Places, Violence and Response-ability

Abstract

This chapter explores the significance of the desert to the contemporary politics of mobility, by examining humanitarian water drops across the Sonoran borderzone. Leaving water for migrants in the desert contests biophysical violence, which Squire defines as a form of violence that involves socialphysical forces that act directly on the biological constitution of migrating bodies. However, activists have also been challenged on the grounds of ‘humanitarian littering’ when leaving water for migrants in the desert. This chapter examines several legal cases in order to show how water drops entail a struggle over ‘the human’ as a political stake. It considers water drops as interventions that engage an extended response-ability, and that as such transform the desert into a more human/e place.