Ithaca College

Carlos Figueroa, Assistant Professor, Politics Department, presented a paper titled Bridge Narratives and Spatial Citizenship at the U.S. Mexico Border at the Mapping Nations, Locating Citizens:  An International Conference on Nationalism and Identity in Toronto, Canada (October 2015). 

 Abstract:  The events of September 11, 2001 that took place in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Shanksville, PA changed the ways in which national and state governments perceived and later managed the expansive U.S. southern border.  At the same time, the public discourses and policy debates over immigration, political membership and more importantly the notion and practice of citizenship were re-framed at all levels.  As a result, these two policy areas (national security and immigration) were conflated under the new & bi-partisan supported narrative of waging a “war on terrorism.”  Not surprisingly, these shifts and the corporate media discourses that fueled them also shaped how ordinary citizens and local government officials interpreted and understood everyday life at the US southern border.  I explore these perceptual shifts and associated policy controversies through a close reading of public texts and lived spaces (urban bridges).  I focus on understanding the lived experiences of border peoples (Hispanic-Americans and Mexican Nationals) who make their living in and around the ‘international’ bridges connecting Brownsville, Texas (USA) and Matamoros, Tamaulipas (Mexico).  Through various focus group and individual interviews, and drawing from Ivan Illich (1985) on changing perceptions of living spaces, John B. Jackson (1994) regarding impact of time, place and movements on social environments, and Irene Bloemraad (2006) on the politics belonging, becoming, and being a citizen, I show that border peoples (within fluid borderlands) often construct, and reconstruct spatial citizenship within and through the negotiation of bridge technological/urban spaces in order to maintain a semblance of civic community despite -- and often in light of -- the real and/or perceived violence at the southern US border.