Border Wall Research Articles

The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

Do border walls work?: security, insecurity and everyday economy in the Turkish-Syrian borderlands

ABSTRACT Border walls are often seen as preferable options to improve security by providing strong barriers against the movement of people. Although these barriers are never absolute and remain porous, they are still appealing, which raises the question about who benefits when border walls are introduced. This article questions whether and for whom border walls work by focusing on the new Turkish-Syrian border wall in Hatay. Through an ethnographic investigation of border politics and the effects of increasing surveillance on residents of the border, it examines the socio-economic and political impact of the wall on local life. Second, it shows how the wall has led to a significant increase in migrant smuggling, which indicates improvements in security in one policy area may lead to a worsening situation in others. It concludes that the wall reinforces the state’s claim of sovereignty but fails to be an effective security measure for border residents or refugees.

Foxconn, Ciudad Juárez, and the Trials of Solidarity

In San Jeronimo, Chihuahua, on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, a beige monolith of placid architecture hovers over the newly reconstructed US-Mexico border wall. Looking like a mix between a prison and a city built entirely of suburban Walmarts, this is in fact Foxconn's largest assembly plant at the US-Mexico Border; a shrine of sorts to over fifty-five years of low-cost export manufacturing in the region. And in 2010, it was where a decade of labor struggle was about begin. On a cold night in February 2010, around three hundred night workers at Foxconn's San Jeronimo factory on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, anxiously waited for company buses to finally deliver them home after a long shift. Soon enough however, managers filed out of the factory to inform the workers that the due to technical issues, the buses were not coming. According to worker accounts, the managers explained that the best thing these workers could do was work an extra shift, and wait for the buses to arrive later in the morning. Realizing that they were essentially being held against their will at the remote factory, and perhaps fueled by recent lay-offs on the assembly line and consistent pressure to work extra shifts, anger erupted in the crowd. By the end of the night, workers had set fire to the cafeteria, smashed the managers’ dormitory windows, and collided more than once with security guards. Days later, despite Foxconn's assurance to the press that there would be no reprisal, around 75 night-shift workers were identified and fired from the company.

The Gravity of Transnational Terrorism

Transnational terrorism is an inherently international phenomenon as it involves attacks where the perpetrators are from a different country than the victims. Accordingly, a growing literature explains patterns in transnational attacks with a focus on international variables, for example, the presence of a border wall or alliance patterns. Despite the importance of the topic, no common empirical framework with theoretical basis has emerged to analyze the flows of transnational attacks. We propose that recent versions of the structural gravity model of transnational flows, long the workhorse model in trade economics, can be modified to provide a theoretically motivated model of the flows of transnational terrorist attacks among countries. The gravity model provides several empirical advantages for the study of international variables and transnational terrorism, for example, recent specifications allow the researcher to estimate count models that condition out all time-varying country-level confounders with fixed effects. This facilitates sidestepping the typical problem that any international variables associated with transnational flows are often correlated with omitted or imprecisely measured domestic factors, which draws their estimates into question. Moreover, we demonstrate that the structural gravity model does a much better job in predicting outcomes, particularly when multiple attacks flow across borders.

Inventing expert in English language arts: A case study of critical literacies in a third grade classroom

Drawing from data generated during the 2016-2017 academic year, this study centred on U.S. children’s design of two critical literacies compositions—a letter to Congress and a persuasive multimodal text. Situated within an integrated unit focused on (im)migrants, children asked legislators to act on the GOP Administration’s proposed border wall and the #MuslimBan. Simultaneously, their teacher took steps to engage students in critical literacies conversations about access in/to the United States. Using a case study design, I investigated the following: How might traditional perceptions of ‘expert’ shift as children engage in critical literacies using varied materials and technologies? Specifically, I highlight how, by engaging an expansive skill set of communicative practices, children designed texts and enacted identities related to civic agency. Through multimodal composing, one nine-year-old white boy exemplified how children highlight knowledge beyond what is captured in a written text. His multimodal response illuminated his deep understanding of the obstacles faced by (im)migrants as they traverse boundaries. To alleviate such challenges, he “invented” both a transportable water filter cup and a fishing tool and engaged in critical making. When provided with opportunities to compose multimodally, the child—a white boy marked as “behind” in literacy—demonstrated rich content knowledge not readily visible in his written responses. His compositions disrupted understandings of expert with regard to elementary writing and critical literacies.

