Kristen Hill Maher | San Diego State University (original) (raw)

Books by Kristen Hill Maher

San Diego and Tijuana are the site of a national border enforcement spectacle, but they are also ... more San Diego and Tijuana are the site of a national border enforcement spectacle, but they are also neighboring cities with deeply intertwined histories, cultures, and economies. In Unequal Neighbors, Kristen Hill Maher and David Carruthers shift attention from the national border to a local one, examining the role of place stigma in reinforcing actual and imagined inequalities between these cities. Widespread "bordered imaginaries" in San Diego represent it as a place of economic vitality, safety, and order, while stigmatizing Tijuana as a zone of poverty, crime, and corruption. These dualisms misrepresent complex realities on the ground, but they also have real material effects: the vision of a local border benefits some actors in the region while undermining others.

Based on a wide range of original empirical materials, the book examines how asymmetries between these cities have been produced and reinforced through stigmatizing representations of Tijuana in media, everyday talk, economic relations, and local tourism discourse and practices. However, both place stigma and borders are subject to contestation, and the book also examines "debordering" practices and counter-narratives about Tijuana's image. While the details of the book are particular to this corner of the world, the kinds of processes it documents offer a window into the making of unequal neighbors more broadly. The dynamics at the Tijuana border present a framework for understanding how inequalities that manifest in cultural practices produce asymmetric borders between places.

Papers by Kristen Hill Maher

Unequal Neighbors Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border, 2021

This chapter examines efforts to reinvent Tijuana’s reputation during and after a period of image... more This chapter examines efforts to reinvent Tijuana’s reputation during and after a period of image crisis. From 2008 to 2010, cartel violence dominated international news coverage about the city, with devastating economic effects. Drawing on a set of twenty interviews conducted in Tijuana from 2009 to 2012, the chapter explores cultural contestation over how to represent the city during that time of image crisis and in its aftermath. Actors with stakes in industry promoted substantially different place images than those involved in tourism and cross-border commerce. A third, diverse set of actors worked to shape the city’s image from the bottom up, through blogs, grassroots organizations, and entrepreneurialism, which showed potential for shaping place narratives within and outside the city. Finally, the chapter takes a closer look at the transformation of the former tourism district and finds promising signs for a debordering future stemming from ongoing image work.

Globalization and Human Rights, 2002

Noncitizen populations pose a quandary for the administration of human rights because human right... more Noncitizen populations pose a quandary for the administration of human rights because human rights norms have generally been enacted within the nation-state system and administered as the rights of citizens. While the human rights regime is international, its greatest influence has been to establish standards for states’ obligations vis-à-vis their own citizenries. Hence, even in Western states that are vocal champions of human rights,
policymakers debate the extent to which they are responsible for protecting the full range of human rights for noncitizen migrants, particularly migrants lacking state authorization.
Universal personhood is subordinated to citizenship as a basis for rights. The violations and vulnerabilities of migrant rights in the U.S. can be understood as extensions of a cultural logic in which even human rights are framed as entitlements exclusive to citizens. My analysis suggests that popular and political discourse in this context conceptualizes citizenship less in objective terms (as a legal status) than as a relational identity defined in opposition to “aliens,” particularly in reference to labor migrants from less developed states. This constructed opposition—positioning migrants as lacking a legitimate claim to rights—has two dimensions. The first dimension of the citizen-alien opposition rests on logics grounded in liberal notions of contract and property that position migrants as criminals, trespassers, and usurpers who have forfeited claims to rights by virtue of individual breaches of contract or law. The second reflects a neocolonial logic that legitimates differential claims to rights in accordance with an individual’s position in a racialized international division of labor, equating the privileges that accompany First World status with a greater entitlement to rights. These oppositions between citizens and aliens pose obstacles for migrants’ claims to rights based on universal personhood, even within a state that formally supports international human rights norms.

