The Mexico-United States Border in Anthropology: A Critique and Reformulation

This paper criticizes the use of the Mexico-United States border in cultural anthropology as an image for conveying theoretical abstractions. Instead, the paper outlines a focused model of political ecology on the border. It delineates territorialized state processes, deterritorialized capital processes, and sets of social relationships and cultural practices characteristic of this region. Keywords: U.S.-Mexico border; anthropological theory; postmodernism; difference; public policy; states; capitalism; bureaucracies; brokers; households; immigration

Predictions of household water affordability under conditions of climate change, demographic growth, and fresh groundwater depletion in a southwest US city indicate increasing burdens on the poor

Reduced river flows and groundwater depletion as a result of climate change and population growth have increased the effort and difficulty accessing and processing water. In turn, residential water costs from municipal utilities are predicted to rise to unaffordable rates for poor residential water customers. Building on a regional conjunctive use model with future climate scenarios and 50-year future water supply plans, our study communicates the effects of climate change on poor people in El Paso, Texas, as water becomes more difficult and expensive to obtain in future years. Four scenarios for future water supply and future water costs were delineated based on expected impacts of climate change and groundwater depletion. Residential water use was calculated by census tract in El Paso, using basic needs indoor water use and evaporative cooling use as determinants of household water consumption. Based on household size and income data from the US Census, fraction of household income spent on water was determined. Results reveal that in the future, basic water supply will be a significant burden for 40% of all households in El Paso. Impacts are geographically concentrated in poor census tracts. Our study revealed that negative impacts from water resource depletion and increasing populations in El Paso will lead to costly and difficult water for El Paso water users. We provide an example of how to connect future resource scenarios, including those affected by climate change, to challenges of affordability for vulnerable consumers

Borders of Wealth and Poverty: Ideas Stimulated by Comparing the Mediterranean and U.S.-Mexico Borders

How can anthropologists and sociologists share ideas and knowledge on the Mediterranean and U.S.-Mexico borders to deepen insight and understanding? The best-known comparison is militarized border enforcement, plus humanitarianism, posed against asylum seeking and irregular migration. But, more complex mobility occurs at these borders, including privileged and other differentiated and sorted mobilities. Interwoven with these mobilities, commerce of many scales and degrees of legality occurs, supporting complicated cultural worlds of informality and exchange. Borders require not just a political analysis, but also attention to capital. Importantly, borders (immediate and extended) have become increasingly important sites of export-oriented production in the world economy. The processes of interchange at borders, in turn, support important urban zones and other communities that merit close ethnographic study for their social and cultural complexity.Come possono, antropologi e sociologi, condividere idee sui confini nel Mediterraneo e tra Stati Uniti e Messico per approfondirne la conoscenza? Il confronto più noto riguarda il rafforzamento, la militarizzazione dei confini e l’umanitarismo, in risposta alla ricerca d’asilo e alle migrazioni irregolari. Tuttavia, questi confini sono interessati da una mobilità più complessa, “differenziata” e anche privilegiata. Un commercio di diverse scale e gradi di legalità avviene nell’intreccio con queste mobilità, contribuendo al configurarsi di mondi culturali complicati, di informalità e scambi. I confini non necessitano solo di un’analisi politica, ma occorre considerare anche il capitale. Significativamente, i confini (“immediati” o “estesi”) diventano sempre più siti importanti di produzione per l’esportazione nell’economia mondiale. D’altro canto, i processi di scambio ai confini generano zone urbane e comunità che, per la loro complessità sociale e culturale, richiedono un attento studio etnografico

