Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War On "Illegals" and the Remaking of the U.S. – Mexico Boundary

This is a major revision and update of Nevins’ earlier classic and is an ideal text for use with undergraduate students in a wide variety of courses on immigration, transnational issues, and the politics of race, inclusion and exclusion. Not only has the author brought his subject completely up to date, but as a "case" of increasing economic integration and liberalization along with growing immigration control, the US / Mexico Border and its history is put in a wider global context of similar development s elsewhere. A companion website is available at www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415996945. The Companion Website contains key U.S. government documents related to the boundary and immigration enforcement strategy; reports from non-partisan research entities and non-governmental organizations that evaluate enforcement from a civil and human rights perspective; and studies that investigate migrant deaths in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. There are also photo essays, including one related to deportations and another to California’s Border Field State Park, for which the site also includes historic photos and other resources. Finally, the site has links to websites—from U.S. government agencies involved in boundary and immigrant policing, to humanitarian and border, migrant, and human rights organizations.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction 2. Nation-building in the Borderlands: Constructing the U.S.-Mexico Boundary 3. Generating Difference in San Diego-Tijuana 4. Sharpening the Divide: From Border to Boundary 5. Producing the Crisis: The Emergence of Operation Gatekeeper 6. The Ideological Roots of the Illegal as Threat and the Boundary as Protector 7. The Effects and Significance of the Bounding of the United States 8. Security in an Age of Global Apartheid

About the Author :
Joseph Nevins is an associate professor of geography at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. His writings have appeared in publications such as The Boston Review, Counterpunch.org, The International Herald Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Washington Post, and Z Magazine. His previous books include A Not-so-Distant Horror: Mass Violence in East Timor, and Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid.

Review :
"The first edition of Operation Gatekeeper has been widely influential in migration and border studies. I assign it to all my advanced students, and I think about its provocative arguments often. The second edition goes well beyond brief updating. It provides altogether new considerations and observations, and will prove essential for students and scholars of these issues."--Josiah Heyman, Anthropology, University of Texas at El Paso "Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the complex constellation of social, political, and economic forces that gave rise to the criminalization of undocumented immigrants. Nevins powerfully illustrates how this on-going phenomena is linked to statecraft in an era in which globalization both diminishes and reinforces the sovereignty, power and relevance of the nation-state."--Roxanne Doty, Political Science, Arizona State University "Joe Nevins puts forth a nuanced and path-breaking political history of "illegal migrants." This study holistically examines the growing social divide between those with rights in the US and those denied them, between the privileged and the subordinated and, fundamentally, between the law and the realization of justice. It is a must-read for those seeking a fuller understanding of how the US war against "illegals" is a part of a contemporary system of apartheid."--Nandita Sharma, Ethnic Studies, University of Hawaii "In this updated second edition, Nevins...presents readers with a thorough assessment of the US's ever-evolving immigration policies. ...His analysis is fresh and unique. ...[The book] is well written and should be of interest to a wide variety of geographers, political scientists, economists, and Latin Americanists." --J. S. Robey, University of Texas at Brownsville in Choice