Ordering a world of difference: local bordering practices in Tapachula, MEXICO, by Thomas Cattin

This poster examines the conflicts surrounding the presence of migrants as drivers of bordering processes in the city of Tapachula, located near the border between Mexico and Guatemala. Understood as an ongoing strategy of differentiation of spatial mobility and access to certain territories between people, bordering allows us to question by whom, when, where and how borders are made, but also who has the power to cross them and who does not.

This cartographic reflection is mainly based on a corpus of observations and semi-structured interviews conducted in Tapachula between January and April 2022.

First, at the regional level, we analyze how the Mexican federal government has designed a migration control system to prevent migrants from reaching the US border and detain them in Tapachula, the main border city of Mexico’s poorest state. We then show at the city level that a number of local actors, for whom the presence of migrants poses a threat to their interests, attempt to implement spatial strategies of surveillance, separation and exclusion, creating ‘borders’ in the urban landscape. These local control practices targeting migrants extend the scope and reach of restrictive national border policies at the city and street level.

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