ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to articulate the construction of border zones from the standpoint of multiple, and usually conflictive, sovereign perspectives. I argue that the paradoxical combination of more hospitable normative and diplomatic interventions in border areas and the (often exclusive) daily negotiations over their terms among different social groups is central to an understanding of the complexity of migrants’ experiences, particularly in the context of peripheral societies. I illustrate this argument with an analysis of the contemporary construction of the border zone between Brazil and Bolivia (in the twin cities of Corumbá and Puerto Suarez), especially in relation to the regulation (and regularization) of a transborder status for border dwellers. I focus on ethnographic research conducted with migrant groups, NGOs and government officials in the region and how they (re)produce particular notions about the modes of (mobile) presence to which border communities are entitled. In sum, I discuss how certain inter-subjective discursive practices about the regulation of migration help to constitute border zones not only as rites of passage for migrants, but as spaces of life itself.
It seems we live in a world of paradoxes, especially in what concerns the regulation of labour migration. On one hand, special regional agreements are facilitating the movement of migrants (either through the creation of common spaces such as the EU or the recently formalized free residence agreement between countries of Mercosur). On the other, new barriers, walls and border controls are making the movement, especially from those coming from the global peripheries, increasingly difficult. More than that, it has become harder to define where these peripheries are currently located and even more difficult to precisely pinpoint who their inhabitants are. In important respects, this chapter addresses the connection between the construction of such peripheries through zoning practices and their impact on the regulation of labour migration. Zoning strategies have been central to the operation of borders (and bordering activities) in these regions of the world. As such, the concept of zoning might help one to analyse the (dis)connections between statist claims regarding the control of labour 40migration and the everyday practices involved in the mobility of migrant workers within and beyond the territorially circumscribed spaces of border zones. Aihwa Ong (2006) defines zoning strategies as a mechanism of adaptation by sovereign power – as a response to profound changes in the global structures of capitalist accumulation and circulation – in which states adapt to the new demands of global capital. Consequentially, sovereign authorities devise zones as sites where the regulations, rights, restrictions, administrative processes and services are designed to secure development, prosperity and freedom for those outside of it. Special economic zones tend to tolerate modes of existence, and forms of mobility, that are not otherwise present in the traditional territories of the nation-state. The border in these cases bends to ‘flexible notions of citizenship’, neither resident, neither migrant, neither citizen, neither alien. It also bends to flexible or graduated notions of sovereignty by allowing governance structures to incorporate the interests and de facto power of important players in the global capitalist order.
Zoning technologies encode alternative territorialities for experiments in economic freedom and entrepreneurial activity. The logic of the exception fragments human territoriality in the interests of forging specific, variable and contingent connections to global circuits. The resulting pattern of graduated or variegated sovereignty ensures that the state can both face global challenges and secure order and growth. It is also crucial to note that these strategies produced through the logic of the exception are free of the “enlightenment” package of free-market ideology, modern political liberalism and participatory citizen-subjects. While the state retains formal sovereignty, corporations and multilateral agencies frequently exert de facto control over the conditions of living, laboring and migration of populations in special zones (Ong 2006, 19).
Ong provides an interesting approach to how sovereign power rearticulates itself in the face of globalization processes. In her analysis, flexible or graduated notions of citizenship and sovereignty are conveyed in an attempt to trace these transformations and to illustrate alternative mechanisms of responding to a world increasingly marked by fluidity and transversal connections. Zoning technologies carry with them a highly ambiguous connotation. They are embedded in new structures of discrimination and new forms of exploitation, especially from the standpoint of displaced groups. For migrants, special zones present themselves as a permanently impossible gateway to equality and justice, as flexible mechanisms of inclusion place them into a transient zone where they are neither ‘proper’ migrants, ‘potential’ citizens or otherwise. These groups and individuals are somewhat tangentially incorporated into a logic of being that never fully realizes itself, and that is constantly subjected to the volatile interests of multiple sovereign authorities. Moreover, zoning practices entail highly selective mechanisms of partial inclusion, opened to a group of marginal, yet privileged, few who have the abilities and ‘desired’ identities sought by those who control the exercise of graduated sovereignty. Practices of zoning as such do not alter the dynamics 41of exclusion inherent in the control of labour migration, but they can certainly minimize them. For example, zoning strategies can create mechanisms of inclusion that allow for migrant workers to circumvent some of the restrictions imposed by prioritizing a national, territorially exclusive notion of community membership. One might say that there are elements that present the border zone as a more hospitable site than the one individuals left behind (access to public services, informal jobs, better chances of social mobility and so on). But there are also elements that compose a more precarious condition of living, such as submission to degrading work standards, discrimination on the part of the hosting community, restrictions on mobility rights, difficulties in language and integration etc. Therefore, the balance between abjection and protection is always dependent on the evaluation and effect of these zoning strategies on mobile groups (and on the responses they provide to the problems they face in this new environment).
Zoning strategies demonstrate how flexible mechanisms of management of migrant workers serve to reproduce a peculiar form of sovereignty performance, that articulates simultaneously a logic of control/discipline and of solidarity/inclusion. The concept of zoning also demands an analysis of how different actors, usually disconnected from state-run institutions, operate as crucial gatekeepers of the borders labour migrants have to cross in order to integrate into host societies.
Reflecting upon this theoretical discussion, the chapter discusses the contemporary agreement on labour migration between Brazil and Bolivia ratified in 2004. This agreement transformed the border into a space of free movement for labour migrants and created a new juridical figure: the transborder dweller or fronteiriço. Portrayed by public officials of both countries (and in the media) as a cooperation effort aimed at improving the living conditions of border dwellers, and thus of advancing an understanding of the border as a hospitable zone, this chapter tries to elucidate the multiple aspects of life at the border that make this claim both possible and unattainable. It draws on ethnographic research conducted in Corumbá and Puerto Suarez, twin cities on the border zone, in order to discuss the (im)possibilities of the condition of fronteiriços. It also illustrates the difficult conciliation between a hospitable border zone in an inhospitable country, especially in what regards Bolivians presence within urban spaces in Brazil. This is particularly salient in relation to the situation of Bolivians in Brazil largest metropolis, São Paulo. The chapter is organized in three sections. In the first section, I briefly describe some of the tensions crisscrossing Brazil–Bolivia relations and advance a particular understanding of the everyday negotiations of fronteiriços in the border zone. In the second section, I move towards a description of the situation of Bolivian migrants in São Paulo and, in the third, I conclude with some reflections on the consequences of this particular case for contemporary labour migration regulations.