Water, Climate, and Social Change in a Fragile Landscape

We present here and in the companion papers an analysis of sustainability in the Middle Rio Grande region of the U.S.-Mexico border and propose an interdisciplinary research agenda focused on the coupled human and natural dimensions of water resources sustainability in the face of climate and social change in an international border region. Key threats to water sustainability in the Middle Rio Grande River region include: (1) increasing salinization of surface and ground water, (2) increasing water demand from a growing population in the El Paso/Ciudad Juarez area on top of an already high base demand from irrigated agriculture, (3) water quality impacts from agricultural, municipal, and industrial discharges to the river, (4) changing regional climate that portends increased frequency and intensity of droughts interspersed with more intensive rainfall and flooding events, and (5) disparate water planning and management systems between different states in the U.S. and between the U.S. and Mexico. In addition to these challenges, there is an increasing demand from a significant regional population who is (and has been historically) underserved in terms of access to affordable potable water. To address these challenges to water resources sustainability, we have focused on: (1) the determinants of resilience and transformability in an ecological/social setting on an international border and how they can be measured and predicted; and (2) the drivers of change ... what are they (climate, social, etc.) and how are they impacting the coupled human and natural dimensions of water sustainability on the border? To tackle these challenges, we propose a research agenda based on a complex systems approach that focuses on the linkages and feedbacks of the natural, built/managed, and social dimensions of the surface and groundwater budget of the region. The approach that we propose incorporates elements of systems analysis, complexity science, and the use of modeling tools such as scenario planning and back-casting to link the quantitative with the qualitative. This approach is unique for our region, as are our bi-national focus and our conceptualization of water capital . In particular, the concept of water capital provides the basis for a new interdisciplinary paradigm that integrates social, economic, and natural sectors within a systems framework in order to understand and characterize water resources sustainability. This proposed approach would not only provide a framework for water sustainability decision making for our bi-national region at the local, state, and federal levels, but could serve as a model for similar border regions and/or international rivers in arid and semi-arid regions in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America

Trade-offs between security and inspection capacity - Policy options for land border ports of entry

Security 2006: Transportation Research Record, 1942: pp. 16-22.Observations of primary inspections at land border ports of entry between Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, indicate that the majority of inspections are of limited depth. 79% of primary inspections do not involve opening a vehicle compartment and 45% last 20 seconds or less. Slightly less than 2% of vehicles are referred to secondary inspections. Three policy options are considered for allowing more thorough primary inspections. The first would require all primary inspections to involve opening a vehicle compartment. This would increase average inspection times from 34 seconds to 70 seconds. The more thorough inspections would reduce the processing capacity of the ports of entry to roughly 50% of current peak hourly demand, creating congestion with the potential to propagate throughout the regional traffic network. The second option would limit the time in primary inspections to 63 seconds. Vehicles requiring more time to complete the inspection process would be referred to secondary inspections which would greatly increase the frequency of referrals to secondary inspections, but allow for the percentage of primary inspections that involve physical inspection of at least one vehicle compartment to be increased to 35%. The third option would increase the number of crossers in the SENTRI program, where pre-screened participants are subject to expedited inspections. Reducing the volume in the non-SENTRI lanes would allow more detailed inspections in these lanes. However, SENTRI participants currently constitute only a small portion of total border crossers. A doubling of the current SENTRI program would be required to raise the average non-SENTRI, primary inspection time from 34 to 40 seconds. This study concludes that none of these options, whether alone or in combination, have the potential to avoid conflicts between national security requirements that favor more detailed inspections and local traffic flow consideration that favor less detailed inspections. However, these strategies are amenable to incremental implementation, and such incremental implementation may increase the thoroughness of the inspection process without interfering with local traffic flows

Human Rights in the Context of Environmental Conservation on the US-Mexico Border

At Cabeza Priesta National Wildlife Refuge, a wilderness area on the US-Mexico border in Arizona, conflicting policies permit the provision of supplementary water for wildlife but not for undocumented immigrants passing through the area. Federal refuge environmental policy prioritizes active management of endangered and threatened species. Vast systems of water resources have been developed to support wildlife conservation in this extremely hot and dry environment. At the same time, humanitarian groups are not allowed to supply water to undocumented border crossers in the park. Human border-crossers must utilize non-potable wildlife water guzzlers for survival and face risk of illness or death by dehydration. This article analyzes human rights via an ethnographic lens. From this perspective, water policy at the wildlife refuge brings into question the value of human life in a border conservation context, especially for those entering the site illegally

brainlife.io: A decentralized and open source cloud platform to support neuroscience research

Neuroscience research has expanded dramatically over the past 30 years by advancing standardization and tool development to support rigor and transparency. Consequently, the complexity of the data pipeline has also increased, hindering access to FAIR data analysis to portions of the worldwide research community. brainlife.io was developed to reduce these burdens and democratize modern neuroscience research across institutions and career levels. Using community software and hardware infrastructure, the platform provides open-source data standardization, management, visualization, and processing and simplifies the data pipeline. brainlife.io automatically tracks the provenance history of thousands of data objects, supporting simplicity, efficiency, and transparency in neuroscience research. Here brainlife.io's technology and data services are described and evaluated for validity, reliability, reproducibility, replicability, and scientific utility. Using data from 4 modalities and 3,200 participants, we demonstrate that brainlife.io's services produce outputs that adhere to best practices in modern neuroscience research