Up Against the Wall: Re-Imagining the U.S.-Mexico Border (Louann Atkins Temple Women & Culture) - Hardcover

Casey, Edward S.; Watkins, Mary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0292758413 ISBN 13: 9780292758414

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2014

Synopsis

Winner, National Association for Ethnic Studies (NAES) Outstanding Book Award, 2017

As increasing global economic disparities, violence, and climate change provoke a rising tide of forced migration, many countries and local communities are responding by building walls—literal and metaphorical—between citizens and newcomers. Up Against the Wall: Re-imagining the U.S.-Mexico Border examines the temptation to construct such walls through a penetrating analysis of the U.S. wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as investigating the walling out of Mexicans in local communities. Calling into question the building of a wall against a friendly neighboring nation, Up Against the Wall offers an analysis of the differences between borders and boundaries. This analysis opens the way to envisioning alternatives to the stark and policed divisions that are imposed by walls of all kinds. Tracing the consequences of imperialism and colonization as citizens grapple with new migrant neighbors, the book paints compelling examples from key locales affected by the wall—Nogales, Arizona vs. Nogales, Sonora; Tijuana/San Diego; and the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. An extended case study of Santa Barbara describes the creation of an internal colony in the aftermath of the U.S. conquest of Mexican land, a history that is relevant to many U.S. cities and towns.

Ranging from human rights issues in the wake of massive global migration to the role of national restorative shame in the United States for the treatment of Mexicans since 1848, the authors delve into the broad repercussions of the unjust and often tragic consequences of excluding others through walled structures along with the withholding of citizenship and full societal inclusion. Through the lens of a detailed examination of forced migration from Mexico to the United States, this transdisciplinary text, drawing on philosophy, psychology, and political theory, opens up multiple insights into how nations and communities can coexist with more justice and more compassion.

About this title

About the Author:

EDWARD S. CASEY is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at State University of New York, Stony Brook, and the author of several acclaimed books, among them Getting Back into Place and The World at a Glance.

Review:

"...a very impressive work of interdisciplinary research and analysis, one that will interest students and scholars of public policy, psychology, contemporary art, and more. Highly recommended." (Choice)

"Stunning in the insights it unearths. . . . [provides] impressive, timely scholarship in this era of great concern about migrancy and the increased proximity among peoples created by globalization." (Fred Evans, Professor of Philosophy, Duquesne University)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0292758413
• ISBN 13: 9780292758414
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 312