Magie tecniche e magie di consumo di una pratica urbana socio-motoria. Riflessioni a partire dall’infrastruttura dello skateboard a Tijuana (Messico)

This article frames skateboarding in Tijuana, Mexico, as a socio-technical system (STS) en- compassing both transborder infrastructures and the use/consumption of their artifacts. Based on long-term ethnographic research, it investigates the interplay between skateboarding in Californian popular culture, the global production of skateboards in Mexican maquiladoras, and their informal circulations in Tijuana. Skateboards are conceived as «magical» objects that enable general motor conducts in the city and shape specific bodies and persons in the social border context. The intertwining of bodies, subjectivities, technologies and commercial value through practice fully explains how skateboards on the border are cultural artifacts for participating in global fantasies.