The dissertation, based on fieldwork from September 2006 to September 2007, ethnographically examines the multiple meanings of illegality and how notions of illegality permeate, and at times govern, social, political, and economic life at the Mexico-Guatemala border. By focusing on the residents of a clandestine border crossing, I question the term, "illegality," arguing that the socio-economic relations engendered by illegal practices may generate new forms of law, economy, and moral norms. I situate the study of (il)legality in theories of neoliberalism, "moral economy," and law and corruption. Rather than deriving conceptualizations of justice from the law, I suggest that people may create such norms and notions of belonging by engaging in officially illegal, yet acceptable, practices. This is especially the case when individuals recognize that the state and its laws are often the source of injustice and inequality. The dissertation depicts the contestation of (il)legality in five chapters, including (1) the (il)legal practices individuals use to claim national and ethnic identities at the border; (2) the regional and national context of (il)legality in the borderlands and the establishment of community-run tollbooths that interact with the official border to determine the practice of legality, development and security; (3) the local appropriation of neoliberal discourses of "free trade" and "rights" to justify a moral economy of contraband based on corn; (4) the local social and transnational market realities that inform the organization of contraband; (5) the internal disputes developing over who determines the meanings of "legality" and "rights." Border residents capitalize on the ambiguities of illegality to create opportunities, while state officials draw on "a culture of illegality" to justify increasing militarization and the inherent "uncontrollability" of border residents' illegal activities. Local, and even official, designations of legality were never straightforward, but reflected shifting ideas of rights, ethics, and identity that are developing in a border region amidst transnational flows of commodities, ideas, and people. By examining the daily relations between border residents, state agents, farmers, formal-sector companies, and smugglers, the dissertation illustrates how illegality produces and reconstitutes gendered, ethnic, and class inflected subjectivities.
Galemba, Rebecca Berke,
"Cultures of Contraband: Contesting Illegality at the Mexico-Guatemala Border"
(2009).
Anthropology Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0JH3JFS
