'Welcome to the Border’: National Geographic’s Border Wars and the Naturalization of Border Militarization

Dorr, Noam, Emine Fidan Elcioglu, and Lindsey Gaydos*. 2014. “‘Welcome to the Border’: National Geographic’s Border Wars and the Naturalization of Border Militarization.” Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society 17(1): 45-60. *equal co-authors

Welcome to the Border examines how National Geographic’s hit show Border Wars makes border militarization look natural and inevitable. Through content analysis, we show how the series casts agents as soldiers, migrants as either villains or pitiable victims, and seized objects as trophies of war. By framing the border as a perpetual battlefield, Border Wars transforms enforcement into spectacle, reinforcing the very insecurities it claims to resolve .

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