Abstract
This chapter concludes the book with attention to how Rio Grande Valley organizations and individuals continue to push for a productive, forward-thinking vision of the region and U.S.–Mexico borderlands. From a region-wide lobbying effort in the state capitol to national speeches and open letters to President Trump to grassroots social media campaigns, borderlanders tell a different story. Their discursive practice of debordering extends the term to encompass strategic place-making from within borderlands. Production of knowledge about the border should be a conversation with borderland communities, especially when national policies and politics about our borderlands and its communities exacerbate racial violence and suffering, such as unequipped and overcrowded detention centers and declining funding for public services for the disenfranchised.
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Notes
- 1.
For a special journal issue that reviews more recent theories and areas of focus of moral panic research, please see Volume 7, Issue 3 (2011), of the academic research journal, Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal.
- 2.
A good place to begin reviewing the demographic and social science research on immigration is the Pew Research Center (pewresearch.org), a nonpartisan, non-advocacy research organization.
- 3.
The 2016 Texas Monthly article on his decision was subtitled “Congressman Filemon Vela had always kept a low profile – until he told Donald Trump to stick his border fence you-know-where” (Benson, 2016).
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Fleuriet, K.J. (2021). Flipping the Script About the Rio Grande Valley and the Border During Turbulent Times. In: Rhetoric and Reality on the U.S.—Mexico Border. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63557-2_9
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