Communities along the United States–Mexico border have a great deal in common, including a shared history, two deserts, rapid population growth, thriving tourism, and deepening economic integration. Day-to-day life for people living along the border is shaped by these common elements, plus the distinctive feature of an international border that divides families, friends, and businesses. The challenges posed by an international boundary that draws into proximity two vastly different countries while simultaneously dividing local communities of great similarity represent a complex mix of economics, politics, culture, and language. Directly or indirectly, the international boundary affects the daily life of...

For most of its nearly 2,000 miles, the United States–Mexico border is a permeable barrier of desert rock and sand. In a few places urban landscapes appear, with multiple fences and controlled gates of entry, while along the eastern half of the border the open space is divided by the Rio Grande. Through most of its western half, the boundary between national sovereignties is little more than a simple fence running across the two great deserts connecting northern Mexico and southwestern United States.

The residents of this region share far more than natural landscapes. Their regional histories and life...

Oscarʹs parents are from Aguascalientes, in central Mexico. They migrated to Los Angeles in the 1960s, and that is where Oscar and one of his sisters were born. After a few years of trying to get comfortable in a sprawling American city, the family decided to move back to Mexico, where they felt more at home and could raise their family in the traditions they knew best. They chose the bustling city of Tijuana, but this too was hard, as the lower salaries in Mexico meant that their standard of living suffered. After a couple of years it was back...

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed and ratified in 1993 and implemented on January 1, 1994. Along the border there was a flurry of activity as state and local chambers of commerce, business groups, and public officials began to prepare for a more open Mexican economy. On the U.S. side, fears of competition from relatively low-wage Mexican workers were offset by the anticipation of export and outsourcing opportunities, particularly in Texas and California, the two most populous states and the two with the largest quantity of exports going to Mexico.

Commerce aside, however, not all was well...

Transportation costs play a major role in both domestic and international commerce. In general, water transport is usually the cheapest way to move goods over long distances, and air transport is most suitable for high-value, low-bulk items that need to reach their markets in the shortest possible time, yet the vast majority of U.S.-Mexico trade is hauled on the ground by trucks and trains. Although two-thirds of U.S. merchandise trade with the rest of the world is via water and air, and only one of the top five international gateway ports for the United States is a land-based port (Detroit),...

The maquiladora boom of the 1980s and 1990s and the accompanying population growth in the Mexican border region dramatically increased strains on the environment. The direct impacts of increased manufacturing activity include the generation of toxic wastes, chemical spills, pressures on water and wastewater treatment, air emissions, and other side effects of industrialization. Indirectly, the growth of border manufacturing increased the demand for labor and contributed to a rapid migration to the border region at a time when many regions of Mexico had fewer employment opportunities. Population in the Mexican border region increased by 31 percent in the decade of...

Jorge and Gabriel are from different generations, but they each view the border as a place of opportunity. Jorge left his home town, Torreón, in the interior of Mexico to look for work in the border town of Piedras Negras. Piedras Negras was full of young men like Jorge who came to find work and better wages. Jobs were scarce and paid badly in Torreón, but Jorge knew he could find work in Piedras Negras because his cousins had migrated there and had kept him posted about job openings in the border manufacturing plants that were springing up. He knew...

One notable feature of the U.S.-Mexico border is that it is the point of contact between two large nations with very different income levels. The income gap between the two sides of the border is so large that it is difficult to identify any other countries in the world sharing a common border that have income differences as large as those between the United States and Mexico. In 2005, the World Bank estimated Mexicoʹs per capita income to be $7,449 in current U.S. dollars and that of the United States to be $42,006—approximately six times greater.¹ This large an...

María is in her mid-fifties and has seven children, ranging in age from twenty-eight to six. Originally from Guadalajara, she married and had her first three children while living in Culiacán, Sinaloa. Around 1980, she moved from Culiacán to Tijuana, where she and her husband bought land in a marginal area without services. The city grew up around them, however, and they slowly became part of the urban center with a full range of amenities, including electricity, water, and sewage. Other parts of her life did not go quite as well, and about five years after they arrived in Tijuana,...

Nearly everyone would agree that quality-of-life improvements and human development depend on more than just material wealth or income. As economists and social scientists, we would like to affirm this point while at the same time maintaining standards for measuring human development and welfare that are comparable across countries and through time. This is a tall order, since, as the United Nations Development Program has noted, ʺThe basic purpose of development is to enlarge peopleʹs choices,ʺ and no simple numerical measurement can possibly portray the level of development in all of its dimensions and complexity. Nevertheless, simple, comparable measures are...

The economic dynamism of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands has attracted a steady stream of migrants, both national and international, who in turn have generated more economic growth while creating a rich multicultural stew of music, language, food, architecture, and other artifacts of daily life. People and customs from Mexico and the United States fit comfortably together along the border, often blending into a mix of Anglo, Latino, occasionally Asian, and sometimes indigenous cultures. This blend makes the border a unique part of North America, a place where the cultural and political identities of many residents are not accurately characterized as simply...