Missions of the Border

http://ant.sagepub.comAnthropological Theory

DOI: 10.1177/1463499604042811 2004; 4; 131 Anthropological Theory

Michael Kearney The Classifying and Value-Filtering Missions of Borders

http://ant.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/2/131 The online version of this article can be found at:

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

can be found at:Anthropological Theory Additional services and information for

http://ant.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts:

http://ant.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

http://ant.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/4/2/131 Citations

by Ras Roger on April 29, 2009 http://ant.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Anthropological Theory

Copyright 2004 SAGE Publications(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)

www.sagepublications.comVol 4(2): 131156

DOI: 10.1177/1463499604042811

131

The classifying andvalue-filtering missionsof bordersMichael KearneyUniversity of California, Riverside, USA

AbstractUsing examples of migration of Mixtecs from Oaxaca and of Mexican nationals ingeneral across the USMexican border, this article explores and illustrates theproposition that the political importance of social borders varies directly with thedegree to which they serve two basic missions. The first of these missions isclassificatory in the sense of defining, categorizing, and otherwise affecting theidentities that are circumscribed and divided by borders and that cross them. Suchkinds of identities are ethnicity, nationality, the cultural experience, markers of socialclass and so on. The second mission is also classificatory, but in the sense of affectingthe economic CLASS positions and relationships of migrants who cross borders. Thissecond mission of borders is effected by differentially filtering and transforming formsof economic value that flow across them and between identities defined by them. It isargued that these two complementary processes classification of identities andCLASSification (uneven value exchange) are the primary de facto missions ofsignificant borders.

Key Wordsborders class identity migration Mixtec value

Four leading scholars of borders and border areas Robert Alvarez, Hastings Donnan,Josiah Heyman, and Thomas Wilson focus our primary attention as anthropologistson the political ecology of formal geopolitical borders rather than metaphoric culturalborders.1 This theme is also the main concern of this article, but, like Alvarez, Donnan,Heyman, and Wilson, I am also concerned with cultural borders that demarcate iden-tities such as nationality, citizenship, ethnicity, and so forth. A border in this case theUSMexican border so defined in both senses, is a composite geographic, legal, insti-tutional, and sociocultural structure and process. Understanding of this complex wholerequires an integrated holistic anthropological approach that combines and transcendsthe particular interests of more focused disciplinary concerns such as those of political

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 131


science, sociology, law, economics, and cultural studies. Thus, a major task of such arobust anthropology is to explore how the two types of borders the geopolitical andthe cultural are related. This article explores such integration in the case of theUSMexican border and does so by examining two effects of this border, namely howit classifies identities and how it moderates cross-border flows of forms of economicvalue. The border in this extended sense is thus not just the boundary line demarcatingthe United States and Mexico, but also the immense bureaucratic, law enforcement,political, and sociocultural apparatus that formally and informally defines it and personswho are divided by it and who cross it.

The analysis offered here requires that we distinguish borders, as just discussed, fromboundaries. Such a distinction is necessary to enhance ethnographic description andanalytic power (see Kearney, 1991). Here it is important to note that a border is a vaguelydefined area that exists on both sides of a boundary. As used here, boundaries are theimaginary lines, running through borders, that states draw to demarcate their territories.As such, boundaries of states have deep legal and psychological significances for the defi-nition not only of territory demarcated by them, but also for conceptual definitions ofidentity such as citizenship, foreigner, alien and so on. Borders may or may notinclude boundaries, and here it is important to note that the USMexican border is tran-sected by two boundaries: one drawn and defined by Mexico and the other drawn anddefined by the United States. We can refer to them, respectively, as the MexicoUSboundary and the USMexican boundary.

In this article, we are concerned with the USMexican boundary and with migrationacross it from Mexico into the United States.2 While the US and the Mexican bound-aries coincide geometrically, they differ greatly in how they are defined and managedwithin their respective national legal systems and national sensibilities. These twodifferent boundaries have distinctly different influences on the greater border area. Thus,it is important to note that crossing the border in one direction is not the same ascrossing it in the other, since the border has the two different boundaries and regimesof power, noted earlier, which profoundly shape the experience of entry into and exitfrom their respective national spaces.

The theoretical model presented in this article is substantiated by Heymans exten-sive ethnographic research on and analysis of the policies and practices of the USImmigration and Naturalization Service at the USMexican border and related issues,which the reader is encouraged to consult (e.g. Heyman, 1991, 1994, 1995, 1998a,1998b and especially 2001). This model is intended as a step toward a method andtheory for the comparative anthropology of borders and their boundaries, and morespecifically as a presentation of the hypothesis that significant borders effect certainunequal exchanges of economic value between types of persons and regions defined by theboundaries in question. In both cases, in the example offered here, the uneven exchangeof value is effected by migration across the boundary from a sending to a receivingarea.

This terminology, which is common in the migration literature, refers to regions thatsend and receive migrants. Herein I extend these terms to refer to uneven exchangesof economic value between such regions and between migrants and residents belongingto them. This theoretical perspective draws on theories of colonial and other forms ofunequal exchange between regions. Such uneven transactions are mediated by various

ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY 4(2)

132

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 132


mechanisms such as mercantilist policies, tariffs, interest payments on national loans andthe taking of profits by multinational corporations. Here, however, we are concernedwith how the functioning of borders and migration across them may also affect such netinter-personal and inter-regional transfers of value.

In order to work toward a more productive definition of borders, I would like topropose that boundaries and their corresponding border regimes have two mainmissions. The first of these missions is classificatory in the sense of defining, categoriz-ing and otherwise affecting the identities of persons who are circumscribed and dividedby borders and who cross them. Such kinds of identity are ethnicity, nationality, thecultural experience, markers of social class and so on. The second mission is also clas-sificatory, but in the sense of affecting the economic CLASS positions and relationshipsof migrants who cross borders (see later). This second mission of borders is effected bydifferentially filtering and transforming forms of economic value that flow across them.I contend that these two complementary processes the two senses of classification are the primary de facto missions of significant borders. Accordingly, the border policiesand bordering practices of a nation-state can be seen as means to obtain a net flow ofeconomic value across its border into its territory by variable classification in the twosenses noted here.3

The proposition that borders have specific missions is suggested by James Fernandezs(1974) discussion of the mission of metaphors. Fernandezs article was written beforeand indeed anticipated current interest in how identities and cultural borderlands (e.g.Rosaldo, 1989) are constructed. And whereas much of the current interest in identityand identity politics takes a cultural studies or postmodern turn that considers identi-ties to be arbitrary cultural constructions, Fernandezs theory of metaphor reveals howa seemingly random bricolage of identities is indeed based on concrete aspects of thematerial world. He thus presents a theory of cultural construction that links theconstructions to material referents. The approach to bordered identities presented herealso pushes into the material underpinnings of identity formation and their corre-sponding and necessary relation to class differentiation. Thus, in a manner similar to theway in which Fernandezs metaphors have as their primary mission the concretization ofidentities that would not otherwise exist, so do I propose that borders have similarmissions that are indispensable in the political economy of nation-states.4 Here again itmust be emphasized that these missions, which in final analysis are primarily economic,are fulfilled by the power of borders to shape the cultural construction of the identitiesof persons who are encompassed and excluded by them, who cross them, and who areotherwise defined by them. Another border strategy of mature and emergent nation-states is to seek to relocate their boundaries so as to redefine territory and populations.This type of geopolitical border dynamics is beyond the scope of this article.

IDENTITIES, BORDERS, ORDERSTo begin to address the classificatory and value-filtering missions of borders I wouldlike to offer a conceptual framework. For several years I participated in an inter-national workshop that devised a useful triad of terms specifically identities, bordersand orders, or IBO (see Figure 1).5 One may foreground any member of this triad andexamine it in its mutually constitutive relationship with the others. Thus, I amfocusing here on the USMexican border, but am doing so with a concern with

KEARNEY The filtering missions of borders

133

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 133


political order, namely, aspects of the nation-state such as immigration law, policy,theory and research, and culturally constructed identities, for example citizens, legalresidents and illegals.

A basic assumption of this triad is that, in specific cases, each of its components isshaped by its relationship to the other two. Thus, an identity is a culturally constructeddimension of personhood (Kearney, 1996: 13740). Two relevant critical points here arethat identity is shaped in some measure by being within a border or by crossing a border.Thus, in terms of formal legal classification, on one side of the MexicanUS border somepersons may be Mexican nationals, but on the other side they may be Mexican nation-als who are also undocumented immigrants, or legal residents, or non-immigrantvisitors, and potentially US citizens (see Heyman, 2001).

