Waiting in Non-places: The Spatialization of Displacement Discourses

The paper explores how migration politics manifest in physical spaces, and how the labelling of displacement as migration affects the lives and opportunities of the displaced. Drawing on the experiential perspectives of displaced communities in Mexico's Migrant Integration Centres along its northern border with the United States, the study explores the geopolitics of displacement, viewed as a socio-spatial phenomenon, and uses this as an empirical pathway to uncover the fractured environments that result from the conflict between political discourses and incongruent (inter)national policies. In other words, non-places. Through discourse analysis, the research unpacks the continuum of state-produced labels used to create and manage migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees as Other. A socio-spatial analysis further reveals that, through ‘spatialization’ processes, non-places emerge as multifaceted conglomerations abstractly produced by systemic state apparatus to exercise and maintain power over local and other populations.