Abstract
This chapter makes the argument that contemporary border rules are a set of social relations, marked by the long shadow of historical violence, determining access to wealth and resources, and enabling the management of labor, the extraction of surplus, and the accumulation of capital. They are characterized, in short, as determinants in creating, maintaining, and reproducing a specific set of political and economic relations. They are also considered to be the operative framework for enforcing and regulating these relations and shown to consist of material state and inter-state policies and performative rituals (such as the representation of bordered subjects) that enact and reproduce these exploitative and oppressive relations. Moreover, these rules are confirmed to mark difference in racial and national terms and to serve as an essential mechanism for ensuring the extraction of surplus and the management and reproduction of living labor. If capital is value in motion, then borders are essential conduits for circulating and reproducing that value. The politics of race and the business of surplus extractions and management, it is argued, are not separate issues: clearly, many intersecting political and economic factors meet at the point of the border.