Policing the Boundary and Bounding the Police: Fictitious Borders and the Making of Gendarmeries in North America

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article argues that the mismatch between the legal fictions of the boundaries separating the states of late nineteenth century North America and the reality of local trans-border life helped drive the militarization of borderlands policing. The form this militarization took, in turn, reflected administrative state development; that is, whether they were relatively unitary and centralized, like Canada, or whether they were marked by fragmentation and local autonomy, like Mexico and the US. I use the example of state gendarmeries – mounted, armed policing units combining military and law enforcement functions – to explore this claim.