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The Classifying and Value-Filtering Missions of Borders

Using examples of migration of Mixtecs from Oaxaca and of Mexican nationals in general across the US–Mexican border, this article explores and illustrates the proposition that the political importance of social borders varies directly with the degree to which they serve two basic missions. The first of these missions is classificatory in the sense of defining, categorizing, and otherwise affecting the identities that are circumscribed and divided by borders and that cross them. Such kinds of identities are ethnicity, nationality, the cultural experience, markers of social class and so on. The second mission is also classificatory, but in the sense of affecting the economic CLASS positions and relationships of migrants who cross borders. This second mission of borders is effected by differentially filtering and transforming forms of economic value that flow across them and between identities defined by them. It is argued that these two complementary processes – classification of identities and CLASSification (uneven value exchange) – are the primary de facto missions of significant borders.