The University of Arizona Press
The border between the United States and Mexico is one of the most unique and complex regions of the world. The asymmetry of the border region, together with the profound cultural differences of the two countries, create national controversies around migration, security, and illegal flows of drugs and weapons. The national narratives miss the fact that the 15 million or more people living in the border regions of Mexico and the United States are highly interactive and responsive to conditions on the other side.
Enormous legal cross-border flows of people, goods, and finance are embedded in the region’s history and prompted by the need to respond to new opportunities and challenges that originate on the other side. In Border Economies by James Gerber examines how the interactivity and sensitivity of communities to conditions across the border differentiates them from communities in the interiors of Mexico and the United States. Gerber explains what makes the region not only unique but uniquely interesting. Read an excerpt from the book below.
Permeability is an important feature of the U.S.-Mexico border. It enables the interactions of communities on opposite sides, regardless of migration policies, trade agreements, border walls, or frictions between Washington and Mexico City. Permeability refers to the authorized, constant, bidirectional movement of people, goods, and money across the international boundary. It is what allows the border region to be a unique hybrid space where Mexico’s culture and economy spill into the United States and those of the United States into Mexico. Many residents and businesses on both sides need to cross frequently, if not daily, and their normal routines require them to send and receive goods as well as to provide money and financial assets to the other side. Taken together, the enormous bidirectional flows of people, goods, and finance create a border economy that extends into both countries.
The idea of a peaceful border defined by the interactions of Mexican and U.S. citizens, businesses, and government officials is one part of the story, but an exclusive focus on the positive interactions of residents along the border elides other realities. There are also walls, armed border police, families who lead precarious lives, drug wars, and disturbing acts of violence. Raw sewage periodically spills into shared waterways, while HIV, asthma, diabetes, and other diseases pose public health challenges. It is not hard to paint a distorted and one-sided picture, but the reality of the border is one of a complex mosaic of ethnicities, incomes, social classes, and living conditions. There are difficult problems and challenges but also dynamism, opportunity, and creativity. In addition to the darker elements, both sides offer museums and universities, shopping malls, elegant homes, middle-class suburbs, and gourmet restaurants. In some places, urban areas on the border are graceful examples of cultural hybridity and cooperation across the divides of history and language, but in other places and times, they become examples of misunderstanding, poverty, and threats of violence.
Many people on both sides of the border never cross to the other side. The reasons are various—they are not permitted, they do not want to, or they haven’t enough time or money. But many people do cross, and many of them do so regularly. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2019, there were over 188 million crossings on foot, and in cars, buses, or trains, from south to north. This did not mean that 188 million unique individuals crossed the border, because many people cross daily or weekly, going back and forth to work or school or to visit family. Border crossers take their lives and culture with them when they visit the other side, so Mexico comes to the United States and the United States goes to Mexico. Some observers in both countries fear this exchange will corrupt their nation’s values by turning the border region into a miniature enclave of the country on the other side. Others welcome the influences and see more cultural choices, enrichment for the arts and education, a wider variety of medical services, and new economic opportunities. The perception of the border, like the reality, is not one thing.
The U.S.-Mexico border is perhaps the most traversed in the world. But it is not just people that cross. The United States and Mexico have the second largest trade relationship of any two countries in the world; the largest is trade between the United States and Canada, but only by a relatively small amount. Most of the trade between the United States and its two neighbors crosses the border in trucks and adds to the flow of border crossing. Simultaneously, the flow of goods and people is amplified by the flow of money and finance, including large investments in manufacturing, trade finance, remittances of migrants, tourist dollars, cross-border shopping, the purchase of medical services, and other payments and receipts.
