Long a space of cultural and economic convergence, the border between Mexico and the United States has increasingly become a place of division and suspicion. This transformation has resulted from the interrelated national security concerns of the Mexican and U.S. governments regarding immigration, drug trafficking, and the growth of criminal organizations. Both the Mexican and U.S. governments have chosen to address these concerns through "militarization" -- the inclusion of military ideology, tactics, technologies, and force in domestic governance and policing. This research project will investigate how militarized approaches to border governance and territorial control reconfigure everyday life for residents of the borderland. The investigators' objectives are to study how border militarization alters the form, function, and meaning of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands for resident communities and to examine how militarization is shaped by border landscapes on both sides of the divide. Special attention will be given to militarization of the borderlands as expressed and evident in the region's landscape as well as how federal militarization as a governance strategy affects the everyday experience of mobility, rights, belonging, and environment among diverse border populations. A multidisciplinary team with scholars from the U.S., Mexico, and Canada will conduct this study in two binational border metropolises of El Paso, Texas-Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua and Nogales, Arizona-Nogales, Sonora. As strategic points in federal militarization strategies, these cities regularly experience an increased presence of law enforcement as well as intensifying surveillance, interrogation, and searches. They also share some of the longest histories of joint families, communities, and economies along the border. The investigators will engage in archival research, open-ended interviews, and focus groups, all of which will be designed to investigate the multiple intersections of militarization and landscape and to mine the complexity of these intersections within daily life.
The project will enhance basic knowledge about the processes of border militarization, its impacts on residents, and its interaction with landscape. In addition to enhancing fundamental understanding, it will provide information and insights for the architects and implementers of militarization strategies who seek to rectify problems created in earlier manifestations. It also will benefit citizens' organizations, environmental organizations, and social justice groups as they react to current policies and try to shape future ones. Results will be disseminated in both English and in Spanish in academic and policy-oriented journals and will be presented at appropriate international and regional conferences.