These formal, legal identities coexist and interact in complex ways with informal,popular patterns of sociocultural classification in a process that is integral to the overalldynamics of bordering. Thus, in this broader classificatory practice, a border crosserlegally defined as an undocumented immigrant is apt to be informally identified as andto self-identify by the popular term illegal alien. The application of this folk categoryto persons who technically might be undocumented immigrants or legal permanentresidents, or even citizens defies the legal principle of a presumption of innocence priorto the proving of guilt. But as Heyman (1991, 1994, 1998a, 2001) shows, such informalclassification, pervasive as it is, is a major component of the overall classificatory prac-tices concerning immigrants in US society. Another example of how attribution ofterms reveals common assumptions about identities is the pervasive use of immigrationand immigrant in speaking of border crossings and border crossers in innumerable caseswhen it would be ethnographically more accurate to refer to migration and migrant. Theformer terms are consistent with widespread popular assumptions that most illegal aliensare illegal immigrants, that is, persons who have come to stay, rather than, perhaps,temporary and circular border crossers.

As for orders, implied in order, is the exercise of official and non-official forms of powerto make territorial distinctions that is, to draw, define, and manage borders on the earththat affect identities. Thus, according to this usage, the boundary aspect of a border is ademarcation that both gives shape to nation-states, and other territorial entities, and thathas the power to define the identities of persons who cross them, are bounded by them,


134

Figure 1. IdentitiesBordersOrders.

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 134


and excluded by them. A border also demarcates the internal domain within which thisorder has the power to construct and define legitimate identities as contrasted with illegitimate ones, for example undocumented. Furthermore, a border has this effectbecause there is some constellation of formal and informal power, that is to say, somepolitical order, that constructs and enforces borders so that they function in this manner.In addition to drawing and managing geopolitical borders, orders, in both their formalinstitutional forms and their more everyday informal popular forms (as the languageusages noted earlier), also shape the identities of persons divided by and crossing borders.By the same token, orders such as nation-states are largely defined by being borderedvis--vis other orders. Hence, each of the three terms of the triad (Figure 1) shapes theother two (see Lapid, 2001).

By bringing together its elements IBO is an advance on border theory. It generatesimportant questions about borders and leads to powerful analysis. It does not, however,lead us to ask why, at any moment in its history, a border assumes the political signifi-cance and forms that it does. What I propose is that the IBO triad lacks the theoreticalpower to do so because it is not yet sufficiently anthropological to deal with questionsof cross-border flows of value and economic class that are the concerns of this article.Nor, would I submit, does it enable an incisive history of the present USMexicanborder that explains the markedly different forms and functions that the border has hadat different historic moments since its formation in 1848.6

With its relational dynamics, the IBO model makes a significant conceptual contri-bution that is much more than the sum of its parts. But seen from an anthropologicalperspective, IBO is basically a folk model, in other words, a construct conceptualizedwithin the same basic sociology and politics of knowledge that shape and define its indi-vidual components. As a concept its language and theoretical perspective are essentiallycoterminous with popular speech and folk categories, and thus not sufficiently displacedfrom its subject of investigation to be able to comprehensively envision it in a deeperanthropological sense. In other words, the language of IBO derives primarily from thedisciplines of political science, international relations, and geography, which themselvesare intimately imbricated in the language, culture, and politics of the nation-states thatthey seek to investigate. Thus, to the large degree that the aforementioned academicdisciplines, like national borders, are artifacts of the state and popular culture, they donot have sufficient social and intellectual displacement from the state and from popularculture to be able to gain a comprehensive vision of themselves and their artifacts, suchas the borders that they, as a complex order, create.7

A stronger version of this theoretical position is that because the language and modelsof political science and international relations are closely related to the language andstructure of the state, their use functions in the construction and constitution thereproduction of the same identities, borders, and orders that they study. That is, manyof the terms, concepts, and data employed in the social science discourse are basicallythe same terms and concepts as those used by the subjects of investigation politicians,bureaucrats, and the public. Thus, I propose as a working assumption that much main-stream sociology, political science, economics, and some anthropological approaches tomigration and border studies employ terminology and implicit cultural assumptions thatunderlie and inform the political order of their respective nation-states, including theirborders, identities, and immigration policies. If this is so, then research and analysis based


135

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 135


on such assumptions participate in the construction of the phenomena that they seek tostudy.8

This strong version of the theory is suggested by Corrigan and Sayers (1985) analysisof the role of government institutions and practices in state formation and goes beyondit by suggesting that institutionalized social sciences especially those social sciences thathave close connections with government participate in the formation of constructsthat are integral components and practices of the state and of popular culture, which inturn are the institutional and quotidian sociocultural matrices in which the socialsciences are embedded and shaped (Abrams, 1988). Similarly, an applied anthropology to the degree that it is in the service of some official government entity and seeking topromote its projects via social engineering also no doubt employs and reifies the officialand popular terms, categories, and social identities, and as such perpetuates the hegem-onic system of classification of those identities.

The approach taken here and held to be necessary for a more objective scientificmethod is to seek a socio-semantic displacement to a more inclusive theoretical vantagepoint that takes the official terms of identity more as objects to be analyzed, rather thanas the basic categories of analysis and policy. For if indeed most scholarship about bordersand migration is developed within and is an expression of a national political sociologyof knowledge, then what is called for is a sociology or better said, an anthropology of knowledge that examines the ideological dispositions and corresponding theoreticaland methodological assumptions of the prevalent sociological, economic, and politicalscience approaches to migration.9 To achieve such a theoretical shift we need a displace-ment of theory construction to a different social-intellectual space that enjoys some rela-tively greater degree of freedom from the political discourses of nation-states than is thecase with most conventional migration theory. In a word, we need to theorize moreanthropologically; we must disentangle theory from affairs of the state, including itsdisciplines and their language.10 Such displacement is necessary for the advancement ofa more conceptually emancipated anthropology, that is, an anthropology that attainsgreater distance from specific local social contexts and their corresponding world viewassumptions as they are inscribed in, for example, language specific constellations ofIBO.

Such displacement is facilitated by an anthropological perspective that envisions spaceand social processes transnationally. Indeed anthropology is the premiere transnationaldiscipline by virtue of its distinctive sociology of knowledge and its focus on communi-ties beyond the national borders of its own institutional centers. In spite of some of thecolonial origins of anthropology and some linguistic traces of them (Kearney, 1996:2630), it more than any other discipline has achieved a transborder sociology of know-ledge that best enables the displacement of theory from national institutional andhegemonic semantic contexts to other social and conceptual fields. It is with the intentof further advancing such anthropological displacement to another different sociologyof knowledge of borders that I propose a second triad of terms CLASSValueField,or CVF as a complement to the first. When combined, the two triads of conceptsconstitute a paradigm that interrelates all six terms. Whereas most research on migra-tion across borders is written mainly with the terminology of, and from the perspectiveof, the first triad (Figure 1), herein I am attempting to extend this work into the theor-etical and practical realms of the second triad (Figure 2). The basic proposition here is


136

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 136


that a robust anthropology of migration must attend to and integrate the concerns ofboth triads.

VALUE, CLASS, FIELDI was led to devise this second triad because of a notable missing element in the firsttriad and the rich discussions and research that it generates, namely class a term withtwo fundamentally distinct meanings, which are distinguished by reference to Figure3.11 In common speech and most social science language, class refers to cultural charac-teristics of persons and groups that roughly correspond to their occupations and incomelevels. In this sense it is appropriate to speak of, for example, working-class culture orelite-class identity, whereby such features are reflected in, among other ways, style ofspeech and cultural tastes. This meaning of class refers to a socially acquired culturallyconstructed component of a persons or groups overall identity, comparable to otherdimensions of their identity such as their gender, ethnicity, race, nationality and so on(Figure 3) and as such belongs to the IBO triad (Figure 1).12

CLASS AND classIn contrast to class as used earlier in the usual sense of an identity, such as working class,capitalist class, peasant and so on, is its usage as introduced here, and that is the senseof class as a relationship and a process. It is this dynamic sense of CLASS (written withcapital letters to distinguish it from the other senses) that is used in the CVF Triad(Figure 2). The nature of this CLASS process is relationships of unequal exchange ofeconomic value among the identities positioned in fields in which value is unevenly produced,consumed, and exchanged. Thus, whereas class identities are culturally constructedfeatures of persons and groups, what I propose to call their CLASS nature is, consistentwith Marxian theory, determined by their positions within and relationships within amode of production such that one is, for example, either a worker or a capitalist, a serfor a lord, who is defined as such by economic and political relationships with other iden-tities. Thus, CLASS, as I propose to use it in this second sense, is distinct from whiledependent on the various forms of culturally constructed identity. Also, I propose that


137

Figure 2. CLASSValueField.

