Queering the Law: Tracing Resistance at the Border

There is a significant amount of work tracing laws and the climate they create for Latinos/as in the United States. Laws throughout border states have become more aggressive and problematic for undocumented people, while... [ view full abstract ]

There is a significant amount of work tracing laws and the climate they create for Latinos/as in the United States. Laws throughout border states have become more aggressive and problematic for undocumented people, while Latinos/as in the United States more generally face increased surveillance and suspicion by law enforcement officials. The ability for the United States government to arrest and detain Latinos/as grows progressively more unchecked and dangerous, with allowances for arrests based solely on vague wording such as “reasonable suspicion,” all for the ambiguous excuse of fighting risks to the nation associated with terrorism. In contrast, an increasing number of laws and policies are being passed that give limited rights or privileges back to immigrants, such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). These laws seem to counter the anti-immigrant sentiment present in the United States, but the requirements one must meet to gain access to these benefits, such as being under a certain age and having potential as a laboring body, suggest that the focus remains on filtering out unwanted or unproductive immigrants and assimilating those who can contribute to the United States as an exploited laboring body.

This paper critiques the use of genealogies of law as a method through which to study immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. Starting with an examination of analyses of American laws targeting the border, the paper looks at the production of different immigrant figures that emerge, such as the undocumented immigrant, the documented immigrant, and the DREAMer. Tracing the law provides an important tracking of the political climate for immigrants entering the United States at the border, but this emphasis upon the law silences immigrant voices in the ways that it shifts the focus away from the immigrant and towards the law. This paper seeks to explore the potentialities of legal analysis and looks at the ways in which responses to the law should be brought into this conversation to re-center the Latino body. To accomplish this re-centering, I focus on tracing protests and responses to the laws by those they seek to contain, and reframe this genealogy as one of solidarity, protest, and “incivility.” Specifically, I focus on this concept of “incivility” in the context of oppressive and neoliberal laws and use the work of scholars such as Eithne Luibéid to explore the ways in which the path to citizenship is queered through protest and resistance.