Este estudio examina la relacion entre un creciente sector de servicio domestico trasnacional y e... more Este estudio examina la relacion entre un creciente sector de servicio domestico trasnacional y el desarrollo de enclaves habitacionales fortificados en los suburbios del sur de California, Estados Unidos. Como muchas otras areas metropolitanas del continente americano, el sur de este estado ha visto una proliferacion de comunidades con portones de acceso a partir de los anos setenta. Los especialistas identifican a estas comunidades como un medio critico de segregacion social contemporanea por raza y por clase.Sin embargo, generalmente ignoran la paradojica realidad de que la mayoria de las comunidades mencionadas importan mano de obra de servicio, desde jardineros, sirvientas y nanas hasta asistentes de salud domesticas, acompanantes, paseadores de perros y limpiadores de piscinas.En el sur de California, este trafico regular de trabajadores de servicio comprende frecuentemente a inmigrantes latinoamericanos de clase trabajadora, el tipo de personas que los portones tratan de mant...

Unequal Neighbors: Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border, 2021

How does photojournalism in San Diego represent Tijuana and its residents? This chapter analyzes ... more How does photojournalism in San Diego represent Tijuana and its residents? This chapter analyzes both articles and photographs in the San Diego Union-Tribune over the course of a decade (2000–2010), using visual methods and a broad heuristic to capture four dimensions of stigmatizing narratives about Tijuana. On one hand, the analysis finds a complex portrait of Tijuana that encompassed not only the expected images from the drug war but also stories from business and daily life that would feel familiar and empathetic to San Diego readers. On the other hand, themes of violence and disorder pervaded much of the content, even on topics unrelated to crime, particularly in headlines and captions. This chapter demonstrates how bordering and debordering representations in local media can coexist in paradoxical ways and how they shift scales from local to national, depending on the topic and framing.

Unequal Neighbors: Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border (Oxford), 2021

This chapter explains and illustrates four core arguments that contribute to literatures on borde... more This chapter explains and illustrates four core arguments that contribute to literatures on borders, territorial stigma, and geographies of inequality. They are presented in an accessible way, with stories and illustrations from this region as well as other parts of the world, and they are relevant to any circumstances in which people have mental geographies that divide “good neighborhoods” from “bad” ones. First, the stigmatization and valorization of places are relational processes that contribute to spatialized inequalities. Second, place stigma plays an important role in producing and maintaining asymmetric borders. Third, asymmetric bordering occurs wherever people construct spatial lines demarcating distinction and inequality, at any scale. Fourth, asymmetric borders generate particular dynamics of crossings and contact zones that serve to protect and reinforce inequalities of status.

Unequal Neighbors: Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border (Oxford 2021), 2021

Tourism has played an important role in shaping the economies and reputations of San Diego and Ti... more Tourism has played an important role in shaping the economies and reputations of San Diego and Tijuana. This chapter draws on archival research—including materials such as tourism brochures, maps, guidebooks, and postcards—to examine how tourism boosters have represented Tijuana, especially in relation to neighboring San Diego. This analysis identifies five thematic narratives that emerge, disappear, and reappear over the course of more than a century, as different actors draw upon different meanings of place and race to suit their current needs or agendas. Once created, these narratives live on and remain available for different purposes over time.

Unequal Neighbors: Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border (Oxford), 2021

This chapter uses photographs to analyze how ordinary people in San Diego visualized the neighbor... more This chapter uses photographs to analyze how ordinary people in San Diego visualized the neighboring city of Tijuana in relation to their own. In qualitative interviews, forty-five people sorted a set of photographs from the Tijuana–San Diego borderlands, evaluating them according to how much they thought the images resembled Tijuana and discussing which visual cues led to their conclusions. This process brought to the surface dimensions of a bordered geographic imaginary that reflected implicit, mundane forms of social knowledge that they may not have thought to articulate otherwise. Three overarching and interrelated themes arose inductively from the interviews: dirt, disorder, and economic deprivation. Each of these themes reinforces the border as a marker of inequality, either in terms of class distinction or as part of a neocolonial imaginary about a socially distant “Third World.”

