An Extraordinary Ride to the Other Side: Border Fantasies and Fuckeries in the Context of Sanctioned Crossings

An Extraordinary Ride to the Other Side: Border Fantasies and Fuckeries in the Context of Sanctioned Crossings

Presented by the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society

Every year, an estimated 200 million sanctioned crossings take place across 27 pedestrian and vehicular ports of entry at the US-Mexico border. Based on four years of ethnographic field-work (2017-2021), this talk will discuss how Mexican nationals, who spend a small fortune securing access into the US in order to shop for clothing, groceries, and home goods, grapple with the US-Mexico border’s functional capacity to disrupt their lives in terrifying and unknowable ways. Yet, not all is terror in the lives of my interlocutors. There are joys, desires, and fantasies activated by border-crossing, otherwise, why do it? In addition to unpacking the types of fuckeries unleashed by the border, this talk explores sanctioned travels into the US by paying close attention to the ways Mexican nationals conceive of border-crossings through fantastical narratives. Of particular interest is a fantasy professed by many interlocutors: that obtaining a Border Crossing Card, and thereby gaining sanctioned access into the US, may radically better one’s social standing in Mexico. Additional meaning-making layers reveal other fantasies: that the food is better, the grass greener, and the air just nicer a mere three feet North. Remarkably, these fantasies open-up social avenues for travelers to engage-with and relate-to the world in radically different ways according to geographical location.