.
Hill, S. (2006). Purity and Danger on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1991–1994. South Atlantic Quarterly, 105(4), 777–800.
Kosek, J. (2004). Purity and Pollution: Racial Degradation and Environmental Anxieties. In R. Peet & M. Watts (Eds.), Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements. London and New York: Routledge.
Kosek, J. (2006). Understories: The Political Life of Forests in Northern New Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Krakoff, S. (2018). Goodbye Abbey, Hello Intersectional Environmentalism. Environmental Law Prof Blog. https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/environmental_law/2018/08/goodbye-abbey-hello-intersectional-environmentalism.html.
Li, T. (2009). To Make Live or Let Die? Rural Dispossession and the Protection of Surplus Populations. Antipode, 14(6), 1208–1235.
Lowe, C. (2006). Wild Profusion: Biodiversity Conservation in an Indonesian Archipelago. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Meierotto, L. (2012). The Blame Game on the Border: Perceptions of Environmental Degradation on the United States-Mexico Border. Human Organization, 71(1), 11–21.
Nevins, J. (2002). Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge.
Peluso, N., & Watts, M. (2001). Violent Environments. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Potts, M. (2017). Dumping Grounds: Donald Trump, Edward Abbey and the Immigrant as Pollution. Transnational Literature, 10(1). Retrieved from http://fhrc.flinders.edu.au/transnational/home.html.
Radding, C. (1997). Wandering Peoples: Colonialism, Ethnic Spaces, and Ecological Frontiers in Northwestern Mexico, 1700–1850. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Regan, M. (2010). The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands. Boston: Beacon Press.
Sayre, N. F. (2002). Ranching, Endangered Species, and Urbanization in the Southwest: Species of Capital. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
Senellart, M., et al. (Eds.). (2009). Michel Foucault Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College De France, 1977. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sheridan, T. (2006). Landscapes of Fraud: Mission Tumacacori, the Baca Float and the Betrayal of the O’Odham. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
St. John, R. (2011). Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Stoler, A. L. (2008). Imperial Debris: Reflections on Ruins and Ruination. Cultural Anthropology, 23(2), 191–219.
Sundberg, J. (2015). The State of Exception and the Imperial Way of Life in the United States-Mexico Borderlands. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33(2), 209–228.
Sundberg, J., & Kaserman, B. (2007). Cactus Carvings and Desert Defecations: Embodying Representations of Border Crossings in Protected Areas on the Mexico-U.S. Border. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25(4), 727–744.
United States Customs and Border Protection. (n.d.). Legal Authority for the Border Patrol. Retrieved March 6, 2019, from https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/1084/~/legal-authority-for-the-border-patrol.
Urrea, L. A. (2004). The Devil’s Highway: A True Story. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (2013). Employee Pocket Guide. FWS Fundamentals. https://www.fws.gov/info/pocketguide/fundamentals.html.
Wakild, E. (2011). Revolutionary Parks: Conservation, Social Justice, and Mexico’s National Parks, 1910–1940. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press.
Wilderness Society. (n.d.). The National Wilderness Preservation System. Retrieved April 26, 2019, from https://www.wilderness.org/articles/article/national-wilderness-preservation-system.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Meierotto, L. (2020). Introduction: Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. In: Immigration, Environment, and Security on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31814-7_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31814-7_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31813-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31814-7
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)