Migration Barriers and Buffers: The U.S.-Mexico Border in a North American Context

For most of the twentieth century, the U.S.-Mexico border was overwhelmingly important as a barrier to Mexican migration to the United States. Yet it has also functioned as a barrier for Latin American migration to Canada, and increasingly is dominated by attempted movements from a widening circle of other nationalities, including asylum seekers from outside the Western Hemisphere. This presentation will put contemporary headlines into a broader geopolitical context to explain how migration enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border is part of a much more widespread system of controls. Policies of the U.S., Canadian, and Mexican governments are highly interactive and cannot be understood simply by examining processes within each country. A historical perspective will show how policies dating to the late nineteenth century have recently shifted in surprising ways.