A defining issue of this century will be people on the move and where they settle. Wealthier countries like the U.S. are responding by walling themselves off from the rest of the world and investing in deterrence and detention, which only contributes to more deaths and misery while providing no long-term solutions. There must be a better way. This was John Washington’s thought as he launched his latest book project, The Case for Open Borders, which takes a deep dive into more humane responses to global migration and examines the history of borders and nation-states, which are relatively r ..read more

Water, climate change, and the right-wing disinformation ecosystem...The Border Chronicle founders discuss what should be on everyone's radar when we talk about the borderlands this presidential election season. Read or listen to more of The Border Chronicle at www.theborderchronicle.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/border-chronicle/support ..read more

Join us for an illuminating conversation about borders, belonging, myths, and oracles. She warns, “What we have created is a ruinous map for a ruinous future.” I was so happy to get a chance to talk with writer, author, and journalist Lauren Markham about her insightful and page-turning new book A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging. In this conversation we take a journey through the layers of this book starting with a deadly 2020 fire at the Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos in Greece, we talk about borders and bordering throughout the world ..read more

In January, the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity confirmed an exciting discovery near the Arizona-Mexico border: the first sighting of a jaguar never previously identified in Arizona. Russ McSpadden, a Southwest conservation advocate at the center, has been tracking the jaguar population in the borderlands for several years. The rare and elusive creatures once lived throughout the American Southwest. But they’ve nearly disappeared over the past 150 years due to habitat loss and government programs to protect the livestock industry. For decades, the nonprofit Center for Biological ..read more

As widespread election border theater kicks in, the director of the Surveillance Resistance Lab talks about smart borders, border externalization, “identity dominance,” and what can be done about it. Well, this week has been a doozy on the U.S.-Mexico border. There is the continued Texas standoff between the federal government and Operation Lonestar; the “Take Back the Border” convoy (also known as “God’s army”)and their political backers annoying and intimidating border communities such as in Eagle Pass; the failed impeachment of Department of Homeland Secu ..read more

How did right-wing media hijack the narrative around the U.S.-Mexico border? You’ve probably heard the terms “military age men,” “invasion,” and “Biden’s open borders” bandied about in the media and among congressional leaders. These deliberately dehumanizing terms have shaped the way Americans view the U.S.-Mexico border as the 2024 election season unfolds. In his research, AJ Bauer focuses on right-wing media and conservative movements in the United States. We talk about mutual aid movements in New York and Chicago and the trajectory of right-wing media from fringe to mainstream and its domi ..read more

Al Otro Lado's executive director discusses what’s to come this election year: more of the CBP One app and open-air border prisons, along with a hyper-distorted fearmongering narrative of overwhelm. So, dear listeners, it is time to continue preparing ourselves for 2024 (check out Melissa’s Tuesday piece). As we know, during an election year the border tends to be a place where distorted narratives flourish on the fertile ground of misinformation, and we can expect plenty of that this year, as border expert Erika Pinheiro tells us in this episode. Some of you certainly rem ..read more

It’s been almost a year since the U.S. government rolled out the CBPOne app, which was meant to reduce the number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. But a historic number of people continue to arrive. In Lukeville, Arizona, people from all over the world line up to be processed by Border Patrol with the aim of applying for asylum, while in Matamoros, Mexico, migrants wait for months in camps with no running water or toilets for an appointment on CBPOne. And in Tijuana, and other border cities, wait lists grow for vulnerable migrants, just as they did for Title 42 exemptions. “I’ve ..read more

The co-founder of the Sidewalk School, which provides services to asylum seeking families in Mexico's migrant camps, talks about racism and Black migration, border disinformation, and how governments could alleviate suffering at the border. Check out more local border journalism at theborderchronicle.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/border-chronicle/support ..read more

“It’s not difficult to understand that a population that makes its livelihood off the land would find climate change oppressive, and would find climate change to be tantamount to persecution.” All signs indicate that 2023 will be the hottest year on record, yet again. If this sounds like something you’ve heard before, it is. Every year it seems like records are set, broken, and then broken again in cities, states, countries, and regions across the world. The heat, droughts, floods, and storms are putting pressure on people and their livelihoods, primarily in the Global South. As founder ..read more