Divided by the Wall: Progressive and Conservative Immigration Politics at the US–Mexico Border

Abstract

In Divided by the Wall, Emine Fidan Elcioglu examines both progressive and conservative immigration politics in the US–Mexico borderlands. Through ethnographic fieldwork with activist organizations and interviews with participants, Elcioglu seeks to understand why people who, seemingly, have nothing to gain from immigration policy decided to devote their time and energy to pro- and anti-immigration activism. Elcioglu discovers that activists engaged in immigration politics to make sense of conflicting identities, leading to actions that felt personally transformative. Pro-immigrant activists contended with their position as progressive but privileged, while anti-immigrant activists contended with being white but working-class and downwardly mobile. These conflicting identities informed activists’ conceptions of state power, influenced their choice of organizations, and ultimately, shaped their understanding of their place in society. Elcioglu's interlocutors engaged in their activism in an ambiguous borderland, a frontier for self-actualizing and deep political activism (p. 39).Pro-immigrant activists viewed the state as an entity with the ability to wield coercive power against powerless Third World migrants. Elcioglu uses the state effect framework as a lens to view “the common thread that links together an extensive repertoire of practices among politically like-minded organizations” (p. 14). Thus, pro-immigrant activists endeavored to weaken the state through their organizations, because as white and progressive individuals they had both the power and moral obligation to intervene and advocate for Third World migrants. Their strategies included leaving jugs of water along known migrant trails, becoming watchdog groups attentive to Border Patrol abuses, and arming immigrants with the training and knowledge to protect themselves from the state. Their conception of the state as a powerful and coercive entity, coupled with an understanding of migrants as powerless and vulnerable, led pro-immigrant activists to refrain from ascribing agency to any border crosser, even ones engaged in illicit activities. They deflected accusations they were helping drug smugglers by arguing border crossers were only responding to conditions created by the United States.While pro-immigrant activists posited that the state effectively wielded coercive powers, for restrictionists unfettered border crossings by criminal Third World migrants rendered the state feeble and emasculated. These activists continually expressed feeling a loss of control over their lives due to their downward mobility, which helped foster “an acute desire for control” that they channeled into their work in the borderlands (p. 72). These activists projected their own feelings of inadequacy and marginalization onto a powerless state, confronting the friction between their racial entitlement and downward mobility. They focused their energy on strengthening that state's coercive capabilities by developing detection technologies, disrupting local recall efforts led by progressives, and patrolling common migrant trails and entry points. Restrictionists deflected accusations of racism by arguing they worked alongside state institutions like the Border Patrol and that the “real” racists were those fringe actors operating at the margins of society.By examining both progressive and conservative activism, Elcioglu seeks to understand not only why but also how people organize around immigration issues. The book's focus on participants’ class backgrounds, racial identities, and motivations underscores that their activism was “part of a project of remaking the self” (p. 11). The type of activism they pursued and the organizations they joined reflected both how they viewed their own social positions and how they viewed the state. Elcioglu's final assessment is that polarization around immigration is fundamentally about worsening inequalities and about local community's desires to respond to those inequalities. In order to go beyond arguments about building or tearing down walls, Elcioglu reminds us, we must address the underlying conditions of both inequality and insecurity that exacerbate the importance of immigration politics for people across society.