Tracing borderscapes in three recent documentaries on Central American migration

Abstract

Abstract This article looks at visual configurations of border landscapes and Central American migrant trajectories in three recent documentaries: Which Way Home (Cammisa, 2009), De Nadie/No One (Dirdamal, 2005) and Who is Dayani Cristal? (Silver and García Bernal, 2013). It examines elements pertaining to the representations of borders, space and identity to expand Shaw’s classification of the new sub-genre of migration films within the documentary. It also highlights the social configuration of space because of its relational construction and its production through practices of material engagement: ‘if time unfolds as change then space unfolds as interaction’. To this end, the spatial metaphor of the paratopia designates a negotiation of material and human relationality away from essentialist place/non-place thinking. This additionally leads to an examination of the migrant body as a depoliticized subject of which the visualization counters the stereotypical discourse of the migrant as a delinquent.