Human Rights Along the U.S.-Mexico Border

Human Rights Along the U.S.-Mexico Border
Author: Kathleen A. Staudt
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2009-11-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816528721

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.

The Shadow of the Wall

The Shadow of the Wall
Author: Jeremy Slack
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2018-04-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0816535590

Thanks to hundreds of interviews with Mexican deportees, this book puts a real face on discussions of immigration and border policies--Provided by publisher.

Handbook on Human Security, Borders and Migration

Handbook on Human Security, Borders and Migration
Author: Natalia Ribas-Mateos
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2021-02-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1839108908

Drawing on the concept of the ‘politics of compassion’, this Handbook interrogates the political, geopolitical, social and anthropological processes which produce and govern borders and give rise to contemporary border violence.

Social Justice in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region

Social Justice in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region
Author: Mark Lusk
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014-07-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9789400793705

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.

Threshold

Threshold
Author: Ieva Jusionyte
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2018-11-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520969642

"Jusionyte explores the sister towns bisected by the border from many angles in this illuminating and poignant exploration of a place and situation that are little discussed yet have significant implications for larger political discourse."—Publishers Weekly, STARRED Review Emergency responders on the US-Mexico border operate at the edges of two states. They rush patients to hospitals across country lines, tend to the broken bones of migrants who jump over the wall, and put out fires that know no national boundaries. Paramedics and firefighters on both sides of the border are tasked with saving lives and preventing disasters in the harsh terrain at the center of divisive national debates. Ieva Jusionyte’s firsthand experience as an emergency responder provides the background for her gripping examination of the politics of injury and rescue in the militarized region surrounding the US-Mexico border. Operating in this area, firefighters and paramedics are torn between their mandate as frontline state actors and their responsibility as professional rescuers, between the limits of law and pull of ethics. From this vantage they witness what unfolds when territorial sovereignty, tactical infrastructure, and the natural environment collide. Jusionyte reveals the binational brotherhood that forms in this crucible to stand in the way of catastrophe. Through beautiful ethnography and a uniquely personal perspective, Threshold provides a new way to understand politicized issues ranging from border security and undocumented migration to public access to healthcare today.

Human Rights along the U.S.–Mexico Border

Human Rights along the U.S.–Mexico Border
Author: Kathleen Staudt
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2022-08-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816548382

Much political oratory has been devoted to safeguarding America’s boundary with Mexico, but policies that militarize the border and criminalize immigrants have overshadowed the region’s 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 situation—globalization, NAFTA, economic inequality, organized crime, political corruption, rampant patriarchy—promote gendered violence and other expressions of hyper-masculinity. They also show that U.S. immigration policy exacerbates the problems of border violence—in marked contrast to the border policies of European countries. By focusing on women’s 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 today’s security debate in constructive ways.

Hard Line

Hard Line
Author: Ken Ellingwood
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2005-07-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1400033675

The Southwestern border is one of the most fascinating places in America, a region of rugged beauty and small communities that coexist across the international line. In the past decade, the area has also become deadly as illegal immigration has shifted into some of the harshest territory on the continent, reshaping life on both sides of the border. In Hard Line, Ken Ellingwood, a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, captures the heart of this complex and fascinating land, through the dramatic stories of undocumented immigrants and the border agents who track them through the desert, Native Americans divided between two countries, human rights workers aiding the migrants and ranchers taking the law into their own hands. This is a vivid portrait of a place and its people, and a moving story of the West that has major implications for the nation as a whole.

Blockading the Border and Human Rights

Blockading the Border and Human Rights
Author: Timothy J. Dunn
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2009-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0292719019

To understand border enforcement and the shape it has taken, it is imperative to examine a groundbreaking Border Patrol operation begun in 1993 in El Paso, Texas, "Operation Blockade." The El Paso Border Patrol designed and implemented this radical new strategy, posting 400 agents directly on the banks of the Rio Grande in highly visible positions to deter unauthorized border crossings into the urban areas of El Paso from neighboring Ciudad Juárez--a marked departure from the traditional strategy of apprehending unauthorized crossers after entry. This approach, of "prevention through deterrence," became the foundation of the 1994 and 2004 National Border Patrol Strategies for the Southern Border. Politically popular overall, it has rendered unauthorized border crossing far less visible in many key urban areas. However, the real effectiveness of the strategy is debatable, at best. Its implementation has also led to a sharp rise in the number of deaths of unauthorized border crossers. Here, Dunn examines the paradigm-changing Operation Blockade and related border enforcement efforts in the El Paso region in great detail, as well as the local social and political situation that spawned the approach and has shaped it since. Dunn particularly spotlights the human rights abuses and enforcement excesses inflicted on local Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants as well as the challenges to those abuses. Throughout the book, Dunn filters his research and fieldwork through two competing lenses, human rights versus the rights of national sovereignty and citizenship.

OD

OD
Author: Nancy D. Campbell
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2020-03-03
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0262357488

The history of an unnatural disaster—drug overdose—and the emergence of naloxone as a social and technological solution. For years, drug overdose was unmentionable in polite society. OD was understood to be something that took place in dark alleys—an ugly death awaiting social deviants—neither scientifically nor clinically interesting. But over the last several years, overdose prevention has become the unlikely object of a social movement, powered by the miracle drug naloxone. In OD, Nancy Campbell charts the emergence of naloxone as a technological fix for overdose and describes the remaking of overdose into an experience recognized as common, predictable, patterned—and, above all, preventable. Naloxone, which made resuscitation, rescue, and “reversal” after an overdose possible, became a tool for shifting law, policy, clinical medicine, and science toward harm reduction. Liberated from emergency room protocols and distributed in take-home kits to non-medical professionals, it also became a tool of empowerment. After recounting the prehistory of naloxone—the early treatment of OD as a problem of poisoning, the development of nalorphine (naloxone's predecessor), the idea of “reanimatology”—Campbell describes how naloxone emerged as a tool of harm reduction. She reports on naloxone use in far-flung locations that include post-Thatcherite Britain, rural New Mexico, and cities and towns in Massachusetts. Drawing on interviews with approximately sixty advocates, drug users, former users, friends, families, witnesses, clinicians, and scientists—whom she calls the “protagonists” of her story—Campbell tells a story of saving lives amid the complex, difficult conditions of an unfolding unnatural disaster.

The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978-1992

The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978-1992
Author: Timothy J. Dunn
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN:

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.