Research
In my dissertation project, I take up the challenge of theorizing borderlands as unique geopolitical spaces and local populations as central actors. Knowledge about the macro-level causes and effects of border hardening is abundant, but little is understood about its “on-the-ground” politics. Local communities are unique in their opportunity to engage with people, goods, and institutions across the border. These communities also directly experience changes in how borders are governed.
Given this position, how are local communities navigating the global trend toward hardened borders? I answer this question on three axes: (1) local contestation and accommodation over border hardening, (2) how people in local communities psychologically adapt to changing borders, and (3) how bottom-up demands influence the content of border policy. The multi-method project encompasses global quantitative analyses with an original geospatial measure of local transnational ties across borders, qualitative fieldwork at the United States–Mexico border, and observational survey tests.
Working Papers
The Local Politics of Border Control: Transnationality, Resistance, and Accommodation (invited to revise and resubmit at International Studies Quarterly). PDF
States are increasingly hardening borders. Scholars have dedicated substantial attention to the causes and effects of this phenomenon, but contestation by local communities is less understood. This study takes up the challenge of theorizing borderlands as unique geopolitical spaces and the communities therein as central actors in order to explain why they sometimes resist border hardening. Transnational communities with cross-border ties depend on mobility, which disposes them to contest border hardening. Yet, when hardening makes exceptions accommodating local ways of life, resistance is less likely. This theory is tested and developed via a mixed-methods design leveraging the COVID-19 pandemic context in which most states closed borders. Global quantitative analysis finds that an original geospatial measure of transnationality predicts local protest against closures. Interviews in two deviant case communities that are highly transnational but did not resist the nearby border closure show that the policy’s accommodation of border-related industries largely forestalled discontent. Such selective border hardening, which accounts for local flows, mitigates conflict. The results point to local communities as a key actor in border politics deserving more attention.