Fantasies of Flows and Containment: The Technopolitics of Security Infrastructures in the Americas

Abstract

This contribution combines literature on logistics with literature on the articulation between racism and the securitisation of migration. Studying security infrastructures in Mexico in conjunction with the Mesoamerican Project, a massive transnational infrastructure plan, I show how security and trade infrastructures become intertwined in what governments have called a “secure trade corridor” between Colombia and the United States. In this securitised project of accelerating trade across the Americas, the promise of infrastructure itself is one of enabling flows and controlling the mobility of racialised others. The article describes how security infrastructures redirect and potentially revictimise migrants, contain contestation, and, ultimately, enable capital flows for corporations that provide technology at Mexico's northern and southern borders. Fantasies of containment materialise in wires, border posts, military posts, and even graves. Trade infrastructures also serve as “filters” for migration. Joining logistics and security studies allows us to observe how these different infrastructures simultaneously perform multiple functions.