The Minuteman Project: Affective Entrepreneurship and the Securitization of the US/Mexico Border

Abstract

Since the late 1990s border studies have focused on the intersubjective nature of borders, specifically focusing on bordering processes; the ways in which borders are demarcated and forged by agents and actors. Border studies also focus on borders as loci of sovereignty as well as loci of securitization. This paper investigates the consequences of applying affect theory for the theoretical categories of sovereignty and securitization. It does so by offering a new theoretical category: the affective entrepreneur. It identifies the potential of vigilante citizen border patrol groups, especially their leaders, to be affective entrepreneurs and then enact a downward shift of sovereignty onto themselves in the face of a perceived failure of the 'sovereign' to respond to a perceived threat. It outlines future avenues of research for the affective turn in securitization theory.