Introduction

The introduction outlines the volume’s conceptual perspective on borders and migration across the Western Hemisphere. We deploy the term border regime to characterize borders as dynamic, uneven spaces of encounter, exchange, conflict, and contestation, rather than static demarcations between nation-state territories. A hemispheric perspective calls for a critical examination of transcontinental and interregional migratory processes and the corresponding formations of border enforcement that operate across North, Central, and South America, as well as the Caribbean. We argue furthermore that the Americas should be understood not as an isolated region but as a global space continuously shaped by past and present mobilities connected to Europe, Africa, and Asia. We emphasize the importance of recognizing the diverse migratory flows and transnational corridors crossing the Americas in multiple directions, which increasingly encompass human mobilities on a global scale. By highlighting the dynamics of migration, control, and resistance in Latin America and the Caribbean, we reveal the existence and consolidation of what we designate to be a heterogeneous trans-American border regime that has been consolidated on a hemispheric scale. We also explain the historical context in which this book emerges—a moment of renewed intellectual ferment in Latin American migration studies where, through historically grounded, postcolonial perspectives, contributors examine new migration patterns across the region, the breakdown of previous legal frameworks for migration and asylum, and the spatial, economic, and political transformations instigated by unrelenting human mobility.