Modes of governance and the ethnography of activism at the Mexico-US border

Inspired by political philosophy, critical studies of border regimes often reduce human rights and relief work to some accomplice role in migratory control and surveillance. Drawing on ethnographic research on pro-migrant activism in Tijuana, a large city on Mexico’s northern border, I contrast such critical literature on border policies with an anthropological approach to the study of organizations and bureaucracies. In particular, drawing attention to activists as providers of goods and services enables us to deal with activism as an ensemble of concrete actors, institutions, and practices. The contradictory directives to which providers are subject, faced with inevitable conflicts, shifting alliances, and overlapping structures, are apparent in cases of co-production of services through complex forms of coordination between local authorities, civil associations, and international organizations. Revealing the political dimensions of service delivery—not reducible to domination—these assemblages of modes of governance are frequently oriented to cope with migrants’ immobility in cities like Tijuana, turned into places of indefinite delay by policies that extend the spaces of interception and expulsion to neighboring “transfer” countries.