Collaboration in the shadow of the wall: shifting power in the borderlands

Border security places a heavy burden on public and private land managers affecting rural livelihoods and limiting managers' ability to collectively act to deal with environmental issues. In the southern Arizona borderlands, natural resource managers come together to solve complex environmental issues creating a diverse set of formal and informal institutional arrangements between state and nonstate actors. We explore the effects of the border on these collaborative institutions, as well as the managers' views of the border, invoking theoretical work on power, institutions, literature from the burgeoning field of borderland studies, and recent work on collaboration and the common interest in civil society. In doing so, we seek to understand how a rural community that has taken center stage in national discourse copes with the border on a daily basis and how changing power differentials in the borderlands affect a governance network. This study informs our understanding of when and where collaboration occurs, as well as our conceptualization of the border and the effects of border policy and immigration on natural resource management.