Cross-Border Anxiety among Korean Border Commuters at the US–Mexico Border

Based on ethnographic fieldwork on the Korean transborder community in the US–Mexico border region, this article examines Korean border commuters’ experiences of border inspections through the lens of cross-border anxiety. Interrogating cross-border anxiety offers insight into the ways in which border inspections require border crossers to surrender to the absolute power of the sovereign state, which can arbitrarily shift the framing of non-citizens from “desirable” to “threat.” By applying Mark B. Salter’s conceptualization of sovereign exceptionalism in borderlands, this article shows how discretionary border performance – border agents’ interactions with border crossers – not only adjudicates border crossers’ entry into the country but also has disciplinary effects on immigrants – both border crossers and those around them. This article extends the current discourse by paying attention to how Korean border crossers and their communities find ways to manage their cross-border anxiety in this context by presenting themselves as docile and obedient subjects or restricting their border-crossing mobility and/or employment opportunities. Furthermore, this article shows how immigrants construct counter-discourses that push back against the state’s framing of them as “undesirable.”