Unequal Neighbors: Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border (Oxford 2021), 2021

Many alternative visions of the border-city relationship between San Diego and Tijuana circulate ... more Many alternative visions of the border-city relationship between San Diego and Tijuana circulate among local actors. Some visualize an egalitarian, integrated future. Others have various stakes in reinforcing a bordered imaginary that exaggerates asymmetries and obscures complex economic realities on the ground. Bordering can create local opportunities for profit and contribute to the availability of marginalized labor on both sides of the line. Bordering discourse also provides an identity foil for San Diegans who have come to define themselves as superior, in contrast to a Tijuana stigmatized as impoverished, disorderly, corrupt, dirty, and dangerous. The place images of these cities are intertwined, such that more positive representations of Tijuana will require a reimaging of San Diego. Ultimately, this chapter examines the promise of and constraints on developing a more equal shared regional future, a reduction in Tijuana’s place stigma, and a less bordered imaginary.

Unequal Neighbors: Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border (Oxford 2021), 2021

In San Diego, the neighboring city of Tijuana has a reputation for vice and violence, yet there a... more In San Diego, the neighboring city of Tijuana has a reputation for vice and violence, yet there are many other possible narratives about Tijuana as a place. This introduction lays out the questions and summarizes the main arguments for the book, which examines the ways that Tijuana has been stigmatized over time and how that stigma reinforces local inequalities and borders. More broadly, this case study contributes theoretically to literatures on border theory, territorial stigmatization, and spatial inequalities. The introduction offers a brief discussion of methods and data (including the analysis of archival materials, qualitative interviews in San Diego and Tijuana, and photojournalism representations), as well as an overview of the book.

Unequal Neighbors Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border (Oxford 2021), 2021

How has the notion of a line marking San Diego and Tijuana as unequal neighbors been produced and... more How has the notion of a line marking San Diego and Tijuana as unequal neighbors been produced and challenged over time? This chapter examines three dimensions of regional history. The first lays out the histories of tourism and commerce that developed out of the asymmetry of the international border. These sectors thrived on a border that was fluid yet premised on inequality. The second part focuses on industrial production and trade, sectors that both reinforced and blurred borders. The final part turns to the US government’s hardening of the borderline through policing and inspections, which have played a large role in making the asymmetric border psychologically “real.” Bordering practices also appear at the local level, as do many debordering challenges to the notion of a line demarking unequal places.

Unequal Neighbors: Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border (Oxford), 2021

Everyday talk is central to how places become stigmatized and how asymmetric borders enter the po... more Everyday talk is central to how places become stigmatized and how asymmetric borders enter the popular imagination. This chapter explores the tales about Tijuana that proliferate in neighboring San Diego, based on a set of forty-five qualitative interviews conducted in six San Diego County communities between 2006 and 2008. The analysis finds that people seldom repeated positive stories they heard, whereas they traded liberally in negative tales, many of which came from remote or untraceable sources. These latter stories constituted a kind of urban folklore that cast the neighboring city in a dark light. This tendency was much stronger among those who had little firsthand experience in Tijuana, revealing the reach and importance of an abstract bordered imaginary.

Latino Studies, 2019

This study examines visual and textual representations of Mexican migrants in English-language ph... more This study examines visual and textual representations of Mexican migrants in English-language photojournalism over the course of a decade. We find three clusters of representations: (1) male laborers portrayed as outside the bounds of society but often unfairly victimized (2) migrants portrayed as criminal in encounters with law enforcement, and (3) all other migrants, often portrayed in ways that valorized those who had “made good” or fit in. These clusters initially appeared to employ entirely separate tropes about different demographics of migrants. However, we find that they instead often reflect the same migrant demographics in different geographies and at different moments of the migration trajectory. We argue that these tropes collectively reflect and promote the cultural and economic logic of neoliberal multiculturalism, serving the neoliberal state and legitimating the precarity of migrants in labor markets.

