An official website of the United States government
Abstract U.S. border colonias are peri-urban settlements along the U.S.–Mexico border. Residents often face substandard housing, inadequate septic and sewer systems, and unsafe or inadequate household water. As of 2015, an estimated 30% of over 5 million U.S. colonia residents lacked access to clean drinking water, suggesting health complications. This scoping review identifies a very limited existing set of research on water and sanitation insecurity in U.S.–Mexico border colonias, and suggests value in additional focused research in this specific context to address health challenges. Preliminary health data indicates that due to water insecurity, colonia residents are more likely to contract gastrointestinal diseases, be exposed to carcinogenic compounds from contaminated water, and experience psychosocial distress. These widespread health issues in colonias are exacerbated by historical and ongoing socioenvironmental injustices in the U.S.–Mexico border region and their relation to the poor health outcomes.
more »
« less
The displaced border
Summary This multisited flash ethnography recounts my encounters with a queer asylum seeker from El Salvador trying to move on from a tragedy amid family and legal issues and our observations of the encroaching humanitarian border industry throughout Mexico. It traces events across time and place that are inevitably scarred by the Mexico‐US border, which displaces itself beyond territorial lines.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2116942
- PAR ID:
- 10481448
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Anthropology and Humanism
- Volume:
- 48
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1559-9167
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 379-381
- Size(s):
- p. 379-381
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Prior research reports mixed results regarding the economic impacts of crime. This study employs data from all regions of Mexico, including border regions in both the north and the south, to examine the effects of homicides on retail activity across Mexico during a period of escalating violence. The results indicate that one additional homicide within a municipality eliminates one retail establishment and one paid job in the retail sector. Furthermore, the negative consequences of violent crime for retailers are augmented by proximity to an international border. This is consistent with previous research findings that cross-border shopping is a key feature of commerce along the international boundaries of Mexico. It suggests that crime waves may disproportionately impact border city retail activity by partially diverting customer traffic to stores located in neighboring countries. This result is also consistent with the finding of recent research that violent conflict in northern Mexico resulted in increased retail activity in some United States border cities.more » « less
-
The number of arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border has increased dramatically over the past five years. To accommodate this increased flow, the Biden administration introduced a new program that allows migrants from ‘non-deportable’ countries - Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV) - the opportunity to apply for parole while still in their home countries and arrive for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) appointments at a given port of entry, alleviating the numbers of unsolicited arrivals along the border. In this article, we analyze CBP data to assess the program's effectiveness in reducing irregular migration along the southern U.S. border. Our results show that the CHNV parole program has demonstrated varying levels of success in reducing border encounters, with pronounced, long-term effects for Cuban and Nicaraguan nationals and only temporary for Venezuelan and Haitian individuals. We explore the potential causes for these different outcomes and recommend program adjustments to facilitate the growing number of individuals pursuing lawful entry into the United States.more » « less
-
Between 2018 and 2020, dramatic changes in US-Mexico policy transformed experiences of asylum on the border. Quotas on applications at ports of entry (known as metering), the “Remain in Mexico” policy, and the deployment of the pandemic era “lockdown” through Title 42, each severely limited asylum opportunities. In response, a host of informal waiting lists emerged, developed and were utilized by a binational network of non-governmental and government agencies, shelters, cartels, and individuals. In this article we use a feminist geographic lens to examine the intimate geopolitics of esperar created by these lists. Via in-depth oral histories with Mexican asylum-seekers, shelter staff, legal advocates, and the wider border bureaucracy, we examine their formation, everyday management, the slow violences and immediate threats they posed, and their work as an informal technology of state control. Our analysis demonstrates how the lists operated as informal tactics of diversion and delay, producing a false sense of certainty while using indefinite waiting times as soft and surreptitious mechanisms to block displaced people’s legal claims for asylum. This imposed distinctly gendered burdens on women and youth. However, we also identify how the lists, where appropriated by migrants themselves, became tools to resist the hierarchies of the US nation-state and its territorial impositions. Our work extends established political geographic analyses of migration by attending to the interscalar, quotidian, and embodied realities of border practice – manifest amidst today’s lockdown by the slow violences of waiting.more » « less
-
Marzaioli, Fabio (Ed.)Unidentified human remains have historically been investigated nationally by law enforcement authorities. However, this approach is outdated in a globalized world with rapid transportation means, where humans easily move long distances across borders. Cross-border cooperation in solving cold-cases is rare due to political, administrative or technical challenges. It is fundamental to develop new tools to provide rapid and cost-effective leads for international cooperation. In this work, we demonstrate that isotopic measurements are effective screening tools to help identify cold-cases with potential international ramifications. We first complete existing databases of hydrogen and sulfur isotopes in human hair from residents across North America by compiling or analyzing hair from Canada, the United States (US) and Mexico. Using these databases, we develop maps predicting isotope variations in human hair across North America. We demonstrate that both δ 2 H and δ 34 S values of human hair are highly predictable and display strong spatial patterns. Multi-isotope analysis combined with dual δ 2 H and δ 34 S geographic probability maps provide evidence for international travel in two case studies. In the first, we demonstrate that multi-isotope analysis in bulk hair of deceased border crossers found in the US, close to the Mexico-US border, help trace their last place of residence or travel back to specific regions of Mexico. These findings were validated by the subsequent identification of these individuals through the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner in Tucson, Arizona. In the second case study, we demonstrate that sequential multi-isotope analysis along the hair strands of an unidentified individual found in Canada provides detailed insights into the international mobility of this individual during the last year of life. In both cases, isotope data provide strong leads towards international travel.more » « less
