Towards a Transborder Perspective: U.S.-Mexico Relations

This article embeds a discussion of transborder communities -communities spread out in multiple locations in the U.S. and Mexico- in the history of U.S.-Mexico relations. These relations are read through the colonial and contemporary mapping of space, place, people, race, and ethnicity both literally and metaphorically as well as through U.S. immigration policy in the 19(th) and 20(th) centuries. The concept of "transborder," which can include borders of coloniality, ethnicity, race, nation, and region, can help us to illuminate U.S.-Mexico relationships through time, the racialization of Mexicans in the U.S., and contemporary dynamics of migration and immigration. The crossing of many borders and the carrying of these borders within one's experience allows us to see migration and immigration in terms of family relationships, social, economic, and cultural relationships, communities, and networks.