“We need a fence!”

The spectacle of border militarization in Israel and in the USA

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the contemporary phenomenon commonly referred to as the “multiplication of walls”, namely the militarization of borderlands. It considers border enforcement as a policy solution about mobility portrayed as “undesirable”, propounded by politicians, security professionals and citizens’ groups for their own political benefit and interest. The “wall” is thus apprehended through a political spectacle intended for fenced-in citizens. To dissect the wall spectacle, the article resorts to an international comparison in two different geopolitical cases. The comparison specifically focuses on mobilizations in favor of “border/security fences” in Israel from 2001 and Arizona (USA) from 2010. It identifies three analogous political operations led by these actors (problematization of mobility, securitization into a military response and publicization of pro-fence narratives), and thus characterizes the manufacture of border militarization from a bottom-up perspective, while illustrating their national variations.