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 137


it is a more fundamental dimension of social being and relationships one that shapesand is shaped by the formation of economic and power relationships among variants ofthe identities, for example upper and lower classes, men and women, whites andblacks, white women and black men and so on.13 Accordingly, CLASS is conceptu-ally distinct from identity (including class identity: see Figure 3), although, amonghumans, some culturally constructed identities are necessary for the existence of CLASSdifferences, which make possible CLASS relationships, as just defined.14

The inherent core meaning of the sense of CLASS as a relationship of unevenexchange was first developed by Marx with reference to the specific case of accumulationof surplus value from workers by capitalists in the production process (Marx, 1967: PartIII). In this relationship the value that workers added to products in excess of the wagesthey earned, minus costs of production, amounted to surplus value. Herein I am gener-alizing this basic idea of surplus value as a process and a CLASS relationship to otherforms of value and to borders as constructors and demarcations of classes and as mechan-isms for the uneven CLASS distribution of value.

VALUEA robust anthropological theory of value must be able to move toward two goals. Thefirst is to facilitate a seamless integration of the treatment of infrastructural economicphenomena and processes with symbolic ones having to do with the differentiation ofidentities and CLASS (Figure 3). In other words, it must devise an approach to valuethat attends equally to its material, monetary, social, and symbolic forms and how theyare distributed and how they are in various ways inter-convertible. The second goal isto enable documentation and analysis of value flows and conversions that take placebetween different economic formations. Thus, for example, whereas Marxian economicsand anthropology are working mainly with a theory of value that was derived fromanalysis of capitalist society, a robust anthropology must also attend to how value iscreated, distributed, and converted not only in non-capitalist formations, but also howit flows between various capitalist and non-capitalist communities. In the particular casethat we are examining here, such value flows occur between capitalist and non-capitalistcommunities and regions, and across an international border. The immediate task is toconsider how this border affects these flows.

Value is perhaps the most controversial concept in Marxian economics (see Mohun,1994) and I do not presume here to resolve the debates that swirl around it. Rather, Ioffer a broadened anthropological approach to value that recognizes, per Marx, thatabstract value, which is the basis for the exchange of commodities and which derivesfrom the value of the human labor that created them, is but one, albeit important, sourceof value in human relations. This basic Marxian paradigm can be extended, and mademore anthropological, by combining it with the concepts of capital as elaborated byBourdieu (1986), which manifests in economic, social, intellectual, and symbolic forms.Like Marx, who deals with value as both infrastructural embodied labor power andmaterial resources and abstract symbolic value, so too does Bourdieu deal with forms ofcapital that span the divide between base and superstructural phenomena. Furthermore,Bourdieus work (e.g., 1984) . . . integrates the analysis of economic value with culturalvalues by way of developing a theory of class differentiation, thus preserving the original


138

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 138


Marxist project of theorizing class in terms of the production, accumulation, trans-formation, and consumption of value (Kearney, 1996: 161).15

CLASS AND IDENTITYIn the classic Marxian case, two culturally constructed identities (workers and owners)come together in the production process so that an uneven exchange of economic valuetakes place between them, that is, a transfer of value from one CLASS position toanother. But this unequal exchange is only possible because of the different identitiespresent at the two CLASS positions in a social field and the political relationship betweenthese positions. These CLASS relationships are thus inscribed in a complex set of legal,cultural, linguistic, and embodied forms16 and practices, in other words, an order. Theprimary point here is that the CLASS relationship is synonymous with such unevenexchange of economic value within an economic field. This structural relational featureof CLASS as resulting from positions in a field of unevenly produced, exchanged, andconsumed value is distinct from, but depends on the corresponding cultural correlatesof, the person or groups so positioned their other class identities. A working assump-tion here is that we only become deeply concerned with relationships among identitieswhen we sense that some such relationship of value inequality exists among them. Wereit not for such unequal exchange, namely such CLASS relationships among identities,we would simply celebrate their cultural singularity. But we realize intuitively at somelevel of comprehension that contending identities exist in fields and relationships of suchuneven exchange of value. And, as noted earlier, such relationships of uneven exchangeare by definition CLASS relationships. But because humans are all members of onespecies, these CLASS relationships must of necessity be based on some artificiallyconstructed distinctions, that is, on the construction of corresponding identities, be theynationality, ethnicity, gender, race, class and so on (see Figure 3).17

The second triad is a complement to the first in that each refers to a different phenom-enal and conceptual sphere.18 First of all, the terms of the IBO triad refer to popularculturally constructed artifacts, and as such are phenomenally located in the culturalsuperstructure of a social formation its formal legal system and its informal socialclassification of cultural identities, borders, and so forth.19 In contrast, each of the termsof the CVF triad refers to and relates to phenomena that are based in the material infra-structure of a social formation, but that also have manifestations or permutations thatappear in the social and cultural superstructure. Value, for example, can exist in materialforms such as tangible property, commodities, and embodied labor power, and it canalso be converted into paper and electronic money and other material and immaterialsymbolic forms (Bourdieu, 1986; Kearney, 1996: 15868, 2004; Maurer, 1999). Simi-larly field can be tangible ground that is distributed to persons and upon which they aredistributed, as well as a socioeconomic space in which the persons are distributed in waysthat reflect how the ground is distributed to them.

Similarly, the distinction between CLASS and identity is a fundamental differencebetween the two triads. Note that whereas identities are culturally constructed, CLASSis a position and a relationship within a field of unevenly distributed value. Thus a CLASSrelationship exits between two identities when they exchange unequal quantities of valuesuch that one is a net receiver and the other is a net donor (see later). Therefore, CLASSis not opposed to identity. Rather, each identity (including class identity) is associated


139

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 139


with a CLASS position vis--vis one or more other identities. In much contemporarysocial analysis, attention focuses on class identity, which is treated only or mainlywithout reference to the corresponding CLASS relations that underlie it and the otheridentities. CLASS is disregarded and class is rightly treated largely as an identity,comparable in its conceptual status to, for instance, race and ethnicity, as is evident incourses, symposia, books and so on that deal with various permutations of, for example,ethnicity, race, class, and gender. Such treatment of class thus leads to endless debatesabout whether it, or say race, nationality, ethnicity and so on, is a more importantfeature of personal and collective identity. What the presence of CLASS as an elementin the second triad, in contrast to the identities (including class) in the first, asserts isthat consideration of the relationship between identities and CLASS is not one ofeitheror, but always one of bothand. This relationship between CLASS and identity isnot therefore best thought of in terms of which is the most important aspect of a personor group. Instead, it is best to consider how they both function together, and in particu-lar, how identities function in the structuring of CLASS relations among persons andgroups, in other words, the uneven production, exchange, and consumption of value.Figure 3 depicts this relationship between CLASS and identities.20

MIGRATION, IBO, AND CVFWe can now define migration in the terms of the two triads. In terms of IBO, migra-tion is movement across a significant ordered border that changes identity. Moreover, interms of CVF, migration is movement across a border that bisects a field and that changesboth the identity and, most likely, the CLASS position and relationships of the migrant.Thus, a field is a space with geographic and abstract coordinates in which persons arelocated, move, and migrate. Similarly, forms of value are distributed in fields, where theyare acquired, lost, transformed, and transferred among persons and groups, thus givinga basis to CLASS positions and relationships within the field. Fields, like geographicterritory, are dissected by borders, which can be seen as devices that control flows ofpersons and forms of value within the fields (see Donnan and Wilson, 1999: 1078).


140

Figure 3. CLASS and Identities.

