Affecting migration: Public information campaigns and the intimate spatialities of border enforcement

A broad body of research has examined the shifting spatialities of contemporary border enforcement efforts, drawing particular attention to how border enforcement efforts increasingly take place away from the territorial edges of border enforcing states. However, existing research largely focuses on border enforcement efforts that mobilize strategies of militarization, securitization, and criminalization. In response, this paper draws on work in the fields of emotional and feminist geopolitics, to broaden understandings of the sites, modalities, and spatialities of border governance. Drawing on in-depth interviews, archival research, and discourse analysis, this paper examines public information campaigns launched by US border enforcement agencies between 1990 and 2012. In doing so, I show how these campaigns aim to affect migrant decision-making and reduce unauthorized migration by circulating strategically crafted messages and images into the intimate spaces of everyday life where potential migrants and...