Reparations for border deaths: enforced disappearance, reparations from below, and border abolitionist horizons

This article examines the movement for reparations for border deaths. Considering developments in the legal framework on enforced disappearances, it explores concrete examples that confront state abandonment and demand accountability for border violence. These reparative efforts, rooted in a longer history of anti-state violence mobilizations, are illustrated by truth-seeking campaigns and memory activism. Recognizing these diverse struggles, we propose reparations from below as an alternative notion, highlighting the relational and practical politics that emerge from life amidst loss in support of freedom of movement for all. The conclusion considers how the labor of repair aligns these practices with a border abolitionist horizon.