The End of Myth

Review of: The End of Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin

“Facile Gates:” Walls and Identity Across Paradise Lost and Along the US-Mexico Border

ABSTRACT This article compares the respective functions of the US-Mexico border wall and borders within Paradise Lost. Supposed threats to economic, physical, and cultural property encourage modern nation-states to continue constructing territorial borders despite a growing body of work that contests the efficacy of walls in deterring unauthorized migration. More effective are the symbolic capacities of walls and their ability to articulate the people and cultures they enclose.

Children of immigrants as “brokers” in an era of exclusion

AbstractToday, immigrants and their families live in an era of exclusion. Threats of a southern border wall, increased detentions and deportations, false narratives of Mexicans as “rapists,” attempts to eliminate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and the implementation of penalties for immigrants who use social services are just some examples of the hostile climate immigrant families face. A growing body of literature suggests that children of immigrants help their parents in their transition to the US society as language, cultural, and legal brokers, which generally refers to when youth translate for and/or share resources with their immigrant kin. In this paper, I review the research on contemporary children of immigrants as “brokers” and how the punitive social context influences the way brokering takes place in immigrant families. I conclude with suggestions for future research in the study of brokering in immigrant families.

Crueles deportaciones: masculinidades, infrapolítica

This article takes as a starting point the violence being inflicted through the current United States regime of deportation on male migrants, with the aim of understanding the precarious masculinities consequently taking form within this population. This article presents an analysis of two digital stories from the Humanizing Deportation project, both narrated by men who after being deported lived or have lived several years in precarious conditions on the streets of Tijuana. Migration is proposed as an escape, and deportation as an expulsion within the violence system that has been called the border industrial complex. Deportation represents a brutal and destructive blow that rather than inciting manifestations of the excesses of machismo, it activates a sentimentalized masculinity, which seems to tie deported men to the border, or to the streets running along the border wall, where they maximize proximity to their families, but live exposed to everyday violence. These masculinities are not doubt damaged, but not paralyzed as in some moments these men seem to exercise an infrapolitics that might be understood as an extension of the kind of agency that underlies their escape.

Reflections on Teaching Abroad

Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, fliers appeared on our university’s campus that uncannily resembled Nazi propaganda posters of the early 1940s. Custodians cleaning the campus facilities found the majority of the fliers and removed them before the general student population saw them. Still, a handful were photographed by students and quickly made their rounds via social media inciting a heated debate about free speech versus hate speech, racism, and white supremacy. Shortly thereafter, several student groups organized a Not My President rally near a campus work of art by the Mexican-American sculptor Luis Jiménez entitled “Border Crossing.” Protesters chanted affirmations for minoritized students on campus, such as “you are welcome here,” and “not my president,” in an attempt to disassociate from mainstream political rhetoric and the newly elected President Trump’s campaign slogans that centered on deportation and building a border wall.

The Impact of Immigration on Wages, Internal Migration, and Welfare

AbstractThis article studies the impact of immigration on wages, internal migration, and welfare. Using U.S. Census data, I estimate a spatial equilibrium model where labour differs by skill level, gender, and nativity. Workers are heterogeneous in city preferences. Cities vary in productivity levels, housing prices, and amenities. I use the estimated model to assess the distributional consequences of several immigration policies. The results show that a skill selective immigration policy leads to welfare gains for low skill workers, but welfare losses for high skill workers. The negative impacts are more substantial among the incumbent high skill immigrants. Internal migration mitigates the initial negative impacts, particularity in cities where housing supplies are inelastic. However, the negative wage impacts on some workers intensify. This is because an out-migration of workers of a given type may raise the local wages for workers of that type, while reducing the local wages of workers with complementary characteristics. Overall, there are substantial variations in the welfare effects of immigration across and within cities. Further, I use the model to assess the welfare effects of the border wall between Mexico and the U.S. The results show that the potential benefits are significantly smaller than the proposed cost of construction.

Greg Grandin. The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.

Greg Grandin. The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.

