On the Possibility of Imagining an Open Border

Bibliographic Data

ID2290629
AuthorsR Yeh (0000-0003-1818-8059, El Colegio de Michoacán)
Year2017
Volume40
Issue2
Pages295-310
Publication date2017-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePoLAR Political and Legal Anthropology Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1081-6976 • E-ISSN: 1555-2934
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/plar.12221
OpenAlexW2769346802
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited26

In Tijuana, Mexico, middle-class desires for an open border with neighboring San Diego, California, are riddled with tensions and contradictions that derive from the way in which local ideals of citizenship are entangled with securitized US entry protocols: legal access to the US is basic for local belonging. This article examines the limitations that haunt both these tijuanenses' nostalgic memories of free passage in the past and their projects to reestablish it in the future. The most glaring contradiction, I argue, lies in the forgetting of the predicament of those without authorization to cross the border, even as expedited legal passage is invested with political hopes for a more just future. The article focuses on young, highly binational professionals, whose socioeconomic and legal privilege puts them in the vanguard of the tensions of an emerging global regime of citizenship to which "flexible" borders are key

Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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