Trapped in Transit: Rendering Bodies Subject or Suspect at the Airport

The airport is an integral site of both movement and deterrence in the United States. We must consider the increased security and surveillance techniques and technologies that are being produced and implemented in airports, rendering them as ambiguous sites of rights and agency. The purpose of this paper is to grapple with the tension of movement and deterrence within airports today and to center the airport as an important part of security and surveillance studies. The airport is not only a fascinating area of study for critical race and gender theorists because of the disproportionate violence that it enacts on bodies that are rendered "suspect," but also because there are invisible agents, both human and non-human, that enact this violence. Anthropologist Jason De León conceptualizes human and non-human actants deterring Latin American migrants coming into the US at the desert above the border. An examination of De León and other theorists work will help to re-conceptualize, queer, and re-draw the border at the modern day US airport.