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What do I mean by Border Thinking?

The idea is best exemplified in Gloria Anzaldúa’s inspiring book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, which was published in 1987. Gloria was raised in a geographical border region, Texas-México and can be called Chicana, a label for people born in the United States of Mexican heritage. She spent her life trying to figure out how a mestizo, or mixed, identity might help overcome national, confrontational politics. In 2000, Walter Mignolo, a Latino academic in the US, used the term border thinking to mean the conscious effort we must make to overcome any easy oppositions between dominant and dominated cultures (in Local Histories/Global Designs).

Migrants are commonly seen as both unwanted intruders and powerless victims, but my own ideas work to break down this duality and think about power in different ways. One of my publications in 2008 is entitled Border Thinking. For the most complete treatment of the subject, read Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry.

Why Migration?

When I began writing about migration I thought I was writing about my friends and family and why their motivations were misunderstood by media, governments, feminists, social projects and academics in the first world. Later, I realised I was also writing about myself. My point of view is rarely heard in public, but many people tell me that they share it. So I decided to make my work more available.

Why Sex?

It was obvious to me from the beginning that most treatments of migration ignored sex and sexuality. In order to study migrants who wind up selling sex, I needed to take an anthropological view, which tries to leave moralising aside. Most of my writings demonstrate this way of thinking, which is not objective (because I don’t believe in pure objectivity) but embodies a different morality, or what Arturo Escobar called a different ‘ethics of concern’. Besides, our societies continue to be obsessed with everything sexual, and particularly with the exchange of money for sex, and I keep wondering why.

Why Informal Economies?

Most talk about sex-and-money revolves around one of the easy oppositions that border thinking tries to resist: prostitution as violence against women versus sex work as a job option. My ideas don’t fall into either category but rather wander about in the middle, in the grey areas, in the temporary elements of migratory life. In the process of migrating, most people run into opportunities to work in jobs not included in formal, official accounting and lists. These are jobs for which income is not declared and taxes are not paid, or which occupy some twilight status. Such jobs often mean no rights for workers, who must accept whatever bosses offer. Unless governments officially recognise businesses, neither owners nor workers can enjoy both the rights and responsibilities of the formal economy. This is a fundamental issue underlying the vulnerability of migrants who can easily find jobs outside their own countries – and who therefore understand that their labour is needed – but who cannot become official residents or citizens based on their employment.

Why isn’t ‘No Borders’ the Solution?

I would prefer to live in such a utopian world, but as I wrote earlier this year

To say ‘Let there be no borders’ is like saying let’s do away with traffic regulations, allowing unlicensed drivers to go as fast or slow as they want on streets with no stoplights, lanes or marked exits. To state the utopian goal is one thing; to figure out how to keep order afterwards is another. And to position ourselves as free of any necessity to differentiate ourselves from others by accusing the men in suits is to avoid the harder truth that we are all implicated in these oppressive cultures and that we often benefit from them.

This is an example of border thinking.

What about Policy? Regulation? The Law? Structural Inequalities?

They all come into play in my work, but border thinking shifts them from their usual central locations into the margins and puts questions about culture and sociality in the centre. Usually. I’m not promising total consistency.

Laura María Agustín

August 2008