The geography of intent: The bodily implications of border surveillance technologies

Abstract

Though border scholars have long engaged in rigorous documentation of violence and death experienced by undocumented migrant travelers attributed to US border security policies, we have primarily focused on making these harms manifest. That has especially been true of scholarship employing methods of counterforensic documentation—methods turning the state's monopoly on forensic investigation of crimes towards the investigation of the state (cf. Weizman, 2017). The idea has been that manifestation and accompanying enumeration of violence and suffering would offer proof that border enforcement methods are violent, and that this documentation would compel a change to harmful policies. This goal has been stymied by how agencies charged with enforcing security deny their responsibility for death and injury, instead casting themselves as humanitarian saviors of border crossers at risk. In many ways, this palliates scholarly efforts where they appear in superficial consensus with these border agencies, even as the latter use this apparent consensus to deflect their own role in the violence that occurs. Mindful of these issues, this paper pioneers what we call a “geography of intent.” Plotting the geography of integrated fixed towers (IFTs)—border surveillance technology placed in remote wilderness settings—in relation to sources of safety and shelter, we reveal an intentional placement of this technology to deny access to the few life-saving resources in the dangerous wilderness zones into which migration has been intentionally corralled. This paper also offers a geostatistical vantage on the corporeal effects of this practice.