Abstract

YEH, Rihan. (Non-)Citizenship: An Interrogation at the Mexico-US Border. Rev. colomb. antropol. [online]. 2024, vol.60, n.1, pp.76-102.  Epub Jan 01, 2024. ISSN 0486-6525.  https://doi.org/10.22380/2539472x.2579.

This essay examines the narrative of a young US citizen of Mexican descent about an interrogation she was subjected to upon entering her native country from Mexico, where she had grown up. Through its fixation on the exchange of questions and answers, the interrogation divides and, even, disappears the subject interrogated, thus transforming a bureaucratic procedure into a site of manifestation of state sovereignty, classically understood as arbitrary and unmeasured. At the same time, the narrative of the interrogation nests inside a larger narrative about an attempted kidnapping which the narrator underwent in Mexico. Together, the linguistic interruptions and the interactional impasses of both the narrative of the interrogation and of the kidnapping sketch the contours of a transnational system of governance that operates on the basis not of differential rights but of differential vulnerability to violence.

Keywords : citizenship; US-Mexico border; sovereignty; interaction; narrative.

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