Undocumented migration, use wear, and the materiality of habitual suffering in the Sonoran Desert

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, unauthorized migrants attempting to cross the Sonoran Desert of Arizona have been relying on a unique set of material culture to evade Border Patrol, as well as prevent and treat injuries during the crossing process. Some media and academic attention has focused on the hundreds of migrants who die each year during desert border crossings, but little focus has been paid to the non-lethal injuries (e.g. blisters and dehydration) that hundreds of thousands of people sustain annually. Using a combination of ethnographic and archaeological data, the author argues that border-crossing artifacts both reflect and shape a way of being that is specific to the desert migration process. Expanding upon the archaeological concept of use wear, he demonstrates that modifications made to migrant goods provide evidence of border-crossing body techniques that are connected to widespread and routinized forms of corporeal suffering.