Gender, Governance, and Globalization at Borders: Femicide at the US-Mexico Border

Abstract

Globalization, free trade ideologies, and migration raise questions about the extent to which the nation-state is or should be the primary governance institution for citizens and residents. If not national, what then is the appropriate level: local, global, or regional? Considerable attention has been paid to global governance, whether active players are with International Organizations (IOs) such as United Nations affiliates, national governments, multinational corporations, and/or International Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) such as women’s and human rights organizations. But many decisions are made locally, framed by global and national constraints and opportunities. Few studies of women/gender have been grounded in and at border “places,” or borderlands, omnipresent in all nations save those surrounded by water. This chapter focuses on the “local,” from the standpoint of the US-Mexico borderlands region, as it engages in national and international governance around the murders of girls and women.¹