The images people hold about any city affect its ability to attract tourists, shoppers, and inves... more The images people hold about any city affect its ability to attract tourists, shoppers, and investment. This study of urban image in Tijuana examines institutional place promotion efforts in two vital sectors: industry and tourism. It also explores a diverse set of efforts to shape city image from the bottom-up, through blogs, grassroots organizations, and entrepreneurialism. This analysis of differently positioned actors working to shape perceptions in a time of crisis illustrates how “urban image work” comprises a broader phenomenon than urban branding or place promotion, and one that better captures political contestation over rival city images.

What happens in historical white-flight suburbs when social hierarchies can no longer be marked e... more What happens in historical white-flight suburbs when social hierarchies can no longer be marked easily by physical distance? What kinds of anxieties about boundaries and borders are evident, and with what consequences? This study examines these questions through a 1997 ethnographic study of a largely white, middle-class neighborhood in Irvine, California ("Ridgewood") that depended heavily upon service labor by working-class immigrant Latinos. The Ridgewood case suggests that the social landscape of the household service economy is unlikely to usher in a new era of pluralist integration or to promote a cosmopolitan outlook in global suburbs. Instead, it appears to generate anxieties about both physical and social boundaries. Middle-class residents of Ridgewood marked social distinction through a wide range of everyday practices: through the "talk of crime" and the fortification of physical boundaries, through the legal and informal regulation of aesthetics, and through daily practices that regulated the behavior of service workers within community space. Such practices maintained social distance in circumstances of spatial proximity and even intimacy. These patterns are not entirely new, of course: in many ways they resurrect the dynamics of servitude and social distinction in colonial contexts or in the antebellum American South. However, the Ridgewood case also illustrates what we might expect of emerging global suburbs, and how concerns about local and national border control intersect.

The growing household service economy (e.g., domestic service, gardening) introduces social heter... more The growing household service economy (e.g., domestic service, gardening) introduces social heterogeneity both within and near suburban regions that have previously been segregated by race and class. The author examines this dynamic through an ethnographic study of a community in Orange County, California, and argues that the shifts in social geography accompanying the household service economy in this neighborhood had exacerbated existing anxieties about security and contributed to the popular desire among residents to “fortress.” The findings of this study suggest that in a bifurcated economy in which household services proliferate, more suburban neighborhoods may retreat into highly regulated, gated communities.

Social & Cultural Geography, 2014

This study examines the counter-paradigmatic migration of Westerners into Thailand, focusing on m... more This study examines the counter-paradigmatic migration of Westerners into Thailand, focusing on men in transnational intimate relationships in the northeastern region. We explore how the particular spaces in which they settled affected these migrants' capacities to perform what they saw as hegemonic masculinities over time. We find that they initially experienced an increase in status that they were able to convert into assets in romantic relationships, permitting them to position themselves as ‘providers’ and ‘real white men,’ drawing on masculine ideals from their home countries as well as a diffuse neocolonial imaginary. In the long run, however, these identity constructions were subject to internal contradictions and attrition. They were also place-bound, creating both financial and social obstacles to a return home, particularly for those without ties to transnational capital. The ways these patterns differ from those in existing scholarship underline how both the particular spaces of migrant settlement and temporal dimensions are critical for the analysis of migrant masculinities.

Center For Comparative Immigration Studies, May 28, 2003

Even in the best of economic times, the reputation of a place matters to its ability to attract c... more Even in the best of economic times, the reputation of a place matters to its ability to attract commerce, shoppers, tourists, and investment. In times of acute economic crisis, the place identities of cities and regions can become paramount, determining the life prospects of their citizens. This project examines the strategic representation of Tijuana and San Diego, in the context of the multidimensional crises that have dominated the headlines in recent years. Using qualitative interviews with people on both sides of the border who have an interest in city image and cross-border commerce, we examine how their different structural positions translate into different kinds of images of San Diego and Tijuana as neighbors in a regional economy. The project maps out the landscape of competing interests in the border region in order to inform future efforts toward cross-border collaboration. It also builds theory about the consequences of particular place identities in terms of whom they ...

