Thoughtful investigative report about a central issue of the 2008 presidential race that examines the border in human terms through a cast of colorful characters. Asks and answers the core questions: Should we close the border? Is a fence or wall the answer? Is the U.S. government capable of fully securing the border? Reviews the political, economic, social, and cultural aspects and discusses NAFTA, immigration policy, border security, and other local, regional, national, and international issues.
This book offers answers to essential questions about the border between the United States and Mexico and connected issues that are accessible to readers interested in immigration, border security, and U.S.-Mexico relations. Comprising seven chapters, The U.S.-Mexico Border: A Reference Handbook surveys the complex topic for students and readers. Chapter 1 discusses the political, social, and economic contexts in which the border came to exist. Chapter 2 discusses problems, controversies, and proposed solutions. Chapter 3 consists of original essays contributed by outside scholars, complementing the perspective and expertise of the author. Chapter 4 profiles major organizations and people who, as stakeholders in border politics, drive the agenda on the issue. Chapter 5 presents data and documents on the topic, giving readers the ability to analyze the facts. Chapter 6 provides additional resources that the reader may wish to consult, such as books, journal articles, and films. Chapter 7 provides a detailed chronology of important events, and the book closes with a useful glossary of key terms used throughout the book and a comprehensive subject index.
Line in the Sand details the dramatic transformation of the western U.S.-Mexico border from its creation at the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 to the emergence of the modern boundary line in the first decades of the twentieth century. In this sweeping narrative, Rachel St. John explores how this boundary changed from a mere line on a map to a clearly marked and heavily regulated divide between the United States and Mexico. Focusing on the desert border to the west of the Rio Grande, this book explains the origins of the modern border and places the line at the center of a transnational history of expanding capitalism and state power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moving across local, regional, and national scales, St. John shows how government officials, Native American raiders, ranchers, railroad builders, miners, investors, immigrants, and smugglers contributed to the rise of state power on the border and developed strategies to navigate the increasingly regulated landscape. Over the border's history, the U.S. and Mexican states gradually developed an expanding array of official laws, ad hoc arrangements, government agents, and physical barriers that did not close the line, but made it a flexible barrier that restricted the movement of some people, goods, and animals without impeding others. By the 1930s, their efforts had created the foundations of the modern border control apparatus. Drawing on extensive research in U.S. and Mexican archives, Line in the Sand weaves together a transnational history of how an undistinguished strip of land became the significant and symbolic space of state power and national definition that we know today.
Roving vigilantes, fear-mongering politicians, hysterical pundits, and the looming shadow of a seven hundred-mile-long fence: the US–Mexican border is one of the most complex and dynamic areas on the planet today. Hyperborder provides the most nuanced portrait yet of this dynamic region. Author Fernando Romero presents a multidisciplinary perspective informed by interviews with numerous academics, researchers, and organizations. Provocatively designed in the style of other kinetic large-scale studies like Rem Koolhaas's Content and Bruce Mau’s Massive Change, Hyperborder is an exhaustively researched report from the front lines of the border debate.
Much political oratory has been devoted to safeguarding AmericaÕs boundary with Mexico, but policies that militarize the border and criminalize immigrants have overshadowed the regionÕs widespread violence against women, the increase in crossing deaths, and the lingering poverty that spurs people to set out on dangerous northward treks. This book addresses those concerns by focusing on gender-based violence, security, and human rights from the perspective of women who live with both violence and poverty. From the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, scholars from both sides of the 2,000-mile border reflect expertise in disciplines ranging from international relations to criminal justice, conveying a more complex picture of the region than that presented in other studies. Initial chapters offer an overview of routine sexual assaults on women migrants, the harassment of Central American immigrants at the hands of authorities and residents, corruption and counterfeiting along the border, and near-death experiences of border crossers. Subsequent chapters then connect analysis with solutions in the form of institutional change, social movement activism, policy reform, and the spread of international norms that respect human rights as well as good governance. These chapters show how all facets of the border situationÑglobalization, NAFTA, economic inequality, organized crime, political corruption, rampant patriarchyÑpromote gendered violence and other expressions of hyper-masculinity. They also show that U.S. immigration policy exacerbates the problems of border violenceÑin marked contrast to the border policies of European countries. By focusing on womenÕs everyday experiences in order to understand human security issues, these contributions offer broad-based alternative approaches and solutions that address everyday violence and inattention to public safety, inequalities, poverty, and human rights. And by presenting a social and democratic international feminist framework to address these issues, they offer the opportunity to transform todayÕs security debate in constructive ways.