Building Bridges Instead of Walls: Engaging Young Children in Critical Literacy Read Alouds

Situated in the months after the 2016 United States presidential election, this qualitative case study illuminates third-grade children’s sense-making about the GOP Administration’s proposed border wall with Mexico. In light of these present-day politics, close analysis of how young children discuss social issues remains critical, particularly for social studies educators. Looking across fifteen book discussions, we zero in on three whole-class conversations about (im)migration beginning with initial read alouds through the final debrief wherein children conversed with a local university anthropologist about the clandestine migration of individuals across the U.S.’s southern border. During initial discussions, children in the Midwestern school demonstrated their frustration towards racist laws of the mid-1900s. Others responded with empathy or made personal connections to their own family heritage. In the findings, we note a clear progression in how children understood (im)migration issues as evidenced by how their questions and curiosities shifted in later lessons. We highlight how, when children are encouraged to engage with social topics, they can act as critical consumers and position themselves as politically active and engaged citizens.

Race, Immigration, and Support for Donald Trump: Evidence From the 2018 North Carolina Election

One of the longest standing debates in political sociology and political science concerns how people deploy identities and social cues to form political opinions. This debate turns on questions such as, is opinion formation essentially about social class, racial identification, or about other forms of identity or interest? Using original polling data from North Carolina, we model approval for President Trump in the run‐up to the 2018 midterm elections. Our findings show that support for Trump and the policies associated with his administration were highly connected to support for one policy that was particularly salient during that campaign—that is, the border wall. Among White respondents, support for the wall is strongly connected with perceptions of group threat; however, among Black respondents, group threat is unconnected with support for the wall and therefore for Trump and Trump‐related policies. Consistent with prior work on identity and political views, we theorize that cultural identification as a Trump supporter through one key issue serves as a learning mechanism through which voters develop support for other associated policies.

Authority (de)legitimation in the border wall Twitter discourse of President Trump

Abstract The construction of a wall along the US/Mexico border was one of the main political platforms upon which the 2016 US presidential election campaign was fought. Ahead of the upcoming 2020 US presidential election, and with the border wall still not yet built or funded, this article uses the authorisation component of Van Leeuwen’s (2007) framework for the discourse of legitimation to show how President Donald J. Trump has sought legitimacy for the construction of the border wall. Data is taken from Trump’s @realDonaldTrump Twitter postings between October 18th, 2018 and February 3rd, 2019, a period inclusive of the longest federal government shutdown in US history. We show how Trump’s Twitter language is frequently accompanied by evidence-less attacks on sources of rival opinion or information, while the president tends to reaffirm himself as the exclusive source of credible and truthful information.

Exceptional Circumstances: Immigration, Imports and Climate Change as Emergencies

President Trump has used emergency powers to achieve key parts of his policy agenda, exemplified by his travel ban, funding for the border wall, and tariffs on many imports. This essay examines how the Administration has invoked the need for urgent action in these and other settings, along with the responses of the courts. The essay also consider how these actions could be used as precedents by future presidents, such as declaring a climate change emergency. Finally, the essay discusses the risks of normalizing the use of emergency powers, along with the forces that may impel presidents in that direction.

