An infrastructure of grief: perspectives from a journey along the route of the real and imagined Texas-Mexico Wall

Abstract

This article explores the effects of the border wall between the US and Mexico, from the perspectives of people living along it and through careful consideration of its effects on non-human persons. Two doctoral students travel 400 miles along the Rio Grande River, examining relationships to place in the US-Mexico borderlands through interviews with DACA recipients and their lawyer, environmentalists, and local hikers. Critical place inquiry foregrounds place as a methodology. Racial melancholia provides a framework for understanding how the border is imagined as necessary for the continuation of the settler colonial project, despite costs to diverse forms of life. Conclusions explore the nonsensical nature of the project of building a wall, the resistance to being categorised as static, and the physical and psychic violence caused by the restriction of movement.