Systematically exploring the dynamic interface between Mexico and the United States, this comprehensive survey considers the historical development, current politics, society, economy, and daily life of the border region. Now fully updated and revised, the book provides an overview of the history of the region and then traces the economic cycles and social movements from the 1880s through the beginning of the twenty-first century that created the modern border region, showing how the border shares characteristics of both nations while maintaining an internal coherence that transcends its divisive international boundary. The authors conclude with an in-depth analysis of the key issues of the contemporary borderlands: industrial development and maquiladoras, the North American Free Trade Agreement, rapid urbanization, border culture, demographic and migration issues, the environmental crisis, implications of climate change, Native Americans living near the border, U.S. and Mexican cooperation and conflict at the border, and drug trafficking and violence. They also place the border in its global context, examining it as a region caught between the developed and developing world and highlighting the continued importance of borders in a rapidly globalizing world. Richly illustrated with photographs and maps and enhanced by up-to-date and accessible statistical tables, this book is an invaluable resource for all those interested in borderlands and U.S.-Mexican relations.
Americans from radically different political persuasions agree on the need to “fix” the “broken” US immigration laws to address serious deficiencies and improve border enforcement. In Immigration Law and the US–Mexico Border, Kevin Johnson and Bernard Trujillo focus on what for many is at the core of the entire immigration debate in modern America: immigration from Mexico. In clear, reasonable prose, Johnson and Trujillo explore the long history of discrimination against US citizens of Mexican ancestry in the United States and the current movement against “illegal aliens”—persons depicted as not deserving fair treatment by US law. The authors argue that the United States has a special relationship with Mexico by virtue of sharing a 2,000-mile border and a “land-grab of epic proportions” when the United States “acquired” nearly two-thirds of Mexican territory between 1836 and 1853. The authors explain US immigration law and policy in its many aspects—including the migration of labor, the place of state and local regulation over immigration, and the contributions of Mexican immigrants to the US economy. Their objective is to help thinking citizens on both sides of the border to sort through an issue with a long, emotional history that will undoubtedly continue to inflame politics until cooler, and better-informed, heads can prevail. The authors conclude by outlining possibilities for the future, sketching a possible movement to promote social justice. Great for use by students of immigration law, border studies, and Latino studies, this book will also be of interest to anyone wondering about the general state of immigration law as it pertains to our most troublesome border.
This blend of travelogue and reportage from the US-Mexico border is “an exploration of 2,000 miles of fraught, rugged and deeply contested territory” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). In a quest to capture a real-life, close-up view of the land where so many have been kicked, cussed, spit on, arrested, detained, trafficked, or killed—and the subject that has been debated for decades by politicians and commentators—Charles D. Thompson records his journey from Boca Chica to Tijuana, and his conversations with everyone from border officials to migrant workers to local residents. Along the journey, five centuries of cultural history (indigenous, French, Spanish, Mexican, African American, colonist, and US), wars, and legislation unfold. Among the terrain traversed: walls and more walls, unexpected roadblocks, and patrol officers; a golf course (you could drive a ball across the border); a Civil War battlefield (you could camp there); the southernmost plantation in the US; a hand-drawn ferry, a road-runner tracked desert and a breathtaking national park; barbed wire, bridges, and a trucking-trade thoroughfare; ghosts with guns; obscured, unmarked, and unpaved roads; a Catholic priest and his dogs, artwork, icons, and political cartoons; a sheriff and a chain-smoking mayor; a Tex-Mex eatery empty of customers and a B&B shuttering its doors; murder-laden newspaper headlines at breakfast; the kindness of the border-crossing underground; and too many elderly, impoverished, ex-U.S. farmworkers, braceros, who lined up to have Thompson take their photograph. “A firsthand look at how modern U.S. border policy has affected the people in the region, from migrant workers to indigenous people to border patrol agents to residents of economically stagnant towns just north of the boundary. The result is a travel memoir with a conscience, an extension of Thompson’s ongoing work to humanize the hotly debated region.” —The News & Observer
Thanks to hundreds of interviews with Mexican deportees, this book puts a real face on discussions of immigration and border policies--Provided by publisher.
