The U.S.-Mexico Border Region is among the poorest geographical areas in the United States. The region has been long characterized by dual development, poor infrastructure, weak schools, health disparities and low-wage employment. More recently, the region has been affected by the violence associated with a drug and crime war in Mexico. The premise of this book is that the U.S.-Mexico Border Region is subject to systematic oppression and that the so-called social pathologies that we see in the region are by-products of social and economic injustice in the form of labor exploitation, environmental racism, immigration militarism, institutional sexism and discrimination, health inequities, a political economy based on low-wage labor, and the globalization of labor and capital. The chapters address a variety of examples of injustice in the areas of environment, health disparity, migration unemployment, citizenship, women and gender violence, mental health, and drug violence. The book proposes a pathway to development.

"One of the most complete collections of essays on U.S.-Mexico border studies"--Provided by publisher.

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.

Looks at life on the Mexican border, including the ethnicity, attitudes, and place of residence of those who live there, and how they interact with other residents

From Matamoros to Tijuana, Mexican border cities have long evoked for their neighbors to the north images of cheap tourist playgrounds and, more recently, industrial satellites of American industry. These sensationalized and simplified perceptions fail to convey the complexity and diversity of urban form and function—and of cultural personality—that characterize these places. The Mexican Border Cities draws on extensive field research to examine eighteen settlements along the 2,000-mile border, ranging from towns of less than 10,000 people to dynamic metropolises of nearly a million. The authors chronicle the cities' growth and compare their urban structure, analyzing them in terms of tourist districts, commercial landscapes, residential areas, and industrial and transportation quarters. Arreola and Curtis contend that, despite their proximity to the United States, the border cities are fundamentally Mexican places, as distinguished by their cultural landscapes, including town plan, land-use pattern, and building fabric. Their study, richly illustrated with over 75 maps and photographs, offers a provocative and insightful interpretation of the geographic anatomy and personality of these fascinating—and rapidly changing—communities.

From the boundary surveys of the 1850s to the ever-expanding fences and highway networks of the twenty-first century, Border Land, Border Water examines the history of the construction projects that have shaped the region where the United States and Mexico meet. Tracing the accretion of ports of entry, boundary markers, transportation networks, fences and barriers, surveillance infrastructure, and dams and other river engineering projects, C. J. Alvarez advances a broad chronological narrative that captures the full life cycle of border building. He explains how initial groundbreaking in the nineteenth century transitioned to unbridled faith in the capacity to control the movement of people, goods, and water through the use of physical structures. By the 1960s, however, the built environment of the border began to display increasingly obvious systemic flaws. More often than not, Alvarez shows, federal agencies in both countries responded with more construction—“compensatory building” designed to mitigate unsustainable policies relating to immigration, black markets, and the natural world. Border Land, Border Water reframes our understanding of how the border has come to look and function as it does and is essential to current debates about the future of the US-Mexico divide.

The 2,000-mile-long international boundary between the United States and Mexico gives shape to a unique social, economic, and cultural entity. David Lorey here offers the first comprehensive treatment of the fascinating evolution of the region over the past century. Exploring the evolution of a distinct border society, Lorey traces broad themes in the region's history, including geographical constraints, boom-and-bust cycles, and outside influences. He also examines the seminal twentieth-century events that have shaped life in the area, such as Prohibition, World War II, and economic globalization. Bringing the analysis up to the present, the book considers such divisive issues as the distinction between legal and illegal migration, trends in transboundary migrant flows, and North American free trade. Informative and accessible, this valuable study is ideal for courses on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, Chicano studies, Mexican history, and Mexican-American history.

Every day, 40,000 commuters cross the U.S. Mexico border at Tijuana San Diego to go to work. Untold numbers cross illegally. Since NAFTA was signed into law, the border has become a greater obstacle for people moving between countries. Transnational powers have exerted greater control over the flow of goods, services, information, and people. Mexican Voices of the Border Region examines the flow of people, commercial traffic, and the development of relationships across this border. Through first-person narratives, Laura Velasco Ortiz and Oscar F. Contreras show that since NAFTA, Tijuana has become a dynamic and significant place for both nations in terms of jobs and residents. The authors emphasize that the border itself has different meanings whether one crosses it frequently or not at all. The interviews probe into matters of race, class, gender, ethnicity, place, violence, and political economy as well as the individual's sense of agency.

The border region of the Sonoran Desert, which spans southern Arizona in the United States and northern Sonora, Mexico, has attracted national and international attention. But what is less discussed in national discourses is the impact of current border policies on the Native peoples of the region. There are twenty-six tribal nations recognized by the U.S. federal government in the southern border region and approximately eight groups of Indigenous peoples in the United States with historical ties to Mexico—the Yaqui, the O’odham, the Cocopah, the Kumeyaay, the Pai, the Apaches, the Tiwa (Tigua), and the Kickapoo. Divided Peoples addresses the impact border policies have on traditional lands and the peoples who live there—whether environmental degradation, border patrol harassment, or the disruption of traditional ceremonies. Anthropologist Christina Leza shows how such policies affect the traditional cultural survival of Indigenous peoples along the border. The author examines local interpretations and uses of international rights tools by Native activists, counterdiscourse on the U.S.-Mexico border, and challenges faced by Indigenous border activists when communicating their issues to a broader public. Through ethnographic research with grassroots Indigenous activists in the region, the author reveals several layers of division—the division of Indigenous peoples by the physical U.S.-Mexico border, the divisions that exist between Indigenous perspectives and mainstream U.S. perspectives regarding the border, and the traditionalist/nontraditionalist split among Indigenous nations within the United States. Divided Peoples asks us to consider the possibilities for challenging settler colonialism both in sociopolitical movements and in scholarship about Indigenous peoples and lands.