Empire of borders: the expansion of the U.S. border around the world

✍ Scribed by U.S. Border Patrol.; Miller, Todd

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The United States is outsourcing its border patrol abroad-and essentially expanding its borders in the process

The twenty-first century has witnessed the rapid hardening of international borders. Security, surveillance, and militarization are widening the chasm between those who travel where they please and those whose movements are restricted. But that is only part of the story. As journalist Todd Miller reveals inEmpire of Borders, the nature of US borders has changed. These boundaries have effectively expanded thousands of miles outside of US territory to encircle not simply American land but Washington's interests. Resources, training, and agents from the United States infiltrate the Caribbean and Central America; they reach across the Canadian border; and they go even farther afield, enforcing the division between Global South and North.

The highly publicized focus on a wall between the United States and Mexico misses the bigger picture of strengthening border enforcement around the world.

Empire of Bordersis a tremendous work of narrative investigative journalism that traces the rise of this border regime. It delves into the practices of "extreme vetting," which raise the possibility of "ideological" tests and cyber-policing for migrants and visitors, a level of scrutiny that threatens fundamental freedoms and allows, once again, for America's security concerns to infringe upon the sovereign rights of other nations.

In Syria, Guatemala, Kenya, Palestine, Mexico, the Philippines, and elsewhere, Miller finds that borders aren't making the world safe-they are the frontline in a global war against the poor.

✦ Table of Contents

Twenty-first century battlefields --
The U.S. "border set" on the Guatemala-Honduras divide --
The global pacification industry on the Palestine-Mexico border --
"Selling a security state" --
Securing inequality on the U.S.-Mexico border --
Borders of empires, the colonial creation story --
Maps of empires --
The Caribbean frontier --
The Philippines and the periphery of empire --
Extreme vetting --
"We've got big brothers and sisters all over the place" --
The global caste system --
Armoring capitalism, "teaching the Mexicans how to fish" --
Armoring NAFTA --
"A return on our investments" --
Resistance and transformation on the U.S.-Middle East border --
The unholstered border --
The right to the world on the U.S.-Syria border --
The U.S.-African border in the anthropocene : the case to dissolve borders --
"Shoring up the frontiers of fortress America" --
Negotiating borders on a warming planet --
The future : the airport and the ceiba in Copan.

✦ Subjects

Politics;Nonfiction