Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

6-2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Sociology

Advisor

David Brotherton

Committee Members

Jayne Mooney

Jamie Longazel

Nicholas De Genova

Subject Categories

Criminology | Migration Studies | Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies | Social Justice

Keywords

Border Studies, Criminology, Crimmigration, Political Sociology, Ethnography, Violence

Abstract

Since its formation, the U.S.-Mexico border has been a vital mechanism in the development of U.S. racial capitalism, the security state, and modalities of social control. There is a conceptual gap between this historical development and contemporary case studies of the U.S.-Mexico border. This dissertation intends to fill that gap by addressing the following questions: Which theoretical lenses can be used to locate the practices and purposes that the contemporary U.S.-Mexico border serves for the U.S. state and its projects of late capitalist development, institutionalized social control, and racialization? What does the evolutionary nature of these practices and purposes reveal about the utility of the U.S.-Mexico border to U.S. statecraft? What connections can be made between contemporary border enforcement practices and their historical development through archival research, critical historical methods, critical ethnographic methods, and participant observations?

This project will employ archival research strategies, institutional ethnographic interpretations of historical and contemporary texts from archives and digitized libraries, and critical, embodied ethnographic methods such as participant observations in the field and interviews with border humanitarian workers.

Download

This work is embargoed and will be available for download on Friday, April 30, 2027

Share

COinS