Abstract
Political economy is the study of power in human affairs, including politics, economics, and ideology. Three border processes are examined in terms of these three elements. They are border crossing processes, border-reinforcing ones, and, a third category crucial to borders, uneven and combined relations. The latter involve both connections and also the maintenance or reinforcement of differentiation. The border is a subordinate region in the political economy of North America, though also a crucial point of production and exchange due to combined and uneven relations. This is explored through application of the concept of dependency to politics, economics, and ideas. Examples are taken from the domains of migration, smuggling, and industrialization, and the topic of regulated, unequal mobility is explored. Finally, the challenge and possibilities for social justice struggles of this highly unequal scenario of political economy are explored.
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Notes
- 1.
Properly said, American covers both countries, so I use North American as an adjective pertaining to US citizens.
- 2.
I do not use an example of Mexican political, legal, and administrative border reinforcement here. In fact, such examples exist in abundance, though less well funded than those of the wealthy US federal government. Mexican customs inspections and barriers are representative. But the extreme drug war in Mexico’s northern border region has led to considerable weakening in the Mexican state in this region (see Olson et al. 2010).
- 3.
Properly phrased, the borderlands are not at the absolute bottom of the dependency pyramid—though millions of workers dwelling in marginal neighborhoods do indeed fit that description (see Fernández-Kelly 1983; Núñez 2009 for examples). Rather, the border mediates between places like migrant-sending communities in Oaxaca, Mexico, that are further down the pyramid and suburban California that are further up the pyramid, as migrants pass through the boundary region on their sad path of self-surrender to exploitative labor (Nagengast et al. 1992; Stuart and Kearney 1981; Velasco Ortíz 2005).
- 4.
Violence is extensive and horrific in northern border Mexico, but not at all on the US side, where the US government presence is assembled. The Mexican coercive state presence has grown in this region, due to military intervention. Most US government operations at the border do not seek violence reduction in Mexico, as discussed in the text.
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Heyman, J.M. (2012). Political Economy and Social Justice in the US-Mexico Border Region. In: Lusk, M., Staudt, K., Moya, E. (eds) Social Justice in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4150-8_2
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