Synopses & Reviews
At the center of the 2,000 mile U.S.-Mexico border, a sprawling transnational urban space has mushroomed into a metropolitan region with over two million people whose livelihoods depend on global manufacturing, cross-border trade, and border control jobs. Our volume advances knowledge on urban space, gender, education, security, and work, focusing on Ciudad Juárez, the export-processing (maquiladora) manufacturing capital of the Americas and the infamous site of femicide and outlier murder rates connected with arms and drug trafficking. Given global economic trends, this transnational urban region is a likely paradigmatic future for other world regions.
Review
"This groundbreaking interdisciplinary edited collection embodies the social commitment and the kind of scholarly collaboration deeply indispensable, both within and across nation-states, to more effectively confront the socio-political, cultural, and policy-making challenges associated with global border regions, such as Paso del Norte, around the world. Ultimately, this fascinating volume is the extraordinary result of a rare and rigorous collective dialogue among and between Mexico and U.S.-based scholars, all of whom not only have studied the region for years, but have also experienced, either directly or indirectly, the impact of twenty-first century border life in its multiple dimensions: from the absent state to the empty curriculum, from organized crime to disorganized urban planning and border violence, from the triumphs of global capital to local labor and community struggles." - Alejandro Lugo, author of Fragmented Lives, Assembled Parts: Culture, Capitalism, and Conquest at the U.S.-Mexico Border
"Recent events have again placed Ciudad Juarez in the head lines of print media all over the world, confirming not only the dynamics of an international border community but the need to better understand the complex processes of interactions across the border that are behind such dynamics. This book contributes significantly to such an understanding. Its emphasis on the categories of space and state brings cohesion to the analysis of the wide array of border problems that go from the harmonious to the violent in settings of social and economic relations. No wonder the U.S.-Mexico border has been viewed as both, uniting and dividing two nations and/or two societies that have succeeded and failed at different points in time when facing the challenges of the asymmetries of power that characterize the bilateral relations between them. This book comes at an excellent time, fulfilling a need to understand the U.S.-Mexico border from a more scientifically based approach that allows its analysis to surface above prejudice and stereotypes." - Jorge A. Bustamante, Founder and former President, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte
Review
"This groundbreaking interdisciplinary edited collection embodies the social commitment and the kind of scholarly collaboration deeply indispensable, both within and across nation-states, to more effectively confront the socio-political, cultural, and policy-making challenges associated with global border regions, such as Paso del Norte, around the world. Ultimately, this fascinating volume is the extraordinary result of a rare and rigorous collective dialogue among and between Mexico and U.S.-based scholars, all of whom not only have studied the region for years, but have also experienced, either directly or indirectly, the impact of twenty-first century border life in its multiple dimensions: from the absent state to the empty curriculum, from organized crime to disorganized urban planning and border violence, from the triumphs of global capital to local labor and community struggles." - Alejandro Lugo, author of Fragmented Lives, Assembled Parts: Culture, Capitalism, and Conquest at the U.S.-Mexico Border
"Recent events have again placed Ciudad Juarez in the head lines of print media all over the world, confirming not only the dynamics of an international border community but the need to better understand the complex processes of interactions across the border that are behind such dynamics. This book contributes significantly to such an understanding. Its emphasis on the categories of space and state brings cohesion to the analysis of the wide array of border problems that go from the harmonious to the violent in settings of social and economic relations. No wonder the U.S.-Mexico border has been viewed as both, uniting and dividing two nations and/or two societies that have succeeded and failed at different points in time when facing the challenges of the asymmetries of power that characterize the bilateral relations between them. This book comes at an excellent time, fulfilling a need to understand the U.S.-Mexico border from a more scientifically based approach that allows its analysis to surface above prejudice and stereotypes." - Jorge A. Bustamante, Founder and former President, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte
Synopsis
The volume is a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary approach to analyzing an enormously significant region in ways that clarify the kind of everyday life and work that is generated in a major urban global manufacturing site amid insecurity, inequality, and a virtually absent state.
About the Author
Kathleen Staudt is the author of recent books focused on the border, including Violence and Activism at the Border: Gender, Fear and Everyday Life in Ciudad Juárez (2008), lead editor of Human Rights along the U.S.-Mexico Border (2009), co-author with Susan Rippberger of Pledging Allegiance: Learning Nationalism in El Paso-Juárez (2003) ,and with Irasema Coronado, Fronteras no Más: Toward Social Justice at the U.S.-Mexico Border (2002).
César M. Fuentes is the co-author, with Sergio Peña, of Planeación binacional y cooperación transfronteriza en la frontera México-Estados Unidos (2006).
Julia Monárrez Fragoso is the co-editor of Bordeando la violencia contra las mujeres en la frontera norte (2007).
Table of Contents
Preface: Living and Working in a Global Manufacturing Border Urban Space: A Paradigm for the Future?--Kathleen Staudt * THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC MODEL * Globalization, Trans-border Networks, and Mexico-U.S. Border Cities--César M. Fuentes and Sergio Peña * SECTION I: SECURITY AND SAFETY IN THE BORDER REGION * Death at the Border--Julia Monárrez Fragoso * The Disarticulation of Justice: Precarious Life and Cross-Border Feminicides in the Paso del Norte Region--Julia Monárrez Fragoso and Cynthia Bejarano * Surviving Domestic Violence in the Paso del Norte Region--Kathleen Staudt and Rosalba Robles Ortega * SECTION II: GLOBALIZED PRODUCTION, URBAN SPACE, AND PUBLIC SERVICES * Globalization and its Effects on Urban Socio-Spatial Structure in a Transfrontier Metropolis: El Paso, TX-Ciudad Juárez, CHIH-Sunland Park, NM--César M. Fuentes and Sergio Peña * Global Production and Precarious Labor: Harness Production in Ciudad Juárez--Martha Miker Palafox * SECTION III: LIVING WITH GLOBALIZED RISKS: POVERTY, IMMIGRATION, AND EDUCATION * Centering the Margins: The Transformation of Community in Colonias at the U.S.-Mexico Border--Guillermina Nuñez-Mchiri and Georg Klamminger * Schooling for Global Competitiveness in the Border Metropolitan Region--Kathleen Staudt and Zulma Méndez * Alianza para la Calidad de la Educación and the Production of an Empty Curriculum--Zulma Méndez * TOWARD NEW GOVERNANCE? * Good Governance in a Globalizing Tri-state Bi-National Region--Tony Payan