Surveilling Surveillance: Countermapping Undocumented Migration in the USA-Mexico Borderlands

doi:10.1558/jca.31761

Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, Vol 3, No 2 (2016)

Surveilling Surveillance: Countermapping Undocumented Migration in the USA-Mexico Borderlands

Haeden Eli Stewart, Ian Ostereicher, Cameron Gokee, Jason De Leon

Issued Date: 12 Jul 2017

Abstract

This paper examines how mapping technology is central to the operation of the United States Border Patrol security apparatus on the US/Mexico Border, and explores how the very same mapping technology can be used in critique this security project. Drawing on the concept of counter-mapping, we use spatial data collected by the Undocumented Migration Project – a long-term anthropological project aimed at understanding various elements of the violent social process of clandestine migration between Latin America and the United States – to critique the spatial ideology of PTD and the technological conditions of its production.

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DOI: 10.1558/jca.31761

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