From Paso del Norte to the Borderplex: Labor Devaluation, Bordering, and the Remaking of Uneven Development in the US–Mexico Borderlands

Abstract

Based on over two years of ethnographic research in the US–Mexico borderlands, this article examines how regional economic development actors work to position the border region as a competitive node in the global economy. In the context of the economic uncertainty generated by recent political and economic restructuring, like the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, actors deploy discourses of regionalism and practices of regional integration as part of an economic development strategy designed to foment both economic recovery and competitiveness. I argue that central to their efforts to promote a modern, seamlessly integrated binational border region to interested investors and employers is the maquiladora model of economic development. This is an economic development model built on (1) the long-term devaluation of industrial labor and (2) the active maintenance of the geopolitical border itself, as an institution reproductive of the racialized (and relational) hierarchies of value that underwrite the border region’s competitiveness. Engaging insights on capitalism’s uneven development from feminist economic geography and contributions from border studies, I suggest that an empirical engagement with the US–Mexico borderlands expands our geographic imagination of where, and how, racialized devaluation happens. Ultimately, taking regional actors and their economic development strategies and imaginaries seriously illuminates their ongoing importance in shaping regional economic trajectories, and therefore the well-being of border communities, now, and in the future.