Frontier Government: The Folding of the Canada-US Border

Willem de Lint; Daniel O'Connor

Studies in Social Justice (Oct 2009)

Frontier Government: The Folding of the Canada-US Border

Willem de Lint,
Daniel O'Connor

Affiliations

Willem de Lint
Daniel O'Connor

Journal volume & issue: Vol. 3, no. 1
pp. 39 – 66

Abstract

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In this paper the border is evaluated as a fold of power relations in which sovereign capacity and competence is marshalled alongside strategies of control, surveillance, and risk management to constitute, what we call, a zone of frontier government. We advance the argument that the border is a site for both negative and positive power, for insertion and subtraction, and that the assemblage of surveillance and compliance regimes are "run" not so much in the furtherance of a precautionary or pre-emptive end-state, but as intermediate values that are sufficiently malleable by an invigorated sovereign, expressed in the residue of discretion in and between the many border agencies. Our analysis is based on extensive policy and program documents, as well as twenty-five interviews with officials in various agencies engaged in the US-Canada and, particularly, the Windsor-Detroit corridor.

Published in Studies in Social Justice

ISSN: 1911-4788 (Online)
Publisher: Brock University
Country of publisher: Canada
LCC subjects: Social Sciences: Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
Website: https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/SSJ

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