A Geopolitics of Engagement: Neoliberalism, the War on Terrorism, and the Reconfiguration of US Immigration Enforcement

In addition to a geopolitics of containment model of immigration policing at the Mexico-US border, US immigration-related statecraft has incorporated a geopolitics of engagement model in which spaces previously at arms reach from US immigration authorities and at some remove from the border have been aggressively brought into the purview of US immigration enforcement. These newly engaged spaces are at once local (i.e., US cities) and regional (i.e., Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean Basin). This shift has in large part been a response to the tension between trade and security at the border, and thus allows us to see differently how statecraft is being multiplied, reactivated and transformed at and away from the border in light of the war on terrorism and its complex relationship with economic globalisation and the neoliberalisation of the Mexico-US border region.