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 140


The major ethnographic and analytic task in the study of migration then becomescomprehending the double CLASSificatory impact of movement across borders on, first,the construction of the identities (including class culture) and, second, on the CLASSpositions and relationships of migrants and immigrants vis--vis other identities. Hereit is important to recall that CLASS in this sense is a relationship of uneven valueexchange.

BORDERS AND CLASSIFICATIONA primary mission of borders is to CLASSify persons and things that cross them. Butin speaking of CLASSification in this sense we must invoke the two senses of classcontained in the verb classify, each of which corresponds to one of the triads (see earlier).The first has to do with classifying in a nominal sense of assigning identities as, forexample, the Immigration and Naturalization Service does everyday at ports of entry,and during immigration hearings and so on, as Heyman (1995, 1998a, 2001) welldescribes. This form of classification thus belongs to the realm of the first triad of termsin that it is a function exercised by some official and unofficial order (including thepublic at large) that affects identities of persons who cross and who are defined by itsborders.

But this term classification also carries within it the sense of social CLASS. Buriedwithin this form of nominal classification are acts of socioeconomic CLASSification thatbelong to the second triad of terms in that they affect the social CLASS position andrelationships of the person bearing the identity so classified in the first sense. We canand must distinguish between the nominal categorical classification of identities associ-ated with the first triad of terms versus the socioeconomic CLASSification of the secondtriad that affects the CLASS position and relationships of migrants, remembering thatthe seemingly formal and informal assigning of identities classification in the first sense always has implications for CLASSification in the second sense.

Indeed, I propose that in almost every case of contested identity construction andthe formal and informal construction of the identities of border crossers is a primaryexample there is an underlying dynamic of CLASS, as I have defined the term, whichsignificantly shapes the cultural dynamics of identity formation. The primary theoreti-cal task is thus to relate the dynamics of identities and the cultural and political bordersthat define and detain them to the underlying CLASS issue, namely the uneven exchangeof economic value that flows across the borders between them, that is, between personsand between regions in CLASS relations. In the present sense we are primarily concernedwith CLASS relationships that are shaped, in part, by the USMexican border andboundary.

MIGRATION, VALUE FILTERING, AND CLASS21

Now, what do migration and borders have to do with uneven exchange of value? Let usbegin with a working definition of migration as a movement across a significant borderthat changes identity, and let us examine this relationship among borders, orders, andidentities in the case of migrants by bringing in the second triad of terms and compareits relationship to those of the first triad, starting with borders. To advance this analysisI propose that a major mission of borders is to serve as differential filters that allow certainthings to pass, but not others, and to control the rates at which some things pass. Clearly,


141

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 141


one of the most obvious things that borders control is persons, such control being theessence of immigration policy, just as the cross-border control of commodities andcurrencies is the essence of foreign trade and monetary policy. In the case of trade andmonetary policy, the goal of nations is to operate with a positive advantage, that is, tohave net value flow into national accounts. Similarly, by invoking the second triad, wecan suggest that, at base, a major effect of the cross-border control of persons like thecross-border control of commodities is to affect the net cross-border flow of value thatis contained actually and potentially in such persons.22

The value-filtering power of borders can be illustrated with an analogy from thephysical world: Imagine a container filled with water and divided by a semi-permeablemembrane through which the water can diffuse in both directions (see Figure 4). If asoluble protein or a salt is added to one side, a net volume of water will flow to that sideof the membrane as a result of osmosis and the water level on that side will rise, and thelevel on the sending side will fall.

In this analogy the membrane represents the USMexican border and the waterrepresents general economic value that flows in net amounts to the United States fromMexico as a result of migration across the border. The corresponding theoretical task isto inquire into the nature of the border as a differential filter of economic value. Thisdiscussion of the differential filtering action of the USMexican border is necessarilyconcise. Heyman (1994: 512, 1995: passim, 2001) provides an analytical model and


142

Figure 4. Osmosis across a semi-permeable membrane (border).

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 142


ethnographic description of it that shows how the construction of and variable enforce-ment of immigration policy at the border and in the interior of the United States serveto discipline undocumented workers to produce more economic value and to remuner-ate them with less value in return, as compared with citizens and legals; see also Donnanand Wilson (1999: 99).

Whereas Heyman focuses on how immigration laws and policies and their variableenforcement affect value transfer from immigrants to non-immigrants within the UnitedStates, the discussion that follows deals mainly with a comparable uneven flow of valueacross the border from Mexico to the United States that is mediated by migrants andimmigrants. In both cases Heymans processes occurring within US territory and thecross-border dynamics detailed here bordering policies and practices result in a nettransfer of value from the immigrant-migrant community into the greater US economy.To demonstrate combinations of such uneven and even exchange (filtering) acrossborders we can refer to the case of migration from the Mixteca region of southern Mexicoto California.

THE MIXTECA AND CALIFORNIASince its inception in the late 19th century, large-scale corporate agriculture in California presently around a 30 billion dollar a year industry has relied heavily on successivewaves of migrant workers from throughout the Pacific Basin, such that various foreignnational ethnic groups have cycled through the California farm labor system. Today,Mixtecs from the Mixteca region of western Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, are the mostsignificant recent arrivals on the scene, where they are in varying degrees replacingmestizo Mexican migrant workers, who preceded them, as they in turn came after earliermigrations of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and other ethnic groups.23 Mixtec migrantsand immigrants are also increasingly working in the service sector and the informaleconomy, and as self-employed entrepreneurs.

Central to contemporary Mixtec migration is the formation of transnationalcommunities, or TNCs, that span the border. In addition to primary communities inOaxaca, Mixtec TNCs also contain numerous daughter communities in central andnorth-western Mexico, and in the United States especially in agricultural areas of Cali-fornia and the south-eastern United States. Households and individuals move among allthe communities of the greater TNCs in complex patterns of economic, social, cultural,and biological reproduction deployed at multiple sites on both sides of the border(Besserer, 2003; Kearney and Nagengast, 1989; Rivera-Salgado, 1999a). As culturalentities the Mixtec TNCs constitute a third space that is popularly referred to as Oaxa-california, which exists in both Mexico and the United States (Kearney, 1995; Rivera-Salgado, 1999b; Ziff, 1994).

The Mixtec TNCs are anchored in agrarian communities in Oaxaca where agri-cultural and craft items that have use and exchange value are produced outside of capi-talist relations. These forms of value, including embodied labor power and other formsof human capital, enter into circuits through which they flow across the USMexicanborder, just as value acquired in the United States by migrants is remitted through theirTNCs back to the towns in Oaxaca. These TNCs are bisected by the USMexicanborder in all its manifestations, as described herein and by Heyman (1994, 2001), whichis in the zone where the largely non-capitalist features of the TNCs and the capitalist


143

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 143


society and economy of the receiving society meet and are articulated. The border is thusin effect a complex semi-permeable membrane with respect to flows of forms ofeconomic value. As such the border regulates a sort of osmotic process (see Figure 4) inwhich more value flows through the TNC from Mexico and into the non-Mixtec Cali-fornia economy than vice-versa.

The case of San Jernimo Progreso, a Mixtec community of about 2000 in the districtof Silacayoapan in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, is typical and instructive. In the late 1970sand through the 1980s virtually all of the migrants from San Jernimo who came to Cali-fornia crossed the USMexican border illegally. Appreciable numbers regularized theirstatus under provisions of the 1986 Immigration and Reform Control Act. Presentlyabout 35 to 40 per cent of the San Jernimo population of some 800 in California arelegal residents, including those born in the United States. Migrants and immigrants fromSan Jernimo either settle in the United States or retire in Oaxaca. Those who stay tendto move up the employment and income ladder and generally to be less vulnerable to thekinds and rates of super exploitation that more vulnerable new arrivals experience. Butthose who thus move more toward immigration and economic parity with domesticcounterparts are constantly replaced by the new immigrants who are, as illegals,subjected to the various regimes of discipline and discrimination as were the previousones, in the general pattern that Heyman (2001) describes. In this way, the net flow ofvalue continues from the Mexican side of the San Jernimo transnational community,across the border and out of the community into the greater California and US economy.

