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“By the Time I Get to Arizona”: Citizenship, Materiality, and Contested Identities Along the US–Mexico Border

Each year hundreds of thousands of people attempt to enter the United States from Mexico without authorization by crossing the Sonoran Desert on foot or using false identification at ports of entry. During this crossing process, people actively construct, contest, and obfuscate a multiplicity of identities through various forms of material culture including clothing, hygiene and cosmetic products, and identification paperwork. These identities include undocumented border crosser, false citizens of various countries (e.g., the US and Mexico), and people with no identification. Those charged with keeping non-citizens out of the US (i.e., Border Patrol) also rely on various forms of material culture that both reflect and construct perceptions of migrants as non-citizens with no federal rights or protections. In this article, we highlight the material correlates of different migrant and law enforcement behaviors and identities, and discuss the ways in which they impact the experiences of border crossers en route. Drawing on Agamben’s “state of exception,” we argue that the concepts of citizenship, sovereignty, and materiality are key to understanding how migrants both resist and succumb to the power of the state to exclude them.