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The ever-changing, always porous Mexican-U.S. border region has long been the site of intense and productive cultural and political exchange of every kind, particularly with respect to music. Today, mariachi performance in the United States provides a counternarrative to the discourse of anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican hate language deployed by Donald Trump and his supporters. Accordingly, the rapid spread of interest and proficiency in the production of mariachi music performed by Latino and non-Latino students in schools across the Southwest and as far northeast as New England can be thought of as a kind of social movement. Two case studies—the first a program developed by a Mexican American instructor working predominantly with Mexican American children in an overwhelmingly Anglo town in Connecticut and the second serving an ethnically diverse elementary school in Central New York State where neither the instructor nor more than a few current students are Latino—suggest the potential of this movement for breaking down ethnic and racial barriers. El siempre cambiante y siempre poroso espacio de la frontera México-Estados Unidos ha sido, durante mucho tiempo, el sitio de un intenso y productivo intercambio cultural y político de todo tipo, particularmente con respecto a la música. Hoy en día, las actuaciones de mariachis en los Estados Unidos nos brindan una contranarrativa al discurso del lenguaje de odio antiinmigrante y antimexicano desplegado por Donald Trump y sus partidarios. En consecuencia, la rápida difusión del interés y la creciente competencia en la producción de música de mariachi interpretada por estudiantes latinos y no latinos en escuelas de todo el suroeste de los Estados Unidos y tan al noreste como Nueva Inglaterra puede considerarse una especie de movimiento social. Dos estudios de caso, el primero un programa desarrollado por un instructor mexicoamericano que trabaja predominantemente con niños mexicoamericanos en una ciudad abrumadoramente anglosajona en Connecticut, y el segundo involucrando a una escuela primaria étnicamente diversa en el centro del estado de Nueva York, donde ni el instructor ni la mayor parte de los estudiantes actuales son latinos, sugieren el potencial de este movimiento para romper barreras étnicas y raciales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International boundaries have been mainly considered as barriers in literature on the 'cross-border regional innovation system' (CBRIS), in line with their traditional understanding. In this paper, we underline that such a perspective presents limits, and argue in favour of an understanding of multidimensional borders that are subject to dynamic change over time. By mobilizing conceptualizations from the field of border studies, we examine the various functions of borders to explain the innovation-led development potential in cross-border regions. In this view, international borders can function as an interface, a marker of difference or a symbol, rather than a mere barrier that separates regions. Further, we suggest that these border functions are key factors in explaining the 'fluctuating' integration dynamics of regional innovation systems across the border. Mobilizing evidence from two case studies in European and North American contexts, the paper sheds light on the border as a potential resource for innovation and discusses implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates US immigration law as a spatial system whose application results in geographic confusion. I take the case of Barton v. Barr as a vivid example of this structure, where the petitioner was found to be simultaneously "outside" and "inside" the country under a legal perspective. Beginning from this paradox, I focus on the law's ability to produce extraterritorial folds within the country's interior, thus confining aliens into spaces that escape constitutional rules. Through an engagement with legal geography and Niklas Luhmann's work, I conceptualize immigration law as a system which lives off the repetition of operations that distributes rights and privileges to aliens by assigning a degree of foreignness to their location. The resulting paradox must not be confused for a mistake or a flawed logic. Instead, it constitutes the dispositive that allows the law to produce its effects and draw its territorial enclaves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the phenomenon of borderland shuttle trade across Russia’s borders with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. I argue that borderland shuttle trade is more sustainable in comparison with long-haul shuttle trade, as the former gives entrepreneurs more flexibility, involves fewer transaction costs, and can rely on the extensive support of borderland communities. At the same time, it has some specific vulnerabilities, and its susceptibility to customs control and reliance on overloaded border crossing infrastructure are among the most important. Contrary to beliefs about contemporary states’ inability to exercise efficient control over informal cross-border flows in the age of globalization, this research demonstrates that over the course of time, states may be at least partially successful in suppressing informal cross-border trade. Ultimately, cross-border shuttle trade has proven to be vulnerable to more and more targeted restrictions and control practices. Still, it has also proven to be highly resistant to governmental crackdown in various ways, such as buying fuel from long-haul truck drivers or switching to trade in non-excisable goods or to low-penalty cigarette smuggling. The latter practice illustrates that shuttle trade is only part of the flexible informal cross-border economy and that it can be transformed into low-penalty smuggling when needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those who have to cross "hard" borders face many problems on their way, including arbitrary and unjust treatment by consular and border guard officers, protracted and nitpicking inspections and extortion by customs officers, and huge traffic congestions. This article examines the extent to which various categories of people crossing the European Union-Russian border can self-organize in order to act together and be heard better for solving these and other issues. Tourists, shuttle traders, and truck drivers working for international cargo carriers are taken as three case studies for the research. I argue that all of the three mentioned categories of border crossers are capable of self-organizing in various ways: tourists--by exchanging best practices within thematic networks, shuttle traders--by taking advantage of their ability to gather in their common places of residence and (as well as truck drivers) near checkpoints when traffic congestions arise, truck drivers--also by taking advantage of support from influential business associations. It is also important that the audibility of border crossers' voices can be seriously amplified by mediators, among which officials, politicians, business structures, and the mass media are the most efficient. At the same time, the capability of these three kinds of border crossers to make their voices heard is very limited, since their interactions are typically weak and instable and since officials are much more powerful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-border cooperation to promote economic development and political integration has been among the EU's key themes since the 1990s, and contemporary policy networks are considered useful organisational solutions. Focusing on transport policies in the border regions of Basel and Luxembourg, we analyse the persistency of national preferences among policy actors, mapping their perceived 'policy spaces of action' and conceptualising these policy spaces as relational. We discuss that the networks' various actors on either side of the border appear to perceive the actual 'policy spaces' very differently. Therefore, and due to the networks' terminability, these policy spaces are highly contested and frequently negotiated between the actors. Based on a combination of in-depth interviews, sketch maps, and social network analysis, we show that large spatiocultural differences still prevail among network actors, potentially impacting on the decisions taken in cross-border policy networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the transnational living strategies utilized by women on the US/Mexico border while critically exploring the contradictory coexistence of successful transnational corridors, such as the NAFTA highway, and the poor residents who live alongside them. The article focuses on the transnational living strategies they use in order to improve their living conditions in Starr County, Texas. The author argues that transmigrant women and their families use migration and settlement in the Lower Rio Grande Valley as a way of improving their standard of living. However, the contradiction is that they end up living in an area known for its poor living conditions and high unemployment rates. This article is an ethnographic study of the ways in which women and their families negotiate poverty in a poor, rural border community while also showing how a poor and rural border area can both exacerbate and alleviate woman's poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]