Description
This paper revisits research undertaken in the Mexico-US border region during 2011 and 2012 to consider how ‘things’ left behind by people migrating across the Sonoran Desert can shed light not only on the lived experiences of precarious migration, but also on implicit and indirect demands to life and humanity that such experiences can generate. Reflecting both on the risks of silencing that can arise through an analysis of things, as well as on the ways in which things can help tell stories in contexts where the scope to speak out is limited, the paper considers how a more-than-human approach can facilitate a migrant-oriented analysis of migratory claims even where there are challenges to the analysis of spoken demands. It explores how such a focus can uncover important struggles over governing practices that dehumanise and dispossess people who travel through perilous environments such as the desert.
