The Border Reader

Description

The Border Reader brings together canonical and cutting-edge humanities and social science scholarship on the US-Mexico border region. Spotlighting the vibrancy of border studies from the field’s emergence to its enduring significance, the essays mobilize feminist, queer, and critical ethnic studies perspectives to theorize the border as a site of epistemic rupture and knowledge production. The chapters speak to how borders exist as regions where people and nation-states negotiate power, citizenship, and questions of empire. Among other topics, essays examine the lived experiences of the diverse undocumented people who move through and live in the border region and trace the gendered and sexualized experiences of the border, show how the US-Mexico border has become a site of illegality where immigrant bodies become racialized and excluded, and imagine anti- and post-border futures. Foregrounding the interplay of scholarly inquiry and political urgency stemming from the borderlands, The Border Reader presents a unique cross-section of critical interventions on the region.
Contributors. Leisy J. Abrego, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Martha Balaguera, Lionel Cantú, Leo R. Chavez, Raúl Fernández, Rosa-Linda Fregoso, Roberto G. Gonzales, Gilbert G. González, Ramón Gutiérrez, Kelly Lytle Hernández, José E. Limón, Mireya Loza, Alejandro Lugo, Eithne Luibhéid, Martha Menchaca, Cecilia Menjívar, Natalia Molina, Fiamma Montezemolo, Américo Paredes, Néstor Rodríguez, Renato Rosaldo, Gilberto Rosas, María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, Sonia Saldívar-Hull, Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Sayak Valencia Triana, Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez, Patricia Zavella Spotlighting the vibrancy of border studies from the field’s emergence to its enduring significance, The Border Reader brings together canonical and cutting-edge humanities and social science scholarship on the US-Mexico border region. Gilberto Rosas is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Latina/o Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of Barrio Libre: Criminalizing States and Delinquent Refusals of the New Frontier and Unsettling: The El Paso Massacre, Resurgent White Nationalism, and the US-Mexico Border.
Mireya Loza is Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University and author of Defiant Braceros: How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual, and Political Freedom. Introduction: On Theories from the Ends / Gilberto Rosas and Mireya Loza  1
Part I: Locating the Border
1. Empire and the Origins of Twentieth-Century Migration from Mexico to the United States / Gilbert G. González and Raúl Fernández  11
2. Legal Violence: Immigration Law and the Lives of Central American Immigrants / Cecilia Menjívar and Leisy J. Abrego  43
3. Necro-Subjection: On Borders, Asylum, and Making Dead to Let Live / Gilberto Rosas  85
4. Reimagining Culture and Power against Late Industrial Capitalism and Other Forms of Conquest through Border Theory and Analysis / Alejandro Lugo  106
5. Tijuana Cuir / Sayak Valencia Triana  134
Part II: Documenting Identities
6. The United States, Mexico and Machismo / Américo Paredes  147
7. The Spanish Settlement of Texas and Arizona / Martha Menchaca  166
8. A Place Called Home: A Queer Political Economy of Mexican Immigrant Men’s Family Experiences / Lionel Cantú  199
9. Migrations / Patricia Zavella  222
Part III: En/Gendering Borders
10. Changing Chicano Narratives / Renato Rosaldo  265
11. Feminism on the Border: From Gender Politics to Geopolitics / Sonia Saldívar-Hull  282
12. Trans-migrations: Agency and Confinement at the Limits of Sovereignty / Martha Balaguera  301
13. Carne, Carnales, and the Carnivalesque / José E. Limón  324
Part IV: Othering Spaces, Othering Bodies
14. The Erotic Zone: Sexual Transgression on the U.S.-Mexican Border / Ramón Gutiérrez  345
15. Medicalizing the Mexican: Immigration, Race, and Disability in the Early-Twentieth-Century United States / Natalia Molina  355
16. “Looking Like a Lesbian”: The Organization of Sexual Monitoring at the United States–Mexican Border / Eithne Luibhéid  372
17.  Migrant Melancholia: Emergent Discourses of Mexican Migrant Traffic in Transnational Space / Alicia Schmidt Camacho  402
Part V: Border Crossings
18. “Awakening to a Nightmare”: Abjectivity and Illegality in the Lives of Undocumented 1.5-Generation Latino Immigrants to the United States  / Roberto G. Gonzales and Leo R. Chavez  431
19. Regions of Refuge in the United States: Issues, Problems, and Concerns for the Future of Mexican-Origin Populations in the United States / Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez  467
20. The Battle for the Border: Notes on Autonomous Migration, Transnational Communities, and the State / Néstor Rodríguez  500
21. Yo Era Indígena: Race, Modernity and the Transformational Politics of Transnational Labor / Mireya Loza  518
Part VI: New Border Imaginaries
22. Tijuana: Hybridity and Beyond:  A Conversation with Néstor García Canclini / Fiamma Montezemolo  563
23. The Art of Witness / Rosa-Linda Fregoso  585
24. Amnesty or Abolotion? Felons, Illegals, and the Case for a New Abolition Movement / Kelly Lytle Hernández  608
25. How to Tame a Wild Tongue / Gloria Anzaldúa  628
26. “Wavering on the Horizon of Social Being”: The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo and the Legacy of Its Radical Character in Ámerico Paredes’s George Washington Gómez / María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo  639
Contributors  671
Credits  673
Index

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