“Better to Be Hot than Caught”: Excavating the Conflicting Roles of Migrant Material Culture

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since the mid‐1990s, heightened U.S. border security in unauthorized crossing areas near urban ports of entry has shifted undocumented migration toward remote regions such as the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, where security is more penetrable but crossing conditions are more difficult. Subsequently, a complex smuggling industry has developed in Northern Mexico that profits from helping migrants cross the desert on foot to enter the United States undetected. Desert crossing is now a well‐established social process whereby items such as dark clothes and water bottles have been adopted as tools used for subterfuge and survival by migrants. This article highlights ethnographic data on the experiences of migrants and archaeological data collected along the migrant trails that cross the Arizona desert to illustrate the routinized techniques and tools associated with the violent process of border crossing, as well as the dialectical and often oppressive relationship that exists between migrants and objects. [ material culture, undocumented migration, border crossing, U.S.–Mexico, archaeology of the contemporary ]