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The Specter of Surveillance: Navigating “Illegality” and Indigeneity among Maya Migrants in the San Francisco Bay Area

APLA Newsletter

Published online on

Abstract

This article explores how indigenous migrants experience the sociopolitical and existential condition of “illegality” in the United States. Drawing on the experiences of Maya migrants from Yucatán, Mexico, in the San Francisco Bay Area, I argue that the specter of state surveillance and the threat of law enforcement produce a particular politics of (im)mobility for indigenous migrants. This local politics of mobility takes form through spatial tactics of invisibility and visibility. Tracing migrants’ tactical maneuvers through public space, I show how their relations to space, place, and movement alter cultural sensibilities of tranquilidad (tranquility),and further instantiate “illegality” as a site of exclusion. This analysis of the experiential effects of anticipated surveillance provides a deeper understanding of the power of the state to enforce migrant “illegality” even in cities that promise official sanctuary.