Abstract
The tension between cosmopolitan and nationalist impulses in politics is not new, and yet, it has gained salience in recent years. It is expressed in the ever-changing dogmas of global humanitarian aid, the ambivalence of poverty alleviation as a goal in interstate diplomacy, and the concurrent rise of global social movements and reactive nationalisms around the world. These trends, and their associated dynamics, highlight different answers to the question of what and how much societies owe to those of other nationalities, particularly those who are suffering. In Adler’s study of transnational civic engagement at the US–Mexico border, these tensions are born out in the immediate experiences of immersion travelers, as they engage with migrants, immigration control agents, local activists and humanitarians, and the very landscape and infrastructure of the borderland. The travelers Adler studies, primarily students and religious congregants, are caught between the ethical demands of “distant suffering” (p. 11) on the border and the seemingly self-evidence necessity of the border itself, and security as a state project. The border does exactly what it is supposed to, and it is unsettling to watch.
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