Managing Security and Immigration at the U.S.–Mexico Border: A Foucauldian Perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the dual, yet contradictory roles of freedom and restriction that public administration plays at the U.S.–Mexico border. The state bureaucracy allows for the free circulation of capital and goods while it routinely limits the movement of people. Michel Foucault’s neoliberal state and his notion of governmentality as a unique type of rational governing practice shed light on this apparent dichotomy. This theoretical framework helps account for border enforcement as a part of a much larger political-economy phenomenon. Managerialism as neoliberal ideology falls short of its promise to reduce governmental functions, creating instead a massive bureaucratic presence in the border region. The latter’s pervasive emphasis on surveillance and discipline of human beings crossing the border holds little to no public accountability. Ethnographic research is vital to shed light on the blank spot in public administration and management in this region – public officials’ discretionary judgement in specific border-crossing situations.

KEYWORDS:

• Public management
• border policy
• security
• immigration
• bureaucracy
• governmentality
• US-Mexico border
• Foucault

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Traditionally owned by United States companies, maquiladoras originated in the border towns of northern Mexico in the late 1960s. Maquiladoras are manufacturing plants that produce goods for export and operate under preferential tariff programs in the United States and Mexico. They produce significant foreign exchange earnings for both countries.

2 According to F.A. Hayek, central planning and state intervention in economic affairs lead to a backward political order and societal subjugation, proposing instead, the Rule of law, or l’État de droit (Hayek 1994; Foucault 2008, 172–3).