Title: An infrastructure of grief: perspectives from a journey along the route of the real and imagined Texas-Mexico Wall

Authors: Nisha Toomey; Deanna Del Vecchio

Addresses: Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor St W, Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada ' Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor St W, Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada

Abstract: This article explores the effects of the border wall between the US and Mexico, from the perspectives of people living along it and through careful consideration of its effects on non-human persons. Two doctoral students travel 400 miles along the Rio Grande River, examining relationships to place in the US-Mexico borderlands through interviews with DACA recipients and their lawyer, environmentalists, and local hikers. Critical place inquiry foregrounds place as a methodology. Racial melancholia provides a framework for understanding how the border is imagined as necessary for the continuation of the settler colonial project, despite costs to diverse forms of life. Conclusions explore the nonsensical nature of the project of building a wall, the resistance to being categorised as static, and the physical and psychic violence caused by the restriction of movement.

Keywords: migration; border studies; Indigenous epistemologies; Black feminist geographies; racial melancholia; qualitative interviews; Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals; DACA; Texas; Mexico; border wall.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2019.102449

International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 2019 Vol.5 No.3, pp.212 - 231

Received: 09 Nov 2018
Accepted: 03 May 2019
Published online: 24 Sep 2019 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article