Crossing Borders and Erasing Boundaries: An Overview of the First Five Years of the Undocumented Migration Project

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Antoniou. Jason De León.

 The Undocumented Migration Project has recovered over 4,000 articles of clothing once worn by migrants crossing the Mexico­Arizona border. This often darkly colored apparel is intended to help people furtively move across the desert and avoid detection by Border Patrol. When recovered archaeologically, this clothing is often torn, faded, and stained with bodily fluids that reflect different forms of physical pain experienced en route. Here we employ the concept of "use­wear" (i.e. modifications...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leah B Mlyn. Jason De León.

Since 2000, over 4 million people have been apprehended trying to cross without authorization into the U.S. from Mexico via the Arizona desert. During this process millions of pounds of artifacts associated with migration have been left behind. This includes clothes, consumables, and personal effects. Subsequently, humanitarian groups, artists, local U.S. citizens, museum curators, and anthropologists have collected and used these artifacts in a multitude of ways. In this paper we draw on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine M.W. Hall. Anna Antoniou. Jess Beck. Jason De León.

Since 1998, the remains of over 2,500 undocumented migrants have been recovered along the Arizona-Mexico border. Many of these remains are unidentified due to the rapid rate of decomposition, the disarticulation and dispersal of skeletons by animals, and the tendency of many migrants to travel without identification. In this paper we examine the nexus of taphonomic and political processes and actors that influence the decomposition, recovery, and identification of migrant bodies as well as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Olivia P. Waterhouse. Polina Hristova. Andrea Dantus. Marcela Dorfsman-Hopkin. Jason De León.

While crossing the desert clandestinely, migrants routinely experience a broad range of physical injuries including dehydration, hyperthermia, exhaustion, cuts, bruises, and blisters, all of which are conceptualized by federal law enforcement to act as forms of deterrence.  Drawing on a combination of interviews with migrants and experimental research on hiking injuries, we highlight the many ways that the desert hurts people and the various coping strategies that border crossers have developed....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justine A. Drummond. Jason De León.

For over a decade, Arizona humanitarian groups such as Samaritans and No More Deaths have attempted to help undocumented migrants by leaving water bottles along the many trails in the Sonoran Desert leading from Mexico into the United States. These humanitarian sites have become a source of public controversy, viewed as acts of littering or attempts to aid illegal immigration. During the 2012 and 2013 field seasons of the Undocumented Migration Project, we conducted an archaeological analysis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only mario castillo.

For the last twenty years an archaeological record of immigration has taken shape in Arizona’s wilderness. This material record results from millions of undocumented men, women and children who have entered the U.S. without authorization by walking across the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona. Along the way these people eat, rest, and deposit a variety of objects (e.g., water bottles, clothes, personal effects) at ad-hoc resting areas known as migrant sites. These surface assemblages are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Murphy A Van Sparrentak. Chloe Bergsma-Safar.

          Arivaca, Arizona is one of many small unincorporated communities along the US/Mexican border that have recently been thrust into the media spotlight in the wake of discussions of immigration reform. The dominant media narrative coming out of these towns is typically characterized by anti-immigrant sentiment and calls for more Border Patrol presence. Drawing on ethnographic work in Arivaca and archaeological work focused on Border Patrol activities, I offer a counter narrative to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haeden E. Stewart. Ian Ostericher.

Utilizing an archaeological landscape approach to analyze undocumented migration has significantly improved our understanding of this highly politicized and poorly understood social process. Using spatial methods in conjunction with interviews with migrants, this paper examines the complex geopolitical landscape that is shaped, traversed, and experienced by federal law enforcement, humanitarian workers and undocumented border crossers. While the employment of archaeological spatial methods aids...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John A. Doering-White.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of undocumented Central American migrants transit through Mexico by hopping freight trains. Migrants navigate organized crime networks and government officials that seek to extort and detain them. They also receive assistance from sympathetic Mexican citizens and a network of humanitarian shelters that have developed along common migrant routes. Throughout this process, migrants seek to both highlight their presence as non-citizens and blend in with the citizen...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jordan E Davis.

When the archaeological traces of migrant religion are encountered in the Sonoran Desert by journalists, humanitarian workers, and social scientists, they are often interpreted as static containers of human belief. Previous discussions of this type of material culture have highlighted the perpetuation of colonial discourses that continue to demarcate and enforce the borders of both religious and migration studies, including the privileging of Western, Protestant, and male comprehensions of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason De León.

Started in 2009, the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP) developed out of an attempt to couple archaeological data on what border crossers left in the Arizona desert with ethnographic data collected at migrant shelters in Northern Mexico. The initial goal was to understand the informal economy that structured human smuggling and the various technologies of survival and subterfuge that people employed while crossing the Sonoran Desert. Since 2009, the project’s scope has significantly expanded...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Gokee.

Undocumented migrants crossing the Sonoran Desert must survive the dangers of extreme heat and rugged terrain, while simultaneously avoiding apprehension and physical abuse by the US Border Patrol. A successful migration attempt therefore depends, in part, on the ability to endure or alleviate pain experienced en route. In order to better understand how health concerns play into the strategies and experiences of migrants, this paper presents an analysis of pharmaceutical and aid-related...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Schubert. Madeline Naumann. Jason De León.

The U.S. Border Patrol has come under heavy scrutiny following the deaths of 42 civilians since 2005, numerous reports of migrants being physically and sexually assaulted while in custody, and the surfacing of videos showing aggressive encounters between agents and U.S. citizens. Because a great deal of boundary enforcement happens in remote parts of the desert, documenting how agents do their job is difficult. In this paper, we highlight data from numerous interviews with agents, migrant...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Magda E Mankel.

Because of the clandestine and complex nature of undocumented migration in southern Arizona, many aspects of this social process have proven difficult to systematically analyze using ethnography alone. Using a combination of ethnographic and archaeological data collected between 2009 and 2014, this paper uses statistical analysis to further understand the relationships between artifacts associated with clandestine migration and the material and spatial strategies migrants employ to cross...