Securitization and urban policy in Ciudad Juárez

Abstract

In the 21st century, the connections between globalisation and securitization have been expressed increasingly clear in the local scale. The transnational and securitized character of recent urban policies in Ciudad Juárez is a valuable indicator of such nexus because of the contents that the border situation attributes to the city. It poses Juárez in a privileged position both to the narco-trafficking routes towards the U.S. and to the neoliberal exploitation, historically expressed by the industrial activity of the maquiladoras. The research proposed in this project will study these nexus in the context of an ongoing project of urban development of the historical centre of Ciudad Juarez, last released in 2014. Although the 'urban restructuring' at issue is restricted to the city centre, its formulation mobilises actors at many different levels (municipal, state, federal, binational, and even transnational). All of them are connected by an argument of 'rescuing' the image of the city from a stigma of violence, which was reinforced by an unprecedented dynamic of criminality faced from 2008 to 2010. The U.S. government took side in these urban projects by financially supporting crime-prevention programs in the region since 2008, sustained by the renewed principles of Merida Initiative. The question that motivates this research project is how is this 'urban renewal' policy associated to a broader securitizing project or, in other words, how the neoliberal urbanism embodied by the 'urban regeneration' of Juárez connects to the federal security strategy of Mexican state.