Page 1. The DuaZ Discourse About Peruvian Domestic Workers in Santiago de ChiZe: CZass, Race, and... more Page 1. The DuaZ Discourse About Peruvian Domestic Workers in Santiago de ChiZe: CZass, Race, and a NationaZist Project Silke Staab Kristen Hill Maher ABSTRACT This article examines the functions of the “dual discourse ...

San Diego and Tijuana are the site of a national border enforcement spectacle, but they are also ... more San Diego and Tijuana are the site of a national border enforcement spectacle, but they are also neighboring cities with deeply intertwined histories, cultures, and economies. In Unequal Neighbors, Kristen Hill Maher and David Carruthers shift attention from the national border to a local one, examining the role of place stigma in reinforcing actual and imagined inequalities between these cities. Widespread "bordered imaginaries" in San Diego represent it as a place of economic vitality, safety, and order, while stigmatizing Tijuana as a zone of poverty, crime, and corruption. These dualisms misrepresent complex realities on the ground, but they also have real material effects: the vision of a local border benefits some actors in the region while undermining others.

Based on a wide range of original empirical materials, the book examines how asymmetries between these cities have been produced and reinforced through stigmatizing representations of Tijuana in media, everyday talk, economic relations, and local tourism discourse and practices. However, both place stigma and borders are subject to contestation, and the book also examines "debordering" practices and counter-narratives about Tijuana's image. While the details of the book are particular to this corner of the world, the kinds of processes it documents offer a window into the making of unequal neighbors more broadly. The dynamics at the Tijuana border present a framework for understanding how inequalities that manifest in cultural practices produce asymmetric borders between places.

Unequal Neighbors Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border, 2021

This chapter examines efforts to reinvent Tijuana’s reputation during and after a period of image... more This chapter examines efforts to reinvent Tijuana’s reputation during and after a period of image crisis. From 2008 to 2010, cartel violence dominated international news coverage about the city, with devastating economic effects. Drawing on a set of twenty interviews conducted in Tijuana from 2009 to 2012, the chapter explores cultural contestation over how to represent the city during that time of image crisis and in its aftermath. Actors with stakes in industry promoted substantially different place images than those involved in tourism and cross-border commerce. A third, diverse set of actors worked to shape the city’s image from the bottom up, through blogs, grassroots organizations, and entrepreneurialism, which showed potential for shaping place narratives within and outside the city. Finally, the chapter takes a closer look at the transformation of the former tourism district and finds promising signs for a debordering future stemming from ongoing image work.

Globalization and Human Rights, 2002

Noncitizen populations pose a quandary for the administration of human rights because human right... more Noncitizen populations pose a quandary for the administration of human rights because human rights norms have generally been enacted within the nation-state system and administered as the rights of citizens. While the human rights regime is international, its greatest influence has been to establish standards for states’ obligations vis-à-vis their own citizenries. Hence, even in Western states that are vocal champions of human rights,
policymakers debate the extent to which they are responsible for protecting the full range of human rights for noncitizen migrants, particularly migrants lacking state authorization.
Universal personhood is subordinated to citizenship as a basis for rights. The violations and vulnerabilities of migrant rights in the U.S. can be understood as extensions of a cultural logic in which even human rights are framed as entitlements exclusive to citizens. My analysis suggests that popular and political discourse in this context conceptualizes citizenship less in objective terms (as a legal status) than as a relational identity defined in opposition to “aliens,” particularly in reference to labor migrants from less developed states. This constructed opposition—positioning migrants as lacking a legitimate claim to rights—has two dimensions. The first dimension of the citizen-alien opposition rests on logics grounded in liberal notions of contract and property that position migrants as criminals, trespassers, and usurpers who have forfeited claims to rights by virtue of individual breaches of contract or law. The second reflects a neocolonial logic that legitimates differential claims to rights in accordance with an individual’s position in a racialized international division of labor, equating the privileges that accompany First World status with a greater entitlement to rights. These oppositions between citizens and aliens pose obstacles for migrants’ claims to rights based on universal personhood, even within a state that formally supports international human rights norms.

