Beyond showing the dangers that migrants face crossing the border, the church posters represent the way common assumption about migration perpetuate symbolic violence. During their treacherous journey across the U.S.-Mexico border, Seth Holmes and his group of Triqui companions stop in the dingy desert town of Altar. In the town’s church, Holmes sees a series of posters that depict the risks migrants face while crossing the border: robbers, deadly heat, and dangerous animals. Alongside these images, the posters ask, “Is it worth risking your life?”
Holmes points out that this question assumes people freely choose to cross the border, accepting the risks it involves in exchange for the financial opportunity it presents. However, through his fieldwork, Holmes realizes that many migrants don’t make this kind of deliberate, self-interested decision. Rather, crossing the border is about survival: they have no other option. For instance, the Triquis migrate to work in the U.S. because they have no economic opportunities at home in Oaxaca. They can’t afford to eat consistently or send their children to school unless they migrate elsewhere to work.
Accordingly, it doesn’t make sense to ask many migrants crossing the border illegally is “worth risking [their] life”—rather, they’re crossing the border “to make life less risky” than it already is. So why do public conversations about migration tend to use this framing of individual risk versus reward? One reason, Holmes suggests, is because it allows policymakers and U.S. citizens to blame migrant workers for the violence and poverty they face, rather than taking action to avoid it. This is why the posters are an example of symbolic violence: they blame the victims of violence for their suffering rather than identifying the perpetrators.
The Church Posters Symbol Timeline in Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies
