The Anthropology Graduate Student Organization Presents: Dr. Randall McGuire

For most of the 20th century, the border cities of Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora formed the single transnational community of Ambos Nogales (Both Nogales). Today the people in Ambos Nogales nostalgically remember this border as a picket fence between neighbors. In themid-1990s, the United States tore down the picket fence and erected a steel wall to prevent undocumented migration and drug smuggling. In 2011, they erected a new steel wall. The rematerializationof the border through Ambos Nogales emerges dialectically from fortification and transgression. The wall is the most visible instrument of the United States’ militarization of the border, but it does not secure the border. While the wall was built to limit the agency of crossers it enables agency that the builders did not imagine or desire. The people of Ambos Nogales rematerialize the border in ways that contravene the interests of the nation states. This leads the nation state to rematerialize the border to counter this transgression.

In conjunction with: Department of Political Science, Citizenship and Civic Engagement Program, Department of History, and the Sociology Graduate Student Organization

For information on accessibility, or to request accommodation, please contact Mariel Rivera mriver02@syr.edu

This event is open to the public.