| Summary: | In August 2015, the Venezuelan government closed the Colombian border, causing a disruption in the exchange of goods, services, and the free movement of people. This borderland community responded by reestablishing las trochas, or the trenches, a network of informal roads located surrounding La Raya, which is the road that passes through the Paraguachón migration checkpoint, as the only alternative to cross the border. Since 2015, Venezuelans migrants have used las trochas to flee their country. The public and state represents this space as a violent, lawless land, this phenomenon as a menace to the nation-state and citizenry, and these migrant bodies as victims, criminals, and objects. This narrative engenders xenophobia and justifies denying basic human rights to those that live in and pass through the border. To reduce this negative impact, this paper challenges these misrepresentations. I argue that La Raya is not a lawless land and that Venezuelan migrants are self-determining humans with social and political power. Also, I propose the concept of a new transmigrant citizen. These citizens possess multiple subjectivities and reinvent themselves as they pass through las trochas. In short, transmigrants recreate their own citizenship, and this invented citizenry produces sanctuary spaces outside the limits of the modern nation-state. I support this proposal via the oral histories of transmigrant Venezuelans that have crossed La Raya, as well as via interviews and photographs I collected during my work as a journalist during 2017. I apply theoretical frameworks from cultural criticism studies as well as from migration, space, and citizenship studies to demonstrate the resistance in La Raya by transmigrant Venezuelans. This reconceptualization of transmigrants aims to influence migration public policy at the state level.
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