Surveilled Mourning: Memory Mapping and Digital Memorials in the Borderlands.
In this article I consider the intertwined dimensions of contemporary surveillance technologies and digital memorials for migrants in the United States-Mexico borderlands. I examine how digital memorials make border surveillance apparent through the charting, mapping, and visibility of the Sonoran D...
| Publicado en: | Afterimage Vol. 53; no. 2; pp. 82 - 102 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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University of California Press
Jun2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=195221570&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 195221570 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 03007472 ATF jtl: Afterimage issn: 03007472 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jun2026 vid: 53 iid: 2 pid: 414 pub: University of California Press artinfo: ui: 195221570 10.1525/aft.2026.53.2.82 ppf: 82 ppct: 20 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 1.2MB tig: atl: Surveilled Mourning: Memory Mapping and Digital Memorials in the Borderlands. aug: au: Quintanilla, Alyssa su: Memorials Immigration policy Deserts Electronic surveillance Mexico-United States border Internal migration Resistance to government Border security Sonoran Desert United States sug: subj: Sonoran Desert United States Memorials Immigration policy Deserts Electronic surveillance Mexico-United States border Internal migration Resistance to government Border security keyword: borderlands counter-mapping media memorials surveillance United States-Mexico border ab: In this article I consider the intertwined dimensions of contemporary surveillance technologies and digital memorials for migrants in the United States-Mexico borderlands. I examine how digital memorials make border surveillance apparent through the charting, mapping, and visibility of the Sonoran Desert. These memorials rely upon existing and escalating border infrastructures for visibility while reinscribing digital interfaces as a means of mourning, particularly for migrants who have died as a result of deadly US policies. As such, they highlight the contradictory realities of hypervisibility and erasure that are critical to the continuation of contemporary immigration policy. Here, I consider how two digital memorials, Josh Begley's 2016 Fatal Migrations and John Craig Freeman's 2012 Border Memorial, to explore the possibilities and limitations of digitality as a means of awareness, advocacy, and political resistance. These pieces use existing technologies and logics of mapping attached to the Sonoran Desert to highlight how the specificities of place are critical to the policies that not only kill migrants but hide their deaths under "natural environmental" processes. By anchoring digital memorials in the Sonoran Desert, the pieces challenge dominant narratives of the desert borderlands as a site of nothingness or a space of erasure. Taken together, these digital memorials suggest how migrant deaths have been erased or made invisible, and that the efforts at visibility require complicating the state-run systems. To remember and mourn, especially digitally, reconfigures the state's view and reorients the maps to account for the continuous violence happening just out of sight. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Afterimage is the property of University of California Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Afterimage holder: University of California Press dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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