Abstract
The techniques of contemporary regimes of border policing and immigration law enforcement along the US-Mexican border are only apprehensible in relation to another reality: the embodied materiality of ‘illegal’ migrants. These humble border crossers are the ‘incorrigible’ subject of virtually all contemporary border regimes. As autonomous subjects, with their own aspirations, needs, and desires, which necessarily exceed any regime of immigration and citizenship, migrants’ mobility projects enact an elementary freedom of movement to which borders are intrinsically a response. Rather than defining borders as exclusionary apparatuses, it thus becomes crucial to perceive the contradictory processes of subordinate inclusion mediated by border controls. In consideration of these complications, De Genova’s chapter sheds light on the current US immigration stalemate and the political struggles of ‘illegal’ migrants.
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Notes
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The sole exception is the perfunctory Secure Fence Act of 2006 (Public Law 109–367), which was remarkably narrow in scope: this law was singularly dedicated to providing for the further presumed fortification of the US-Mexico border with hundreds of miles of new physical barriers to be added to the existing 125 miles of fence.
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Genova, N.D. (2016). The Incorrigible Subject: The Autonomy of Migration and the US Immigration Stalemate. In: Oberprantacher, A., Siclodi, A. (eds) Subjectivation in Political Theory and Contemporary Practices. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51659-6_14
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