Дональд Трамп и избиратели: оценки основных проблем

В статье на основе изучения обширного массива результатов опросов общественного мнения в США рассматриваются отношения американцев к деятельности президента Дональда Трампа. Анализ общественного мнения за время его президентства показывает, что многие американцы не разделяет подходы Трампа к ключевым проблемам внутренней и внешней политики. На основании этих оценок будут формироваться электоральные намерения американских избирателей на предстоящих президентских выборах в ноябре 2020 года. Американцы положительно оценивают действия Трампа в сфере экономики, отмечая экономический рост в стране, снижение безработицы, высказывая положительные прогнозы на будущее. В то же время многие отмечают, что от снижения налогов выиграли, прежде всего, богатые слои, при этом среди небелого населения большинство негативно оценивает экономическую политику Трампа. Также критически большинство американцев оценивают политику Трампа по отмене, радикальному изменению системы медицинского страхования, принятой при Бараке Обаме («Обамакер»). Одним из первых шагов Трампа в области экологии и изменении климата стал выход США из Парижского соглашения по изменению климата. Тогда же, в 2017 г., опросы показали, что большинство населения против этого — 53%, в то время как поддержали этот шаг лишь 30%. По главным вопросам иммигрантской политики Трампа общественное мнение в основном определилось: американцы готовы принять незаконных иммигрантов, приехавших детьми, они против строительства стены на границе с Мексикой и считают, что число иммигрантов должно оставаться таким же, как сегодня, или увеличиться, а не сокращаться. Эти оценки идут вразрез политике Трампа. 53% избирателей считают, что «президент США Дональд Трамп не говорил правду о своей политике в отношении Украины»; 54% — что он «злоупотребил своими полномочиями в действиях относительно Украины»; 52% — что Трамп препятствовал конгрессу в расследовании его действий по отношении к Украине. И 48% считают, что Трамп совершал преступления на посту президента, 44% так не думают. Большинство американцев критически оценивают действия президента Трампа во время эпидемии коронавируса, особенно в начальной фазе кризиса. В целом деятельность Трампа на посту президента 50% американцев оценивают отрицательно, 40% положительно и 10% не имеют мнения. Лишь в области экономики положительные оценки превышают отрицательные — 50% : 39%.

Unlearning racism: the classroom as a space for social transformation through borderlands pedagogy

ABSTRACT The U.S.-Mexico borderlands are fraught with conflicts, metaphors, and euphemisms. As such, many students are cautious speaking to the complexities of the borderlands when they realize racist and anti-immigrant discourse are at its core. Borderlands pedagogy, however, can serve as a means of connectivity for social justice courses and for social and transformative justice curricula. This paper argues the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, as articulated through the citizenship regime, deals primarily in power and control; and those who have the power to define citizenship are those who have the control to claim citizenship. However, the transformative classroom can also help students articulate citizenship at various levels for empowerment and against the citizenship regime, and hence against racism. While scholarly focus on the borderlands has generally been on legalized notions of citizenship or on the border wall itself, borderlands pedagogy is useful in explaining and understanding the inherent racism of the citizenship regime; and especially how we as diverse learning communities can challenge it, and consequently tear down walls; starting in the classroom.

COVID-19, wall building, and the effects on Migrant Protection Protocols by the Trump administration: the spectacle of the worsening human rights disaster on the Mexico-U.S. border

The COVID-19 pandemic has repercussions well beyond the confines of borders. National border policies can thwart international efforts to combat the spread of infectious diseases. These problems are especially relevant for the United States with the spectacle of President Trump’s “big, beautiful border wall” used as leverage to maintain political and economic power domestically and globally while confronting the coronavirus pandemic. The focus of this paper is the implementation of Trump’s Zero Tolerance Policy, Migrant Protection Protocols, and the Asylum Cooperation Agreement, all aimed primarily at migrants and refugees, the homo sacer, from Central America to prevent entrance into the U.S. using the border security apparatus. These policies have adverse consequences for people dwelling throughout the hemisphere, particularly borderlanders, as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads into the Americas.

Walls and Cows: Social Media, Vigilante Vantage, and Political Discourse

Vigilante groups in the United States and India have used social media to distribute their content and publicize violent spectacles for political purposes. This essay will tackle the spectacle of vigilante lynchings, abduction, and threats as images of vigilante violence are spread online in support of specific candidates, state violences, and election discourse. It is important to understand the impact of not only these vigilante groups, but understand the communicative spectacle of their content. Using Leo R. Chavez’s understanding of early 2000s vigilante action as spectacle in service of social movements, this essay extends the analysis to modern vigilante violence online content used as dramatic political rhetoric in support of sitting administrations. Two case studies on modern vigilante violence provide insight into this phenomenon are as follows: (1) Vigilante nativist militia groups across the United States in support of border militarization have kidnapped migrants in the Southwest desert, documenting these incidents to show support for the Trump Administration and building of a border wall and (2) vigilante mobs in India have circulated videos and media documenting lynchings of so-called “cow killers”; these attacks target Muslims in the light of growing Hindu Nationalist sentiment and political movement in the country. Localized disinformation and personal video allow vigilante content to spread across social media to recruit members for militias, as well as incite quick acts of mob violence. Furthermore, these case studies display how the social media livestreams and video allow representations of violence to become attention-arresting visual acts of political discourse.