Border Matters: Mexico and the United States

Border Matters: Mexico and the United States is a Social Science course taught by Flavio Risech-Ozeguera.

Course Description
Anzaldua describes the U.S.-Mexico border as a "thin edge of barbwire...where the Third World grates against the First and bleeds." Nowhere else in the world is there such physical proximity of a post-industrial nation and a developing one. While capital and goods are freely traded between the U.S. and Mexico under NAFTA, the Mexican worker?s body is the target of conflicting policies aimed at border security and securing a pliable labor supply. The economic relationship between the two nations produces deeply unequal outcomes in each, impoverishing rural Mexicans and driving northward migration, while deeply held notions of racial, ethnic and national boundaries are challenged by the growth of transnational communities on both sides of the line. Emphasizing historical analysis and contemporary theories of nationalism, governmentality, globalization, and identity, the course will challenge students to rethink the meaning of the border, the place of Mexicans in the U.S., and the role of the U.S. in Mexico.