Homeland Heroes: Migrants and Soldiers in the Neoliberal Era

Abstract

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between neoliberalism and nationalism through the counterintuitive comparison of journeys travelled by US citizens as they enlist in the military and by unauthorized Central Americans as they migrate to the United States. We argue that, however different the context and content of their decisions and their lives, Central American migrants and US soldiers are both connected within a larger political economy. We complicate the idea of migrants and soldiers as purely rational economic actors, but we also reject the idea, imputed onto migrants and soldiers by neoliberal states, that they are naturally nationalistic actors. Migrants and soldiers embody a neoliberal subjectivity produced through processes of violence, capital accumulation and militarization. Yet, as we examine throughout this paper, their construction as homeland heroes within the national imaginary masks the ways their labor and their mobility serve the institutionalization of neoliberal statecraft. Resumen: Este documento examina la relación dinámica entre el neoliberalismo y el nacionalismo a través de la comparación contraintuitivo de viajes recorridos por los ciudadanos de EE.UU., que se alistan en el ejército y los centroamericanos no autorizados que emigran a los Estados Unidos. Nosotros sostenemos que los migrantes centroamericanos y los soldados estadounidenses están conectados dentro de una economía política más amplia, incluso a pesar de la diferencia en el contenido de sus decisiones, de sus vidas y de sus contextos. Nos complicamos la idea de los migrantes y los soldados como los actores económicos puramente racionales, pero también rechazamos la idea, imputada a los migrantes y los soldados de los Estados neoliberales, que son actores naturalmente nacionalistas. Los migrantes y los soldados encarnan una subjetividad neoliberal que se produce a través de procesos de violencia, la acumulación de capital y la militarización. A medida que examinamos en este documento, su construcción como héroes de la patria dentro de las máscaras de imaginarios nacionales las formas de su trabajo y su movilidad servir a la institucionalización del arte de gobernar neoliberal.

Underground Railroads and coyote conductors: brokering clandestine passages, then and now

“…It also portrays the coordination among conductors as a tightly organised conspiracy. This agency-centred discourse provides, "the ability to frame suffering through the lens of agency and the availability of these experiences to the common man" which "makes them ideal fodder for national mythmaking projects" (Brigden and Vogt, 2015). As a discourse centred on the conductor as the primary engine of escape plots, the Underground Railroad refocuses on the potential for noble action by individual citizens, rather than highlighting the overriding and systematic oppression that the State engaged in, or the fact that the vast majority of white Americans acquiesced to and benefited from it (Schultz, 2016).…”

“…As explained by a Salvadoran migrant en route to the USA, "El Salvador is like a prison. The only way to gain liberty is to escape" (quoted in Brigden and Vogt, 2015;Vogt, 2013). People from the Global South frequently participate in contemporary clandestine migration to cope with conditions of structural and direct violence generated by neoliberal governance (Andrijasevic and Mai, 2016;Brigden and Vogt, 2015).…”

“…The only way to gain liberty is to escape" (quoted in Brigden and Vogt, 2015;Vogt, 2013). People from the Global South frequently participate in contemporary clandestine migration to cope with conditions of structural and direct violence generated by neoliberal governance (Andrijasevic and Mai, 2016;Brigden and Vogt, 2015). Recent scholarship has demonstrated that the criminalisation of smuggling restricts the capacity of refugees to reach safe destinations [Baird and Van Liempt, (2016), p.410].…”