Geographical borders still play a pivotal role in the demarcation of national boundaries, despite the promise of globalisation. Mobilities and migrations are determined by perceptions of national identity influenced by trade agreements, neoliberalism and new technologies of surveillance. This results in new imagined terrors and horrors that can plague life at a national border, eliciting strategies to cope with the incoming flux of migrants and forms of violence that afflict communities. In turn, alternative forms and systems of faith and belief arise to guarantee survival in these conflicted liminal spaces. Instead of opening up to potential global social interactions, mobility and exchange, and a pervading perception of the nation, have created urban spaces monstrified by border politics and global trade agreements that benefit from inequality. There is no better example than the border that separates Mexico from the United States of America, a geopolitical space that has historically been a site of struggle in the definition of national identity and which has also been subject to constant migration, whether legal or illegal. Recent gothic and horror fictions, such as Marcus Sedgwick's novel Saint Death (2016) or the Mexican film Belzebuth (2017), reveal the complexities of such borders and the social and economic effects these have had on the cities on the Mexican side, where globalisation has provided harsh conditions for survival, always framed by death and the desire to move to better-imagined places in order to live. Instead of celebrating beneficial outcomes of globalised cultures and economies, gothic at the border reveals and unearths sociopolitical frameworks that constrain desired fluid mobilities. Individuals are threatened by a systemic violence that is enhanced by the environmental and political nature of the national border, complicating these mobilities. Movement is motivated by the desire for a better quality of life, but is constantly hindered by death. To take a look at the Mexico-US border involves understanding a complex network of policies that have turned it into a site of horror. Both Saint Death and Belzebuth explore this horror by telling fictional stories that ultimately make evident that mobility is disrupted by a border that is still in place, despite what globalisation has promised.

Monstrous Global Borders

The Mexico-US border stretches across 3,145 kilometres, mostly through vast deserts. The idea of crossing this border legally requires passing through densely populated areas, closely monitored by agents of each nation.