The functioning of the border as a differential filter changes from one historic periodto another. At this moment in the wake of the creation of NAFTA (the North AmericanFree Trade Agreement) the border is becoming more permeable to capital and commodi-ties. But at the same time more restrictive immigration policy is making it less perme-able to the northward transborder movement of persons. Indeed, until the GreatDepression of the 1930s, personal movement across the border was virtually unrestricted(Vlez-Ibez, 1996: 823). It is important to note, however, that while immigrationpolicy currently restricts the movement of persons, it does not entirely prevent suchmovement. Rather, what border immigration policy ordering does by bordering (seeFigure 1) in the case of undocumented workers is to separate labor power from migrantpersons, such that ideally their labor power is delivered to sites in California, but theyreturn to Mexico without it (see Kearney, 1991: 5560, 1996: 98103). Central to thisbordering is the classification of most Mixtec migrants and their relatives as illegals24

that is integral to their CLASSification, or exploitive relations, with other persons andcorporations that receive quanta of net value when they deal with them (see Donnanand Wilson, 1999: 1356).

This basic premise concerning the extra-national economic contribution of illegalimmigrants is suggested by dependency theory, which posits a net flow of economicvalue from de-developed peripheries of the world system to developed cores, both ofwhich are two sides of the same coin.25 But for the most part dependency theory focuseson unequal macroeconomic exchanges between global regions rather than on the kindof fine-grain ethnographic transnational analysis required to speak to the issue of theimpact of individual migrants on unequal exchange between regions. A step in this direc-tion was provided by articulation theory, which paid more attention to the dynamics ofmigration at the level of the household.


144

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 144


Articulation theory depicts how infra-subsistence peasant households and communi-ties such as San Jernimo are articulated with distant labor markets via migration(Foster-Carter, 1978; Kearney, 1996: 81104; Palerm and Urquiola, 1993). In suchsystems the labor power delivered to employers is partially reproduced by the pro-duction of food and other resources outside of capitalist relations of production, thusarticulating capitalist and non-capitalist (peasant) modes of production. In a situationof articulation, as discussed by de Janvry and Garramon (1977), the followingconditions typically prevail.

1 A rural peasantry lives in a remote region such as the Mixteca where some combi-nation of demographic pressures, scarcity of good farming land, and lack of wageemployment make out-migration in search of wage labor a necessity for survival;that is, they live in an infra-subsistence local economy.

2 The labor markets that the infra-subsistence peasants migrate to are seasonal andsaturated or nearly so, thus causing them to return home in the off seasons.

3 Because such labor power is partially reproduced with non-wage income (via subsist-ence farming and the informal economy), it is possible for such workers to acceptvery low wages and even less than a living wage when they enter labor markets.

Such systems of articulated labor are economically advantageous to the receivingeconomies not only because cheap labor delivers itself to them, but also because the costsof the reproduction and retirement of that labor are borne by the economy of a different,distant region. In the purest form of this system adult workers migrate at their ownexpense from their homes, where children and other dependants remain, to sites ofemployment. From these places of employment they remit earnings that support theirdependants who do not have access to public services in the locale where the migrantworkers are employed. Employment in farm work is mostly seasonal and farm labormarkets in California agriculture are typically saturated such that most workers do findwork, but sporadically (see e.g. Griffith and Kissam, 1995: 190239). Then at the endof work seasons and at the end of their work career the workers are typically retired backto their home communities, which must bear costs of their retirement. Under theseconditions the rate of exploitation, that is, the accumulation of surplus value, of such awork force is potentially higher than from one that is in residence all year and fully prole-tarianized. When migrants began to settle down in the areas of their wage labor, thenthe conditions of articulation start to decay. From the receiving economys perspective,efficient functioning of the system requires that biological reproduction and retirementbe maintained in the sending communities. It is a de facto function of the border andbordering to promote such a situation.26

As the newest entrants into the farm labor markets, the Mixtecs are typically a desiredwork force from the employers point of view since they are recognized as more self-disciplined and productive, as is typical of a first generation of foreign workers. It is alsoimportant to note that the Mixtecs are now entering California labor markets at a timeof increasing anti-immigrant sentiments, which is fueled in part by negative impactresearch that defines immigrants as net consumers of economic value in the Californiaeconomy, relative to what they contribute to it. In this political climate, compoundedby an overabundance of illegal labor, employers and labor contractors can and do use


145

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 145


the freshly arriving Mixtecs as a means to discipline more experienced workers, thusgetting double mileage out of disciplining the Mixtecs directly.27

For this system of articulation to endure over time there must be some mechanismsthat perpetuate a cross-border separation of biological reproduction from economicproduction. In the case of apartheid in South Africa it was the passbook laws; in theCaliforniaMexico case it is the international border and immigration laws and unevenenforcement of them (Burawoy, 1976; Heyman, 2001; Kearney, 1991). Such immi-gration law, policy, and practices can be seen as functioning, or bordering, to ensuresome spatial separation of biological reproduction from economic production, so as toperpetuate the economic advantages of this system to the receiving communities, inother words, an uneven flow of net value.

UNEQUAL VALUE EXCHANGE BETWEEN THE MIXTECA AND THEUNITED STATESThe osmotic filtering analogy introduced earlier is one way to think about trans-bordervalue flow, but it is an incomplete analogy for it fails to account for other possible combi-nations of net cross-border exchanges of value between any given TNC and the greaterUS society. For as Figure 5 indicates, there are eight general possibilities in such a case(of which the osmosis analogy represented in Figure 4 is an instance of number 6).

At the time of the Conquest the valleys of the Mixteca region were productive cornexporting areas (Spores, 1984). In the early colonial period rural indigenous settlementsthere were formed as closed corporate communities, as described by Wolf (1957), thatwere designed to be self-sufficient and surplus producing entities at the bottom of thecolonial food chain (Pastor, 1987). The goal of the planners of this system seems to havebeen to create a Type 3 situation, as shown on Figure 5, in which the indigenous communi-ties would be able to reproduce under constant conditions while also producing surplusesthat were to be accumulated by persons and entities outside of the communities (combi-nation + 0). At present, however, after five centuries of colonial and neo-colonial conditionsmuch of the Mixteca is a de-developed corn-importing region with widespread environ-mental deterioration. The value exchange relation has thus deteriorated to Type 6, Figure5 ( +). Many of these communities still practice subsistence agriculture, but because theynow produce less than they consume, high percentages of their members must migratepermanently or sporadically in search of wages or other income.28


146

Figure 5. Possible combinations of net cross-border flows of value between a trans-national community and receiving communities.

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 146


The colonial period in the Mixteca was a case of classic dependence in which absolutesurplus was extracted from it via mining, logging, and migration to elsewhere in Mexico.Clearly, now at the beginning of the 21st century a new regime of orderingborder-ingidentity has come into play in the Mixteca, and like the earlier one of the colonialperiod it too functions within a global political economy that extracts economic valuefrom Mixtec communities. Now, however, the primary mechanism of such transfer ofvalue is circular migration within Mexico and circular transnational migration to theUnited States. The circuits of extraction of value are now more complex in that theindigenous labor power that lies at the base of the present regimes of accumulation isreproduced primarily not from self-sufficient corporate peasant communities, but frompartially proletarianized villages and towns that reproduce via combinations of peasantproduction and migration to distant sites of wage labor.29 Thus, numerous closedcorporate communities have now evolved into largely deterritorialized and partiallyreterritorialized transnational communities, each of which has as its nucleus its originalterritorially based corporate community (see, for example, Besserer, 1999b, 2003).

Self-employment in non-market based subsistence production in these communitiesmakes substantial contributions to the reproduction and retirement costs of migrants.Were these activities paid the minimum or sub-minimum wages received in formal labormarkets, such wages would exceed the value produced. The same is true of the exten-sive work that members of the TNCs perform in other informal economic activities suchas vending and handicraft production. The main point here is that the income contri-bution which such informal activities make to the overall reproduction of labor powermakes it possible for migrants to receive lower wages than would be necessary if theywere fully dependent on wage labor for their biological and social reproduction. Theseconditions of articulation, described earlier, thus make possible a higher rate of accumu-lation, by employers and consumers, of the value added to products and services byMixtec workers. In this situation the income (net value accumulated) by the migrantsincreases, but it appears that the amount and rates of surplus value that is accumulatedfrom their labor by employers and others above them in reticular CLASS relationshipsis yet greater.30 Thus the value accumulation and exchange relationship between themigrants and these others is typically a case of Type 1, Figure 5 (+ ++).

