Imagined Borders/Lived Ambiguity

Intersections of Repression and Resistance

Edited by B. Garrick Harden - Contributions by Hilario Molina II; Robert F. Carley; Ian Barnard; G. Dillon Nicholson; Ryan Ashley Caldwell; Eric Gamino; Juan José Bustamante; Jesús A. Garcia; Chad Richardson; Rogelio Saenz; Dejun Su and B. Garrick Harden

Imagined Borders/Lived Ambiguity: Intersections of Repression and Resistance examines the theoretical versatility of the concept of “borders.” The impulse to categorize, while present from antiquity in Western culture, has increased in intensity since the advent of the modern age with its corresponding political rise in the ideology of the sovereign nation-state. While immigration is the common mental image Westerners have when discussing borders, immigration is only the tip of the iceberg for this book. The belief in mutually exclusive, clear, and concrete categories creates large swathes of exceptions where people live ambiguous lives nationally, racially, sexually, ethnically, and in terms of gender.Identity is discussed in the book through the lens of borders and ambiguity. The fervor over categorization, best embodied in recent political history by the Trump administration in the United States, is both a desire to identify and control “dangerous” populations, but also creates the very ambiguity categorization is intended to alleviate. The volume weaves together discussions on the subjective meaning-making in ambiguity, policies that create ambiguity, historical creations of ambiguity that persist to the present, and theoretical considerations on the relationship between borders and ambiguity.

Lexington Books

Pages: 238 • Trim: 6½ x 9

978-1-4985-8099-1 • Hardback • June 2019 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-4985-8100-4 • eBook • June 2019 • $99.50 • (£77.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Emigration & Immigration, Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations, Social Science / Political Sociology, Social Science / Cultural Geography, Social Science / Sociology / Social Theory

Imagined Borders/Lived Ambiguity

Intersections of Repression and Resistance

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Imagined Borders/Lived Ambiguity: Intersections of Repression and Resistance examines the theoretical versatility of the concept of “borders.” The impulse to categorize, while present from antiquity in Western culture, has increased in intensity since the advent of the modern age with its corresponding political rise in the ideology of the sovereign nation-state. While immigration is the common mental image Westerners have when discussing borders, immigration is only the tip of the iceberg for this book. The belief in mutually exclusive, clear, and concrete categories creates large swathes of exceptions where people live ambiguous lives nationally, racially, sexually, ethnically, and in terms of gender.Identity is discussed in the book through the lens of borders and ambiguity. The fervor over categorization, best embodied in recent political history by the Trump administration in the United States, is both a desire to identify and control “dangerous” populations, but also creates the very ambiguity categorization is intended to alleviate. The volume weaves together discussions on the subjective meaning-making in ambiguity, policies that create ambiguity, historical creations of ambiguity that persist to the present, and theoretical considerations on the relationship between borders and ambiguity.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 238 • Trim: 6½ x 9

978-1-4985-8099-1 • Hardback • June 2019 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-4985-8100-4 • eBook • June 2019 • $99.50 • (£77.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Emigration & Immigration, Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations, Social Science / Political Sociology, Social Science / Cultural Geography, Social Science / Sociology / Social Theory

Author

B. Garrick Hardenis associate professor of sociology at Lamar University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

B. Garrick Harden

Chapter 1: A Note on How Historical Patterns of American Ideology Led to President Icarus

B. Garrick Harden

Chapter 2: Alie(N)ation: A Qualitative Multi-Method Approach to Language, Domination, and Unauthorized Migration

Hilario Molina II and Robert F. Carley

Chapter 3: Incest Rhetorics and Queerphobic Sex Panics

Ian Barnard

Chapter 4: A Queer Marxian Analysis of the Construction of Race in the US

G. Dillon Nicholson and B. Garrick Harden

Chapter 5: THE KEYS FOR LOCKS: Border Queers/Queer Borders or Community and Possibilities for Identity

Ryan Ashley Caldwell

Chapter 6: Refusing to Decompose: How Cyber-ojo Makes Indigenous Rituals Palatable to Modern Society

Hilario Molina II

Chapter 7: U.S.-Mexico Border Control: The Use of Deportation Threats as a Method of Enforcing Control on Residents in South Texas

Eric Gamino

Chapter 8: U.S. Immigration Enforcement by Proxy: The Making of a New South-to-South Border between Mexico and Central America

Juan José Bustamante

Chapter 9: Unauthorized Latino/a Migration in an Era of Global Displacement: A Mixed Methods and World-Systems Perspective

Hilario Molina II

Chapter 10: Assessing Assimilation in the Borderlands: How Rapidly Do Mexican Americans Assimilate?

Jesús A. Garcia, Chad Richardson, Rogelio Saenz, and Dejun Su

References

Reviews

What I especially appreciate about this timely assemblage is that it brings together various and varied cross-disciplinary approaches/perspectives to bear on the effects of borders, categories, categorizations—material and imaginary. These are thought-provoking, critical, not predictable interventions.
— Aneil Rallin, author of Dreads and Open Mouths: Living/Teaching/Writing Queerly

We live in a world in which not adhering to dominant ideas, identities, and politics have real, often severe, and in many instances deadly consequences. This volume offers an array of articles, synergistically aligned to challenge us to think about both the absurdity of borders and how they affect everyday people, especially those who do not fit neatly into prescribed boxes. Here is a timely and provocative book that goes where few academic books dare, but should. It is a book we should all have on our shelves, if only to offer alternative rigorous scholarship that re-centers itself on scholars (and scholarship) denied, ignored, or minimized. This is one book we should all be reading.
— David G. Embrick, University of Connecticut