“We Are Family”—Lakou Security in the Dominican-Haitian Borderland

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Dominican-Haitian borderland, I depict various security practices of the local population to minimize everyday insecurities caused by structural, physical, epistemic, and racial state violence and a restrictive border regime. By focusing on mixed Dominican-Haitian households, I show how the local socio-politically and economically marginalized population has developed strategic cross-border kin relations that are based on a place-specific form of creating “kin” and thus “family” to ensure a secure life across generations. I present these kin-making strategies and their related security practices as “ Lakou security” and argue for their long history dating back to colonial times. This article introduces kinship as security from the margins and calls for a greater focus on cultural and place-specific forms of making relationships or kin in anthropological security studies.