From the Archive – The Border/ Josiah McC. Heyden
The U.S.–Mexico border wall is not just physical—it is also virtual. Virtual in this instance has two meanings, one narrower and one broader. More narrowly, the virtual wall involves applying advanced surveillance and computer technologies to border law enforcement. Ground-level radar can be used to detect movement; information processed through a computer model indicates if it is, say, a cow or a person, and if the latter, the direction the person is likely to move, given the terrain. More broadly, the virtual wall points to the massing of police forces, including military and intelligence agencies, in the border region, which presents a web of obstacles to northward movement of illegalized people and goods, obstacles that usually are overcome, but at great risk and cost. Physical walls and fences and the technological “wall” are parts of this wider development, and should be understood in these terms.
The physical walls and fences present visible symbols of the coercive side of U.S. immigration policy (enforcement against undocumented migration; of course, there is also extensive legal immigration). They are crudely imposed between twinned border communities with long-standing ties, and they insult Mexico by treating it as a threat rather than a partner. Thus, U.S. governmental and policy circles hope that a technological system will pose an invisible wall with the same enforcement effects but without the negative attention. Also, the virtual technological wall offers corporations huge governmental contracts, drawing Homeland Security into the costly military-industrial complex.
We do not, however, have to accept the “technological solution” discourse at face value. Jason Ackleson (2003, 2005a) has demonstrated that border-control technology claims are overstated and that they face significant limitations in implementation. My goal here is to widen this critique by asking how and why the broad pattern—the constructions of physical, technological, and mass law-enforcement walls, has occurred, and what are its contradictions and limitations. […]