The basic point here is that for such high rates of accumulation of Mixtec producedvalue by non-Mixtecs in the United States to endure at their present levels, some effec-tive forms of bordering of CLASSification are necessary to keep wages and othersources of compensation low and to shift costs back into the TNCs and primarily tothose components of the TNCs in Mexico. A second advantage that such formal andinformal bordering affords to the receiving society is the shifting of costs of social servicesand retirement of migrants who work in the United States, but who are born, raised,recuperate, and retire in Mexico. Such bordering renders benefits to three types of USreceivers of net value. One type is the employers who benefit directly from highly disci-plined, productive illegal workers who typically work harder and receive lower wagesthan domestic and other legal and illegal workers. The second type is consumers thatbenefit in several ways. First, they reap the benefits of lower production costs ofcommodities due to lower wages paid to the undocumented workers. Here it should alsobe noted that producers are pressured to keep down production costs of labor-intensiveproducts such as certain agricultural crops and garments because of stiff competition


147

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 147


from producers outside the United States with access to abundant cheap labor. The thirdtype is the general tax-paying public that benefits from the shifting of health, welfare,education, and other social service costs of members of TNCs to the greater TNCs towhich they belong and especially to those parts of them that are on the Mexican side ofthe border (Martnez, 2003).

Another feature of this transnational relationship that, like the others, is a subsidy tothe US side of the balance sheet is also revealed in the ethnography of Mixtec workersin the United States. I refer here to the frequent irregularities in social security deduc-tions from the wages of Mixtec workers. A common practice is for such deductions tobe credited to a person other than the undocumented worker who should be receivingsuch credits, either because the worker is using a false number, or else because theemployer assigns someone elses number to the worker. Furthermore, in unknownnumbers of cases Mixtec workers use their own valid social security numbers, but retireto Mexico without collecting benefits, which thus remain in the US economy. Border-ing, as described by Heyman (2001) and as Mixtec ethnography shows, inhibits suchsettlement, thus shifting these costs back onto the home communities and other sites ofthe TNCs that are in Mexico. The border in this extended sense loosely circumscribesthe TNCs.

These conditions and practices inhibit the accumulation of value in the Mixteca andthrough the TNCs as it is transferred through the persons of Mixtec workers in theUnited States where it is accumulated by US employers, consumers, and tax payers, whoin their relationship to Mixtec migrants are, again, an instance of Type 1, Figure 5. Thus,although the production and acquisition of value by Mixtec migrants in the UnitedStates increases in absolute terms and relative to what they accumulate in Mexico, theaccumulation of value transferred via the TNCs to the US recipients of this value takesplace at a rate higher than the accumulation rate of the Mixtec migrants. Therefore, anet flow of value takes place through the Mixtec TNCs and across the border betweenthem and the greater US society. Here again it is important to emphasize that the borderreferred to here is not just the boundary line between the United States and Mexico, butalso all the institutional and popular forms of distinction that create identities such ascitizens and migrants categorized as illegals, aliens, undocumented workers, undoc-umented immigrants, and so forth mentioned earlier and described at length byHeyman (1994, 2001).

The result of such border differentiation is extraction of net value from the greatertransnational Mixtec community, much of this value being extracted from the Mixteca,which is thus de-developed. This de-development occurs even though absolute wealthof many migrant Mixtecs increases, although in formal terms, their CLASS positionsand relations worsen due to increased rates of exploitation, namely, loss of value. Againit is important to recall that the definition of CLASS employed here is relational, ratherthan referring to absolute wealth categories. The primary point is that this net north-ward flow of value from Oaxaca to California (Type 6, Figure 5) and the unevenexchange rates between the Mixtec TNCs and the greater US economy (Type 1, Figure5) are due in large measure to the differential filtering action of the border, as it vari-ously manifests and functions.


148

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 148


CONCLUSIONSWhile avoiding facile economic determinism, the concepts and analysis presented heresuggest that the study of immigration and migration politics and the dynamics of border-ing and identity formation of migrants can be fruitfully explored in terms of how border-ing is employed to affect CLASS relations (unequal exchange of value) between migrantsand non-migrants and their respective regions and communities. This article deals witha specific case of likely unequal exchange of value across a border and as such representsone pattern among the range of possible such exchanges (see Figure 5). The same basicquestions asked here about how the USMexican border affects inter-regional andmigrantnonmigrant exchanges across it can be asked of other borders and regimes ofbordering and ordering of persons with specific identities refugees and brain draincome readily to mind. Indeed, there is need for comparative work on how differentborders are constructed and how migration across them affects unequal exchange ofvalue, or CLASS relations.

AcknowledgementsAn earlier version of one component of this article was presented at the 1998 AnnualMeeting of the American Anthropological Association in Philadelphia. I thank my co-organizer Thomas M. Wilson and other members of that panel for valuable commentson the original paper. In the course of its development, this article has benefited fromdiscussions with Robert Alvarez, Josiah Heyman, Carole Nagengast, Tom Wilson, andinsightful comments by Gina Crivello, Kevin Yelvington, and Max Forte. A segment ofthis article was presented for discussion in the Colloquium Series of the Program inAgrarian Studies at Yale University, 6 February 1998; I am grateful to James Scott,Enrique Mayer and others at Yale for constructive comments on that segment. Field-work on which this article is based was supported by grants from the Ford and Rocke-feller Foundations, UC-MEXUS, and the Academic Senate of the University ofCalifornia, Riverside.

Notes1 See, for example, Alvarez (1995), Donnan and Wilson (1994, 1999), and Wilson

and Donnan (1998).2 For discussion of the two-sided nature of borders, see Donnan and Wilson (1999:

213).3 Heyman (1994: 51) provides my working definition of the state: States are aggre-

gations of rules for social and economic action and the bureaucratic organizationsrequired to implement these rules . . . The nation in the nation-state, as I use theterm here, refers to the more informal cultural knowledge and values of citizens andagents of the state that dispose them, inter alia, to form the rules of the state, e.g.laws and regulations concerning immigrants, immigration, and citizens. Suchcultural dispositions also shape the enforcement, non-enforcement, and selectiveenforcement of the rules and the identities that they define.

4 This concern also extends to sub-units of the nation-state, such as the state of California, its counties and their various municipal entities, all of which share someof the basic structural features of the modern nation-state, e.g. precise, absolute


149

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 149


geopolitical boundaries, internal legal jurisdiction, definition of residence, taxation,and delivery of public services.

5 I am grateful to Yosef Lapid (2001) for introducing this mutually referential triad ofterms, which became the conceptual common ground for the Las Cruces Group, aninternational workshop on transnational issues that convened at the Institute forBorder Studies at the State University of New Mexico at Las Cruces and elsewhere.This article has benefited from my participation in the Las Cruces Group. I havealso applied the IBO model in Kearney (2001, 2002, 2003).

6 See Vlez-Ibez (1996) for a comprehensive historic overview of the greater regionof the American Southwest (or conversely the greater Mexican Northwest) and theimpact that the imposition of the USMexican border has had on its inhabitants indifferent historic periods.

7 See Newman (2001) and see Newman and Paasi (1998) for a comprehensive reviewof the prevalent conceptualizations and theoretical issues concerning borders inpolitical science, international relations, sociology, geography, and other disciplines.This review reveals an absence of the concerns with cross-border flows of value thatare the subject of the present article. Alvarezs (1995) thorough review of researchon the USMexican border reveals a similar absence in the anthropological litera-ture.

8 It would be instructive but space does not permit to present a comparableanalysis of the sociology of language, theory, and research problem definitions inMexican scholarship on MexicanUS migration so as to reveal how it reflects officialand unofficial Mexican national concerns, all of which combine into a semantic,intellectual, moral, and political complex quite distinct from the US counterpart.

9 A variant of this strong theory is that even theoretical approaches that seek criticalanalysis as a way of resisting official policies and practices may in fact work to reifyand re-inscribe existing borders, orders, and identities by a subtle jujitsu of socio-cultural politics (Kearney, 2001).

10 Heyman (1998b) proposes a comparable kind of displacement, also associated witha different sociology of knowledge, with respect to the formation of immigrationpolicy and management.

11 Variants of Figure 3 have appeared in Kearney (2001) and Kearney (2003).12 See Williams (1983: 609) for the history of this most prevalent sense of class, viz.,

as an identity.13 In the case of men and women, the inverted commas are meant to indicate that

we are dealing here not with the natural biological distinction, but instead with thegendered cultural identities whatever form they may take that are constructedaround the physical beings. Thus, CLASS relations can exist between sexes whenthey are so gendered, viz., bordered, in ways that construct and constitute such asym-metry that is the basis of unequal exchange of forms of value.

