Through it, over it or around it: The geopolitical futures of border walls

This paper studies how geopolitical representations and geopolitical stimulus influence the future of border security deployments in the US/Mexico borderlands. It explores the way in which adversaries confront those security deployments by going “through, over or around” the walls, following a stigmergic adaptation process of coordination. By applying future-thinking methodologies, it demonstrates these dynamics using two case studies: the first one explores how criminal smugglers have adopted drone technologies to defeat border walls and the second one describes the geopolitical pressure that current strategy place on coastal and submarine operations. The paper concludes by demonstrating that while the true function of border walls is to send signals to a domestic audience in order to build geopolitical representations based on the fear of “the other”, their deployment is nevertheless impacting the future shape of smuggling, providing incentives to organized crime to improve and adapt.