Surveilling Surveillance
Countermapping Undocumented Migration in the USA-Mexico Borderlands
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.31761Keywords:
Archaeology of the contemporary, undocumented migration, GIS, counter-mapping, US/Mexico BorderAbstract
This paper examines how mapping technology is central to the operation of the United States Border Patrol security apparatus on the US/Mexico Border, and explores how the very same mapping technology can be used in critique this security project. Drawing on the concept of counter-mapping, we use spatial data collected by the Undocumented Migration Project – a long-term anthropological project aimed at understanding various elements of the violent social process of clandestine migration between Latin America and the United States – to critique the spatial ideology of PTD and the technological conditions of its production.
References
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Hermann, M. 2010. “They Would Not Take Me There.” Cartographic Perspectives 66: 31–40.
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Kwan, M. P. 2002. “Feminist Visualization: Re-envisioning GIS as a Method of Feminist Geographic Research.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92 (4): 645–661. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8306.00309
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Peluso, N. L. 1995. “Whose Woods are These? Counter-Mapping Forest Territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia.” Antipode 27 (4): 383–406. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.1995.tb00286.x
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Smith, N. 1992. “Real Wars, Theory Wars.” Progress in Human Geography 16 (2): 257–271. https://doi.org/10.1177/030913259201600208
Sundberg, J. 2008. “‘Trash-talk’ and the Production of Quotidian Geopolitical Boundaries in the USA–Mexico Borderlands.” Social and Cultural Geography 9 (8): 871–890. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360802441424
Sweeney, W. 2001. “US Border Patrol Maximizes Enforcement with GIS.” ArcNews Online, Fall. Available online: www.esri.com/news/arcnews/fall01articles/usborderpatrol.html
Tazzioli, M. 2015. “Which Europe? Migrants Uneven Geographies and Counter-Mapping at the limits of Representation.” Movements 1 (2):1–20.
Veal, W. 2003. “Protecting the Borders: GIS technology and Command/control optimization.” Police Chief 70 (6):41–42.
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____. 2015. Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counter-Insurgency in the Americas. New York: Guilford Press.
Beck, J., I. Ostericher, G. Sollish and J. De León. 2014. “Animal Scavenging and Scattering and the Implications for Documenting the Deaths of Undocumented Border Crossers in the Sonoran Desert.” Journal of Forensic Sciences 60: S11–S20. https://doi.org/10.1111/1556-4029.12597
Blust, K. 2016. “Deaths per 10000 Border Crossers are up 5 Times from a Decade Ago.” Arizona Daily Star, 21 May. Available online: http://tucson.com/news/local/border/deaths-per-border-crossers-are-up-times-from-a-decade/article_c1279aaf-4ad8-51c9-82d8-3143b836f52e.html
Bondi, L. and M. Domosh. 1992. “Other Figures in Other Places: On Feminism, Postmodernism and Geography.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10: 199–213. https://doi.org/10.1068/d100199
De León, J. 2015. Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Doty, R. L. 2011. “Bare Life: Border-crossing Deaths and Spaces of Moral Alibi.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29 (4): 599–612. https://doi.org/10.1068/d3110
Dunn, T. J. 2009. Blockading the Border and Human Rights: The El Paso Operation That Remade Immigration Enforcement. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Elwood, S. 2006. “Critical Issues in Participatory GIS: Deconstructions, Reconstructions, and New Research Directions.” Transactions in GIS 10 (5): 693–708. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9671.2006.01023.x
Gokee, C. and J. De León. 2014. “Sites of Contention: Archaeology and Political Discourse in the US-Mexico Borderlands.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 1 (1):133–163. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.v1i1.133
Goss, J. 1995. “Marketing the New Marketing: The Strategic Discourse of Geodemographic Information Systems.” In Ground Truth, edited by J.
Pickles, 130–170. New York: Guilford Press.
Harris, L. M. and H. D. Hazen. 2006. “Power of Maps: (Counter) Mapping for Conservation.” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 4 (1):99–130.
Hermann, M. 2010. “They Would Not Take Me There.” Cartographic Perspectives 66: 31–40.
Humane Borders. 2016. Open-source GIS project. Available online: http://www.humaneborders.info/
Kent, A. 2012. “From a Dry Statement of Fact to a Thing of Beauty.” Cartographic Perspectives 73: 37–60.
Kwan, M. P. 2002. “Feminist Visualization: Re-envisioning GIS as a Method of Feminist Geographic Research.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92 (4): 645–661. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8306.00309
Loyd, J. 2014. “One If by Land, Two if by Sea.” New Inquiry, 16 May. Available online: thenewinquiry.com/essays/one-if-by-land-two-if-by-sea/
Nevins, J. 2002. Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Making of the US-Mexico Boundary. London and New York: Routledge.
Peluso, N. L. 1995. “Whose Woods are These? Counter-Mapping Forest Territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia.” Antipode 27 (4): 383–406. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.1995.tb00286.x
Schroeder, R. 2012. Holding the Line in the 21st Century. US Customs and Border Protection. Available online: https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Holding%20the%20Line_TRILOGY.pdf
Smith, N. 1992. “Real Wars, Theory Wars.” Progress in Human Geography 16 (2): 257–271. https://doi.org/10.1177/030913259201600208
Sundberg, J. 2008. “‘Trash-talk’ and the Production of Quotidian Geopolitical Boundaries in the USA–Mexico Borderlands.” Social and Cultural Geography 9 (8): 871–890. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360802441424
Sweeney, W. 2001. “US Border Patrol Maximizes Enforcement with GIS.” ArcNews Online, Fall. Available online: www.esri.com/news/arcnews/fall01articles/usborderpatrol.html
Tazzioli, M. 2015. “Which Europe? Migrants Uneven Geographies and Counter-Mapping at the limits of Representation.” Movements 1 (2):1–20.
Veal, W. 2003. “Protecting the Borders: GIS technology and Command/control optimization.” Police Chief 70 (6):41–42.
Wood, D. 2010. Rethinking the Power of Maps. New York: Guilford Press.
____. 2015. Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counter-Insurgency in the Americas. New York: Guilford Press.
Published
2017-07-12
Issue
Section
Forum
How to Cite
Stewart, H. E., Ostereicher, I., Gokee, C., & De Leon, J. (2017). Surveilling Surveillance: Countermapping Undocumented Migration in the USA-Mexico Borderlands. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 3(2), 159-174. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.31761
