Tim Dunn examines these policies and practices in detail, and considers them in light of the strategy and tactics of the Pentagon doctrine of "low-intensity conflict." Developed during the 1980s for use in Central America and elsewhere, this doctrine is characterized by broad-ranging provisions for establishing social control over specific civilian populations, and its implementation has often been accompanied by widespread human-rights violations.

Border relations between the United States and Mexico have had a tumultuous history. The connectivity between both countries has been demonstrated by the impact border issues have on each nation. Economic disparity, U.S. dependence on cheap labor, and the scourge of drugs that infects both nations have influenced this relationship. U.S. border enforcement efforts have sought to remedy everything from the immigration crisis to terrorism. Border enforcement tactics have taken on military characteristics, including the use of military troops, equipment, and resources. This evolution toward border militarization has both focused on drug trafficking and criminalized immigration offenders. As border problems threaten U.S. national interests, further militarization of the border is logical.

As historian Miguel Antonio Levario explains in this timely book, current tensions and controversy over immigration and law enforcement issues centered on the US-Mexico border are only the latest evidence of a long-standing atmosphere of uncertainty and mistrust plaguing this region. Militarizing the Border: When Mexicans Became the Enemy, focusing on El Paso and its environs, examines the history of the relationship among law enforcement, military, civil, and political institutions, and local communities. In the years between 1895 and 1940, West Texas experienced intense militarization efforts by local, state, and federal authorities responding to both local and international circumstances. El Paso’s “Mexicanization” in the early decades of the twentieth century contributed to strong racial tensions between the region’s Anglo population and newly arrived Mexicans. Anglos and Mexicans alike turned to violence in order to deal with a racial situation rapidly spinning out of control. Highlighting a binational focus that sheds light on other US-Mexico border zones in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Militarizing the Border establishes historical precedent for current border issues such as undocumented immigration, violence, and racial antagonism on both sides of the boundary line. This important evaluation of early US border militarization and its effect on racial and social relations among Anglos, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans will afford scholars, policymakers, and community leaders a better understanding of current policy . . . and its potential failure.

This ethnography documents and explores the social, political, and material consequences of militarization in the borderlands of Arizona. Based on two years of fieldwork in Phoenix, Tucson, and other communities along the US-Mexico border, the author identifies militarization as a social and political phenomenon that gradually reconfigures both individuals and communities. Through ethnographic instances, she explores how the vocabularies of race, nationalism, and patriotism decrease political engagement and simultaneously increase conflict within the borderland communities.

Tim Dunn examines these policies and practices in detail, and considers them in light of the strategy and tactics of the Pentagon doctrine of "low-intensity conflict." Developed during the 1980s for use in Central America and elsewhere, this doctrine is characterized by broad-ranging provisions for establishing social control over specific civilian populations, and its implementation has often been accompanied by widespread human-rights violations.

This occasional paper is a concise overview of the history of the US Army's involvement along the Mexican border and offers a fundamental understanding of problems associated with such a mission. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the historic themes addressed disapproving public reaction, Mexican governmental instability, and insufficient US military personnel to effectively secure the expansive boundary are still prevalent today.

Yet the unprecedented buildup of border policing has taken place in an era otherwise defined by the opening of the border, most notably through NAFTA. This contrast creates a borderless economy with a barricaded border.".

During the late twentieth century, many Americans expressed concern about the security surrounding the U.S.-Mexico border due to the lack of progress in achieving meaningful and effective immigration regulation and an inability to control growing drug trafficking. Despite publicly and privately striving for cooperation on these issues, Mexican and American policymakers struggled to arrive at viable and sustainable solutions. In The 1970s and the Making of the Modern US-Mexico Border: Fortifying a Frontier, Aaron Brown analyzes US drug and immigration policies from the 1960s to 1980s, how they applied to Mexico and the border, and how this shaped modern U.S. perceptions of border security. Brown utilizes archival research, newspapers, and other sources to investigate how US policymakers, border residents, and activists shaped policies aimed at eliminating rising crime, economic stagnation, and global insecurity. At a time when the US-Mexico border is again the subject of heated political debate, this book can help readers understand the origins of the current crisis.

Written in the context of unprecedented dislocation and a global refugee crisis, this edited volume thinks through photography’s long and complex relationship to human migration. While contemporary media images largely frame migration in terms of trauma, victimhood, and pity, so much more can be said of photography’s role in the movement of people around the world. Cameras can document, enable, or control human movement across geographical, cultural, and political divides. Their operators put faces on forced and voluntary migrations, making visible hardships and suffering as well as opportunity and optimism. Photographers include migrating subjects who take pictures for their own consumption, not for international recognition. And photographs themselves migrate with their makers, subjects, and viewers, as the very concept of photography takes on new functions and meanings. Photography and Migration places into conversation media images and other photographs that the contributors have witnessed, collected, or created through their diverse national, regional, and local contexts. Developed across thirteen chapters, this conversation encompasses images, histories, and testimonies offering analysis of new perspectives on photography and migration today.