The thickening borderlands: Diffused exceptionality and 'Immigrant' social struggles during the 'War on Terror'

I draw from ethnographic research in the Mexico-US borderlands,the immigrant social struggle in the United States, and interviews with organizations invested in the immigrant social struggle in Arizona, to explore the historically specific expansion of what I am calling the 'borderlands condition', or the coupling of 'exceptionality' with politicalimaginaries.The former term represents an iteration of the diffused governance of race.The article charts the plasticity of the exceptionality of the borderlands,its shift from militarized policing in the southwestern borderlands to the naturalization of a vigilantism in concert with the transnationally inflected immigrant social struggle, as representative of the borderlands condition.