14 Yelvington (1995: 323, passim) provides a comprehensive and nuanced definitionof the first sense of class as identity, while also suggesting the elements of the secondsense, viz. CLASS. While Yelvington discusses dynamics of class differentiation andexchange relations that essentially conform to the second sense, viz. CLASS, as itpertains to capitalist relations, I am herein generalizing CLASS to all unevenexchanges of value.


150

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 150


15 As a first approximation, value, in the broad sense used here, can be likened toBourdieus (1986) forms of capital, but see Kearney (1996: 1628). Bourdieustheory of capitals, and his method of mapping their distributions among identitiesin different social spaces and their transformations from one form to another, areequally applicable to capitalist and non-capitalist societies, and for that reason, aswell as to better integrate it with Marxian value theory, I prefer to speak of formsof value, rather than forms of capital.

16 Concerning embodied aspects of such identities see Bourdieus (1990) discussion ofhabitus.

17 Here the reader is directed to Heyman (2001) for discussion of the nexus betweenofficial and unofficial (popular) classifying of identities of border crossers.

18 The second triad is the result of an effort to gain displacement from the first, whichis taken as an emic (folk) model. However, there is no assumption here that thesecond triad is a pure etic (culturally neutral) apparatus. Instead, it is seen as a prag-matic attempt to achieve displacement toward a species-wide, culturally neutraluniversal anthropology, which can only be approached asymptotically.

19 There is of course a material dimension of such an order in this case the actualhardware components of border construction and maintenance such as fences,surveillance and detection equipment, patrol vehicles and so on.

20 Class consciousness may appear as a dimension of identity in IBO, but as such isconceptually distinct from CLASS position in a field of value per CVF. These twodiffering senses of class in the two triads are comparable to the distinction that Marxmakes between class for itself and class in itself in that the former refers to conscious-ness of CLASS membership as a collective identity while the other is the objectivereality of class position, whether or not those who occupy such positions are collec-tively conscious of their situation or not. And as Kevin Yelvington has noted(personal communication), identity dynamics occur not only between the identitiesand CLASS, but also among the identities.

21 This section, with modifications, is from Kearney (n.d.).22 Value contained actually and potentially in such persons refers to the value that can

be created, for example, when migrants go to work as employees and thus meld theiractual embodied labor power and energy with technology and setting to produce aproduct or service that is exchanged for a wage, or some other compensation.

23 See e.g. Bade (1993, 1994); Besserer (1999a, 2003); Cederstrom (1993); Garduo,et al. (1989); Kearney (1986a, 1991, 1995, 1996); Martinez (2003); Nagengast andKearney (1990); Nagengast et al. (1992); Rivera-Salgado (1999a, 1999b); Runstenand Kearney (1994); Stuart and Kearney (1981); Velasco Ortiz (1995, 1996, 2002);Wright (1990); Zabin, et al. (1993); for descriptions of the living conditions ofMixtecs in San Diego County, see Chavez (1992). There are also two films abouttransnational Mixtecs: Grieshop and Varese (1993); Ziff (1994).

24 Here Heyman (2001) describes how this regime of classification and surveillance isinternalized and embodied by illegal aliens; see also the vignette and accompany-ing discussion in Kearney (1991: 601).

25 For a review of the migration research guided by dependency theory see Kearney(1986b); for an assessment of dependency theory in general see Chilcote and Edelstein (1986).


151

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 151


26 The benefits to the receiving community that come from consigning such costs to thesending community under conditions of articulation and how settlement in thereceiving areas causes decay in the structural advantages of articulation to such areasover generations is shown in Kearney (1996, Figures 4.2 and 4.3) as adapted fromMeillassoux (1981), who examined labor migration between Senegal and France.

27 For example, it is not uncommon to hear foremen of agricultural work crews exhorttheir workers, in so many words, to Hurry up, work faster and harder or were goingto bring the Mixtecs in to replace you.

28 See Stuart and Kearney (1981) for data and calculations that demonstrate therelationships between infra-subsistence agriculture and migration for one more orless typical Mixtec community.

29 See Kearney (1996: 98104, especially Figs. 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3) for discussion of suchtransfer of value.

30 Reticular is used to indicate the complex web-like nature of CLASS relationshipsthrough which value flows in a generally upward direction in social fields organizedon the basis of class identity, but rarely marked by sharp CLASS boundaries (seeKearney, 1996: 1267).

ReferencesAbrams, Philip (1988) Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State, Journal of

Historical Sociology 1(1): 5889.Alvarez, Robert, Jr (1995) The MexicanUS Border: The Making of an Anthropology

of Borderlands, Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 44770.Bade, Bonnie Lynn (1993) Problems Surrounding Health Care Service Utilization for

Mixtec Migrant Farmworker Families in Madera, California. Davis, CA: CaliforniaInstitute for Rural Studies.

Bade, Bonnie Lynn (1994) Sweatbaths, Sacrifice, and Surgery: The Practice ofTransmedical Healthcare by Mixtec Migrant Families in California. PhDdissertation. University of California, Riverside.

Besserer Alatorre, Federico (1999a) Moiss Cruz. Historia de un transmigrante. Sinaloa:Universidad Autnoma de Sinaloa and Mexico City: Universidad AutnomaMetropolitana, Unidad Iztapalapa.

Besserer Alatorre, Federico (1999b) Remesas y economa en las comundiadestransnacionales, in Coloquio nacional sobre polticas pblicas de atencin al migrante:Memoria, pp. 21018. Oaxaca: Gobierno del Estado de Oaxaca.

Besserer Alatorre, Federico (2003) Contesting Community: Cultural Struggles of aMixtec Transnational Community. PhD dissertation. Department of Social andCultural Anthropology, Stanford University.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1984) Distinction: A Critique of the Judgement of Taste (transl.Richard Nice). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1986) The Forms of Capital, in J.B. Richardson (ed.) Handbook ofTheory and Research for the Sociology of Education, pp. 24158. New York:Greenwood Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1990) The Logic of Practice (transl. Richard Nice). Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press.

Burawoy, Michael (1976) The Functions and Reproduction of Migrant Labor:


152

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 152


Comparative Material from Southern Africa and the United States, AmericanJournal of Sociology 81: 105087.

Cederstrom, Thoric Nils (1993) The Potential Impacts of Migrant Remittances onAgricultural and Community Development in the Mixteca Baja Region of Mexico.PhD dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson.

Chavez, Leo R. (1992) Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society.Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Chilcote, Ronald H. and Joel Edelstein (1986) Latin America: Capitalist and SocialistPerspectives of Development and Underdevelopment. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Corrigan, Philip and Derek Sayer (1985) The Great Arch: English State Formation asCultural Revolution. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

de Janvry, A. and C. Garramon (1977) The Dynamics of Rural Poverty in LatinAmerica, Journal of Peasant Studies 4: 20616.

Donnan, Hastings and Thomas M. Wilson, eds (1994) Border Approaches:Anthropological Perspectives on Frontiers. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Donnan, Hastings and Thomas M. Wilson, eds (1999) Borders: Frontiers of Identity,Nation and State. Oxford: Berg.

Fernandez, James (1974) The Mission of Metaphor in Expressive Culture, CurrentAnthropology 15: 12637.

Foster-Carter, Aidan (1978) Can We Articulate Articulation?, in John Clammer(ed.) The New Economic Anthropology, pp. 21049. New York: St Martins.

Garduo, Everardo, Efarn Garca and Patricia Morn (1989) Mixtecos en BajaCalifornia: El caso de San Quintn. Mexicali: Universidad Autnoma de BajaCalifornia.

Grieshop, James and Stefano Varese (1993) Invisible Indians: Mixtec Farmworkers inCalifornia. A film. Applied Behavioral Sciences, University of California at Davis.

Griffith, David and Ed Kissam (1995) Working Poor: Farmworkers in the United States.Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Heyman, Josiah McC. (1991) Land, Labor, and Capital at the Mexican Border.Flagstaff: University of Arizona Press.

