The Border Crossed Us: The Case for Opening the US-Mexico Border

The aggressive exploitation of labor on both sides of the US-Mexico border has created a vicious model of capitalist transnationalization, but it has also created its grave-diggers. Transborder people face walls, armed agents, detention camps, and a growing regime of repressive laws that criminalize them. This book argues that labor and migrant solidarity movements are showing how to fight for justice and re-build the international union movement by opening the border.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 23 September 2021
Publisher: Haymarket Books

The ruthless exploitation of labor on both sides of the US-Mexico border has emerged as a defining characteristic of capitalism in North America. Children are being held in cages, violent ICE raids are taking place, and anti-immigrant racist rhetoric permeates our political landscape, shaping the interactions between individuals at the border on a daily basis. However, as activist-scholar Justin Akers Chacón meticulously illustrates, this vicious model of capitalist transnationalization has also inadvertently created its own grave-diggers.

Contemporary North American capitalism thrives on a interconnected working class that spans across the border. Cross-border production and supply chains, logistics networks, and retail and service firms have amalgamated and integrated a growing number of workers into a unified class, irrespective of their geographical location in the US or Mexico. While financial transactions flow freely, the movement of displaced migrant workers across borders is severely restricted and often met with punitive measures. Transborder individuals encounter formidable barriers such as walls, armed agents, detention camps, and an expanding regime of repressive laws that criminalize them. Despite the expansion and intensity of the police state dedicated to repressing transborder populations—known as the "migra-state"—migrant workers have remained at the forefront of class struggles in the United States.

In this timely book, Akers Chacón persuasively makes the case that labor and migrant solidarity movements are already demonstrating the ways and reasons why opening the border is essential in order to fight for justice and revitalize the international union movement. By dismantling the barriers that separate these communities, we can create a more inclusive and equitable society that recognizes the rights and dignity of all workers, regardless of their nationality or immigration status.

Dimension: 215 x 139 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781642595024