"From award-winning journalist and priest Cristina Rathbone comes this remarkable work of reportage about a community of people at the US and Mexico border. In The Asylum Seekers, Rathbone renders in blistering detail the story of people camped at the foot of a bridge: the trauma they carry, the community they create, and the faith they maintain"-- Provided by publisher.

"This is a book about hope, struggle, and possibility in the context of gendered violences of racial capitalism on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border"--;Near Tijuana, Baja California, the autonomous community of Maclovio Rojoas demonstrates what is possible for urban place-based political movements. More than a community, Maclovio Rojas is a women-led social movement that works for economic and political autonomy to address issues of health, education, housing, nutrition, and security. Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas tells the story of the community's struggle to carve out space for survival and thriving in the shadows of the U.S.-Mexico geopolitical border. This ethnography by Michelle Téllez demonstrates the state's neglect in providing social services and local infrastructure. This neglect exacerbates the structural violence endemic to the border region--a continuation of colonial systems of power on the urban, rural, and racialized poor. Téllez shows that in creating the community of Maclovio Rojas, residents have challenged prescriptive notions of nation and belonging. Through women's active participation and leadership, a women's political subjectivity has emerged Maclovianas. These border women both contest and invoke their citizenship as they struggle to have their land rights recognized, and they transform traditional political roles into that of agency and responsibility. This book highlights the U.S.-Mexico borderlands as a space of resistance, conviviality, agency, and creative community building where transformative politics can take place. It shows hope, struggle, and possibility in the context of gendered violences of racial capitalism on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border"--

Federal law rules the land when it comes to border enforcement, but local governments can help.

"The Border Reader is an anthology which gathers previously published foundational works of humanities and interpretive social science scholarship on the U.S.-Mexico border. Edited by anthropologist Gilberto Rosas and American and Latinx studies scholar Mireya Roza, this Reader brings together essays that mobilize feminist, queer, Indigenous and critical ethnic studies perspectives to theorize the border region as a site of epistemic rupture and knowledge production"--