Este estudio examina la relacion entre un creciente sector de servicio domestico trasnacional y e... more Este estudio examina la relacion entre un creciente sector de servicio domestico trasnacional y el desarrollo de enclaves habitacionales fortificados en los suburbios del sur de California, Estados Unidos. Como muchas otras areas metropolitanas del continente americano, el sur de este estado ha visto una proliferacion de comunidades con portones de acceso a partir de los anos setenta. Los especialistas identifican a estas comunidades como un medio critico de segregacion social contemporanea por raza y por clase.Sin embargo, generalmente ignoran la paradojica realidad de que la mayoria de las comunidades mencionadas importan mano de obra de servicio, desde jardineros, sirvientas y nanas hasta asistentes de salud domesticas, acompanantes, paseadores de perros y limpiadores de piscinas.En el sur de California, este trafico regular de trabajadores de servicio comprende frecuentemente a inmigrantes latinoamericanos de clase trabajadora, el tipo de personas que los portones tratan de mant...

Unequal Neighbors: Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border, 2021

How does photojournalism in San Diego represent Tijuana and its residents? This chapter analyzes ... more How does photojournalism in San Diego represent Tijuana and its residents? This chapter analyzes both articles and photographs in the San Diego Union-Tribune over the course of a decade (2000–2010), using visual methods and a broad heuristic to capture four dimensions of stigmatizing narratives about Tijuana. On one hand, the analysis finds a complex portrait of Tijuana that encompassed not only the expected images from the drug war but also stories from business and daily life that would feel familiar and empathetic to San Diego readers. On the other hand, themes of violence and disorder pervaded much of the content, even on topics unrelated to crime, particularly in headlines and captions. This chapter demonstrates how bordering and debordering representations in local media can coexist in paradoxical ways and how they shift scales from local to national, depending on the topic and framing.

Unequal Neighbors: Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border (Oxford), 2021

This chapter explains and illustrates four core arguments that contribute to literatures on borde... more This chapter explains and illustrates four core arguments that contribute to literatures on borders, territorial stigma, and geographies of inequality. They are presented in an accessible way, with stories and illustrations from this region as well as other parts of the world, and they are relevant to any circumstances in which people have mental geographies that divide “good neighborhoods” from “bad” ones. First, the stigmatization and valorization of places are relational processes that contribute to spatialized inequalities. Second, place stigma plays an important role in producing and maintaining asymmetric borders. Third, asymmetric bordering occurs wherever people construct spatial lines demarcating distinction and inequality, at any scale. Fourth, asymmetric borders generate particular dynamics of crossings and contact zones that serve to protect and reinforce inequalities of status.

Unequal Neighbors: Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border (Oxford 2021), 2021

Tourism has played an important role in shaping the economies and reputations of San Diego and Ti... more Tourism has played an important role in shaping the economies and reputations of San Diego and Tijuana. This chapter draws on archival research—including materials such as tourism brochures, maps, guidebooks, and postcards—to examine how tourism boosters have represented Tijuana, especially in relation to neighboring San Diego. This analysis identifies five thematic narratives that emerge, disappear, and reappear over the course of more than a century, as different actors draw upon different meanings of place and race to suit their current needs or agendas. Once created, these narratives live on and remain available for different purposes over time.

