Abstract

In this paper the border is evaluated as a fold of power relations in which sovereign capacity and competence is marshaled in the furtherance of illiberal practices. Drawing from interview data of officials in various agencies engaged in the US-Canada and particularly the Windsor-Detroit corridor, the argument is made that the border is a site for both negative and positive power, for insertion and subtraction, and that surveillance and compliance regimes are ‘run’ not so much in the furtherance of a precautionary or preemptive end-state, but as intermediate values that are sufficiently malleable by an invigorated sovereign, expressed in the residue of discretion in and between the many border agencies