Cactus Carvings and Desert Defecations: Embodying Representations of Border Crossings in Protected Areas on the Mexico—US Border

Recent strategies to enforce the United States boundary with Mexico have shifted undocumented immigrants into remote lands federally designated as protected areas (as in national park or national wildlife refuge). Government and media institutions represent such entries as a threat to nature. In this paper we argue that representations and interpretations of threats to nature in border-protected areas are laden with identity attachments. In repeatedly defining that which is threatened as ‘American’, such discourses work to draw boundaries around the nation, thereby narrating inclusion and exclusion.