Road Signs on the Border

Abstract

This article considers the political impact of a series of billboards that appeared at the Windsor–Detroit border and the Tijuana–San Ysidro border between 1991 and 2007. While there is a significant asymmetry between the political tensions on the northern and southern borders of the United States, there are remarkable parallels and relays between events that have taken place in major cities on these borders that indicate that generalized border anxiety has spread far beyond the localized territory of the southern borderlands. In this heightened climate of border insecurity, artists and community groups have seized on the geopolitical confusion that has emerged in mainstream American media where issues such as terrorism and illegal migration have often been folded into the same discourse. While border regions are tightly controlled spaces, these projects have served to highlight contradictory narratives of globalization and security, unmasking national insecurities that have been submerged through the bureaucratic discourses of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the more recent Smart Border agreements.