Border Politics: Practices of Zoning, Experiences of Mobility and Life in Displacement. Views From Brazilian Crossroads

Abstract

This dissertation examines the political negotlations involved in border encounters, focusing particularly on mobile groups in border areas in South America. It discusses the connection between international and border politics, privileging a definition of the latter as the negotiation processes over the terms and modes of presence of the 'inter' of the international. The dissertation analyzes border politics from the perspective of three major tenets: displacement, practices of zoning and the construction of borders as sites of solidarity. I argue that in order to understand these processes we need to elucidate how the global politics of mobility is played out (or translated) in border crossroads and from a range of social groups that encompass not only the Nation-State, but also a myriad of actors that, despite having little or no say in the international framework of human mobility, perform bordering practices that are central to the enactment of difference as a primary trait of inclusion/exclusion from the political. These processes of political differentiation are reinforced but also contested by mobile groups, especially in relation to discourses that try to equate human mobility as a choice between freedom and protection. In important respects, their intervention attempts to problematize the dichotomous portrayal of freedom and protection as two irreconcilable dimensions of life in displacement, thus evincing the possibility that the 'inter' of the international can actually become a site of living, rather than a rite of passage. I also argue that by incorporating the narratives of diverse social actors at these border crossroads we might come closer to displacing the politics of human mobility from one premised on a conventional reading of the international, as a strategy of separation, modulation and management of difference, towards a global politics of (dis)connections, in which mobile groups can become active participants in the framing of their lives possibilities. This moving-away from the international is always embedded in tenuous, dangerous and ambiguous exchanges about what constitutes mobility, how movement is to be interpreted, stimulated or prevented, where and when it can take place and under what conditions. The dissertation discusses these more theoretical claims in the context of refugee and migration movements in Brazil, particularly in relation to Bolivians, Africans and Colombians living in border zones. As such, this dissertation hopes to contribute to a better understanding of what is at stake in dealing with the border encounter from a political perspective and how different narratives on life in displacement can, in fact, indicate different paths of action and research, especially in the context of South-South circulations.