Heyman, Josiah McC. (1994) The MexicoUnited States Border in Anthropology: ACritique and Reformulation, Journal of Political Ecology 1: 4365. http://www.library.arizona.edu/ej/jpe/volume_1/ascii-heyman.txt

Heyman, Josiah McC. (1995) Putting Power in the Anthropology of Bureaucracy:The Immigration and Naturalization Service at the MexicoUnited States Border,Current Anthropology 36(2): 26187.

Heyman, Josiah McC. (1998a) State Effects on Labor Exploitation: The INS andUndocumented Immigrants at the MexicoUnited States Border, Critique ofAnthropology 18(2): 15579.

Heyman, Josiah McC. (1998b) Finding a Moral Heart for US Immigration Policy: AnAnthropological Perspective. Arlington, VA: American Ethnological SocietyMonograph No. 7.

Heyman, Josiah McC. (2001) Class and Classification at the USMexican Border,Human Organization 60(2): 12840.

Kearney, Michael (1986a) Integration of the Mixteca and the Western USMexicanBorder Region via Migratory Wage Labor, in Ina Rosenthal Urey (ed.) Regional


153

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 153


Impacts of USMexican Relations, pp. 71102. University of California, San Diego:Center for USMexican Studies, Monograph Series No. 16.

Kearney, Michael (1986b) From the Invisible Hand to Visible Feet: AnthropologicalStudies of Migration and Development, Annual Review of Anthropology 15:33161.

Kearney, Michael (1991) Borders and Boundaries of the State and Self at the End ofEmpire, Journal of Historical Sociology 4(1): 5274.

Kearney, Michael (1995) The Effects of Transnational Culture, Economy, andMigration on Mixtec Identity in Oaxacalifornia, in Michael Peter Smith and Joe R.Feagin (eds) The Bubbling Caldron: Race, Ethnicity, and the Urban Crisis, pp. 22643. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Kearney, Michael (1996) Reconceptualizing the Peasantry: Anthropology in GlobalPerspective. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Kearney, Michael (2001) Struggle and Difference: The Jujitsu of TransnationalIndigenous Resistance and Domination, in D. Holland and J. Lave (eds) History inPerson: Enduring Struggles and Identities in Practice, pp. 24780. Santa Fe, NM:School of American Research Press.

Kearney, Michael (2002) Transnational Migration from Oaxaca: The AgrarianQuestion and the Politics of Indigenous Peoples, Oesterreichische Zeitschrift frGeschichtswissenschaften 13(4): 721.

Kearney, Michael (2003) Valor, clase y espacio en las comunidades mixtecastransnacionales, Universidad de Mxico (periodical of the National AutonomousUniversity of Mexico-UNAM), 620 (February): 511.

Kearney, Michael (2004) The Race to Deterritorialize in the Game of Value, in M.Kearney (ed.) Changing Fields in American Anthropology: From Local to Global, pp. 33947. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield.

Kearney, Michael (n.d.) Peasants in Fields of Value: Revisiting Rural ClassDifferentiation in Transnational Perspective (original title: Rural Oaxaca andCalifornia Agribusiness: The Transfer of Economic Value from Mexican Villages toUS Suburbs). Presented for discussion in Colloquium Series of the Program inAgrarian Studies, Yale University, 6 February 1998.

Kearney, Michael and Carole Nagengast (1989) Anthropological Perspectives onTransnational Communities in Rural California. Working Group on Farm Labor and Rural Poverty, Working Paper No. 3. Davis, CA.: Institute for RuralStudies.

Lapid, Yosef (2001) Introduction. Identities, Borders, Orders: Nudging InternationalRelations Theory in a New Direction , in Mathias Albert, David Jacobson, andYosef Lapid (eds) Identities, Borders, Orders: Rethinking International RelationsTheory, pp. 120. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Martinez, Konane (2003) Health Across Borders: Addressing Mixtec Health in aBinational Context, Practicing Anthropology 25(1): 1921.

Marx, Karl (1967[1867]) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. I. The Process ofCapitalist Production (ed. Frederick Engels, transl. S. Moore and E. Aveling). NewYork: International Publishers.

Maurer, Bill (1999) Forget Locke: From Proprietor to Risk-Bearer in New Logics ofFinance, Public Culture 11(2): 36585.


154

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 154


Meillassoux, Claude (1981) Maidens, Meal and Money: Capitalism and the DomesticEconomy. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Mohun, Simon (1994) Debates in Value Theory. New York: St Martins Press.Nagengast, Carole and Michael Kearney (1990) Mixtec Ethnicity: Social Identity,

Political Consciousness, and Political Activism. Latin American Research Review25(2): 6191

Nagengast, Carole, Rodolfo Stavenhagen and Michael Kearney (1992) HumanRights and Indigenous Workers: The Mixtecs in Mexico and the United States.University of California, San Diego: Center for USMexican Studies, CurrentIssue Brief 4.

Newman, David (2001) Boundaries, Borders, and Barriers: Changing GeographicPerspectives on Territorial Lines, in Mathias Albert, David Jacobson, and YosefLapid (eds) Identities, Borders, Orders: Rethinking International Relations Theory, pp.13751. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Newman, David and Anssi Paasi (1998) Fences and Neighbors in the PostmodernWorld: Boundary Narratives in Political Geography, Progress in Human Geography22(2): 186207.

Palerm, Juan Vicente and Jos Ignacio Urquiola (1993) A Binational System ofAgricultural Production: The Case of the Mexican Bajo and California, in DanielG. Aldrich and Lorenzo Meyer (eds) Mexico and the United States: Neighbors inCrisis, pp. 31167. San Bernardino, CA: Borgo Press.

Pastor, Rodolfo (1987) Campesinos y reformas: la mixteca, 17001856. Mexico City: ElColegio de Mxico.

Rivera-Salgado, Gaspar (1999a) Welcome to Oaxacalifornia, Cultural SurvivalQuarterly 23(1): 5961.

Rivera-Salgado, Gaspar (1999b) Migration and Political Activism: MexicanTransnational Indigenous Communities in a Comparative Perspective. PhDdissertation, Sociology. University of California, Santa Cruz.

Rosaldo, Renato (1989) Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston,MA: Beacon Press.

Runsten David and Michael Kearney (1994) A Survey of Oaxacan Village Networks inCalifornia Agriculture. Davis, CA: California Institute for Rural Studies.

Spores, Ronald (1984) The Mixtec in Ancient and Colonial Times. Norman: Universityof Oklahoma Press.

Stuart, James and Michael Kearney (1981) Causes and Effects of Agricultural LaborMigration from the Mixteca of Oaxaca to California, Working Papers in USMexicoStudies, No. 28, Program in United StatesMexican Studies, University ofCalifornia, San Diego.

Velasco Ortiz, Laura (1995) Entre el jornal y el terruo: el itinerario de los migrantsmixtecos en el noroeste mexicano, Nueva Antropologa 14(47): 11330.

Velasco Ortiz, Laura (1996) La conquista de la frontera norte: vendedoras ambulantesindgenas en Tijuana. In Estudiar a la familia, comprender a la sociedad, pp. 39105.Mexico City: Sistema nacional para el Desarrollo Integral de la Familia.

Velasco Ortiz, Laura (2002) El regreso de la comunidad: migracin indgena y agentestnicos. Los Mixtecos en la frontera Mxico-Estados Unidos. Mexico City: El Colegiode Mxico and Tijuana: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.


155

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 155


Vlez-Ibez, Carlos (1996) Border Visions: Mexican Cultures of the Southwest UnitedStates. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Williams, Raymond (1983) Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, revisededition. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wilson, Thomas M. and Hastings Donnan, eds. (1998) Border Identities: Nation andState at International Frontiers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wolf, Eric R. (1957) Closed Corporate Communities in Mesoamerica and CentralJava, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 13: 118.

Wright, Angus (1990) The Death of Ramn Gonzlez: The Modern AgriculturalDilemma. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Yelvington, Kevin A. (1995) Producing Power: Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in aCaribbean Workplace. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Zabin, Carol, Michael Kearney, Anna Garcia, David Runsten and Carole Nagengast(1993) Mixtec Migrants in California Agriculture. Davis: California Institute forRural Studies.

Ziff, Trisha (1994) Oaxacalifornia. A film. Los Angeles: Citron Nueve Productions.

MICHAEL KEARNEY is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside. Address:

Department of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA.

[email: [email protected]]


156

01 042811 (ds) 29/4/04 10:10 am Page 156


Missions of the Border

Documents

Transcript of Missions of the Border