Margath A. Walker
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About Margath
Walker is a geographer who studies the Global South and a variety of topics related to the U.S.-Mexico border, including security policy and civic engagement. She is currently comparing how U.S.-Mexico-Guatemala trilateral policies, aimed at combating violence and fortifying national boundaries, impact key non-governmental organizations. At the University of Louisville, she teaches courses on urban inequalities in cities of the Global South, the history and philosophy of human geography, and qualitative methods. Walker has worked with community organizations on the U.S.-Mexico border and in Kentucky supporting economic and racial justice. She has presented her research to the Department of Homeland Security and municipal agencies in Tijuana, Mexico.
Contributions
Publications
Proposes the concept of techno-cultural-rationalities to understand how border security is enacted and "technified" along the historically porous boundary between Mexico and Guatemala. Examines how technology seeks to neutralize politics and instill rigid classifications on fluid and politicized realities in Mexico's Southern Border Program (Programa Frontera Sur).
Helps to understand the implications of the Trump administration's promise to build a border wall between the United States and Mexico for Latin American geography.
Uses the comparative context of the US-Mexico border and the Mexico-Guatemala border to critique what they call the "border as hegemony", a borderscape constructed through obstructions, punitive policing, and reinforcing the limits of state control. Proposes a model of the "border as discord."
Argues for the necessity and value of using critical theory to review tripartite politics across North and South America in the war on drugs.