Transnational virtual mobility as a reification of deployment of power: Exploring transnational processes in the film Sleep Dealer

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article looks at migration cinema from the perspective of transnational migration, taking as a reference point the setting deployed in the film Sleep Dealer (Alex Rivera, 2008, USA/Mex). This film provides a conspicuous instance of how the global economy, commanded by the United States, can affect local economies, personified in the film by a Mexican town. The thrust of this political and futuristic dystopian film revolves around how the United States has disposed of the need to use physical Mexican workers in favour of importing virtual Mexican labour. By physically connecting the neural systems of the workers—similar to the way it works in the sci-fi film The Matrix—to robots located in the United States, it is no longer necessary for the workers to physically leave Mexico to work north of the border. Thus, transnational virtual mobility (mobilization without the body) not only subverts the regular transnational bodily movement (when physical migration occurs) but it also gives rise to a re...