Walking the Line: Borderlands and the Politics of Hiking

This article takes the Arizona Trail (AZT) as a case study to consider the ways that hiking is made to serve a political purpose in part through its representation as apolitical. I show how certain opposition to border wall construction employs the figure of the hiker as one that is both beyond the realm of politics and aligned with practices of good citizenship. This move then entails the production of that figure’s other, the migrant whose criminalized walking the wall is meant to prevent. In leaving that other largely unmarked and unaddressed, opposition to the wall’s construction can claim to be disengaged from politics while tacitly affirming the necessity of borders and their enforcement.