Abstract
This chapter examines the relationships among immigration, conservation, and security efforts in Cabeza Prieta. Security and conservation programs have coevolved through connections among shared actors, physical space, and efforts to control the landscape. Each process—conservation and security—derives from a perception of threat and contributes to the belief that the threat from the south is increasing. Thus, it is important to pay attention to the ways in which racial and ethnic stereotypes affect conservation science and policy in border regions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Note that this book is based on a research between 2007 and 2009. The number of border-crossings dropped substantially during the recession years (until 2011) began to rise again in the following decade, then leveled off in the Trump era. There are currently no known measures of the actual number of people crossing through Cabeza Prieta each year, only estimates. Typically, the number of the border-crossers tracks with the strength of the U.S. economy.
- 2.
As of March 2016, 652 miles of fencing exist on the U.S.-Mexico border and 300 miles are vehicle barriers. Vehicle barriers typically stand 3–4 feet high. “Vehicle fencing, which is intended to resist vehicles engaged in drug trafficking and alien smuggling operations, is typically used in rural or isolated locations that have a low occurrence of illegal pedestrian traffic” (U.S. GAO 2017).
- 3.
Geiser is referring to the forest bureaucracy in northwest Pakistan in this quote but I find it relevant to border conservation in the United States.
References
Annerino, J. (1999). Dead in Their Tracks: Crossing America’s Desert Borderlands. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows.
Cederlof, G., & Sivaramakrishnan, K. (2006). Ecological Nationalism: Nature, Livelihoods and Identities in South Asia. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
Chavez, L. (2008). The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Coates, P., Cole, T., Dudley, M., & Pearson, C. (2011). Defending Nation, Defending Nature? Militarized Landscapes and Military Environmentalism in Britain, France and the United States. Environmental History, 16, 456–491. https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/emr038.
Conca, K., & Dabelko, G. (2002). Environmental Peacemaking. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.
Cornelius, W. (2001). Death at the Border: Efficacy and Unintended Consequences of U.S. Immigration Control Policy. Population and Development Review, 27(4), 661–685.
De León, J. (2015). The Land of the Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Dunn, T. (2009). Blockading the Border and Human Rights: The El Paso Operation That Remade Immigration Enforcement (1st ed., Inter-America Series). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Foucault, M., Senellart, M., Ewald, F., & Fontana, A. (2007). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978. New York, NY: Picador/Palgrave Macmillan.
Geiser, U. (2006). Contested Forests in Northwest Pakistan: The Bureaucracy Between the “Ecological,” the “National,” and the Realities of a Nation’s Frontier. In G. Cederlof & K. Sivaramakrishnan (Eds.), Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods and Identities in South Asia. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
Kosek, J. (2004). Purity and Pollution: Racial Degradation and Environmental Anxieties. In R. Peet & M. Watts (Eds.), Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements. London and New York: Routledge.
Kuletz, V. (1998). The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social Ruin in the American West. New York: Routledge.
Martínez, O. J. (2006). Troublesome Border. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
McCarthy, J. (2001). States of Nature and Environmental Enclosures in the American West. In N. Peluso & M. Watts (Eds.), Violent Environments. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Mccombs, B. (2010, September 4). 55-gallon Drums for Migrants Are OK’d, but Rules Will Be Strict US Allows New Water Stations by Border. Arizona Daily Star.
McIntyre, D., & Weeks, J. (2002). Environmental Impacts of Illegal Immigration on the Cleveland National Forest in California. The Professional Geographer, 54(3), 392–405.
Neumann, R. (2005). Making Political Ecology. London: Hodder Headline Group.
Nevins, J. (2002). Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge.
Pirages, D., & Manley DeGeest, T. (2004). Ecological Security: An Evolutionary Perspective on Globalization. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Regan, M. (2010). The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands. Boston: Beacon Press.
St. John, R. (2011). Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sundberg, J. (2008). ‘Trash-Talk’ and the Production of Quotidian Geopolitical Boundaries in the USA–Mexico Borderlands. Social and Cultural Geography. https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rscg20.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (2007). Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plan Wilderness Stewardship Plan and Environmental Impact Statement. Albuquerque, New Mexico.
United States Government Accountability Office. (2017, February). Southwest Border Security: Additional Actions Needed to Better Assess Fencing’s Contribution to Operations and Provide Guidance for Identifying Capability Gaps (GAO-17-331). https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/682838.pdf.
Urban, J. L. (2008). Nation, Immigration and Environmental Security. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Urrea, L. A. (2004). The Devil’s Highway: A True Story. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Meierotto, L. (2020). A Disciplined Space. In: Immigration, Environment, and Security on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31814-7_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31814-7_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31813-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31814-7
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)