Deaths, Visibility, and Responsibility: The Politics of Mourning at the US-Mexico Border

• Published in: Social research 2016-07, Vol.83 (2), p.421-451
• Main Authors: Alonso, Alexandra Délano, Nienass, Benjamin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Austrian literature; Biopolitics; Border patrol; Border security; Boundaries; Casualties; Celan, Paul (1920-1970); Constraints; Criminal law; Death & dying; Deaths; Deterrence; Enforcement; Fences; Grief; Immigration; Jewish literature; Migrants; Migration; Mountains; Organized crime; Part IV: Burials, Cemeteries, and Public Grief; Politics; Prevention; Public policy; Romanian literature; Technology; Violence
• ISSN: 0037-783X; 1944-768X; 1944-768X
• DOI: 10.1353/sor.2016.0036

The so-called "funnel effect" is the result of the border enforcement policies that have led migrants to seek new routes to get to the US avoiding areas that since the mid-1990s have become more actively patrolled with border fences, technology, and personnel. (In recent years, the rise in drug cartel violence in Mexico has also contributed to the search for new routes and the shift away from areas controlled by organized crime in the northern border. The new routes go through the hot and remote terrain of the desert and mountains as well as dangerous river crossings left unpatrolled because they are considered natural barriers and deterrents by the US government. Designed as a policy of "prevention through deterrence", the main result of these border enforcement policies has not been a decrease in undocumented migration but rather an increased loss of human lives -- number of migrants dying from dehydration, heat stroke, hypothermia, and drowning has increased sharply since 1995.