Unequal Neighbors: Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border (Oxford), 2021

This chapter uses photographs to analyze how ordinary people in San Diego visualized the neighbor... more This chapter uses photographs to analyze how ordinary people in San Diego visualized the neighboring city of Tijuana in relation to their own. In qualitative interviews, forty-five people sorted a set of photographs from the Tijuana–San Diego borderlands, evaluating them according to how much they thought the images resembled Tijuana and discussing which visual cues led to their conclusions. This process brought to the surface dimensions of a bordered geographic imaginary that reflected implicit, mundane forms of social knowledge that they may not have thought to articulate otherwise. Three overarching and interrelated themes arose inductively from the interviews: dirt, disorder, and economic deprivation. Each of these themes reinforces the border as a marker of inequality, either in terms of class distinction or as part of a neocolonial imaginary about a socially distant “Third World.”

Unequal Neighbors: Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border (Oxford 2021), 2021

Many alternative visions of the border-city relationship between San Diego and Tijuana circulate ... more Many alternative visions of the border-city relationship between San Diego and Tijuana circulate among local actors. Some visualize an egalitarian, integrated future. Others have various stakes in reinforcing a bordered imaginary that exaggerates asymmetries and obscures complex economic realities on the ground. Bordering can create local opportunities for profit and contribute to the availability of marginalized labor on both sides of the line. Bordering discourse also provides an identity foil for San Diegans who have come to define themselves as superior, in contrast to a Tijuana stigmatized as impoverished, disorderly, corrupt, dirty, and dangerous. The place images of these cities are intertwined, such that more positive representations of Tijuana will require a reimaging of San Diego. Ultimately, this chapter examines the promise of and constraints on developing a more equal shared regional future, a reduction in Tijuana’s place stigma, and a less bordered imaginary.

Unequal Neighbors: Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border (Oxford 2021), 2021

In San Diego, the neighboring city of Tijuana has a reputation for vice and violence, yet there a... more In San Diego, the neighboring city of Tijuana has a reputation for vice and violence, yet there are many other possible narratives about Tijuana as a place. This introduction lays out the questions and summarizes the main arguments for the book, which examines the ways that Tijuana has been stigmatized over time and how that stigma reinforces local inequalities and borders. More broadly, this case study contributes theoretically to literatures on border theory, territorial stigmatization, and spatial inequalities. The introduction offers a brief discussion of methods and data (including the analysis of archival materials, qualitative interviews in San Diego and Tijuana, and photojournalism representations), as well as an overview of the book.

Unequal Neighbors Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border (Oxford 2021), 2021

How has the notion of a line marking San Diego and Tijuana as unequal neighbors been produced and... more How has the notion of a line marking San Diego and Tijuana as unequal neighbors been produced and challenged over time? This chapter examines three dimensions of regional history. The first lays out the histories of tourism and commerce that developed out of the asymmetry of the international border. These sectors thrived on a border that was fluid yet premised on inequality. The second part focuses on industrial production and trade, sectors that both reinforced and blurred borders. The final part turns to the US government’s hardening of the borderline through policing and inspections, which have played a large role in making the asymmetric border psychologically “real.” Bordering practices also appear at the local level, as do many debordering challenges to the notion of a line demarking unequal places.

Unequal Neighbors: Place Stigma and the Making of a Local Border (Oxford), 2021

Everyday talk is central to how places become stigmatized and how asymmetric borders enter the po... more Everyday talk is central to how places become stigmatized and how asymmetric borders enter the popular imagination. This chapter explores the tales about Tijuana that proliferate in neighboring San Diego, based on a set of forty-five qualitative interviews conducted in six San Diego County communities between 2006 and 2008. The analysis finds that people seldom repeated positive stories they heard, whereas they traded liberally in negative tales, many of which came from remote or untraceable sources. These latter stories constituted a kind of urban folklore that cast the neighboring city in a dark light. This tendency was much stronger among those who had little firsthand experience in Tijuana, revealing the reach and importance of an abstract bordered imaginary.

Latino Studies, 2019

This study examines visual and textual representations of Mexican migrants in English-language ph... more This study examines visual and textual representations of Mexican migrants in English-language photojournalism over the course of a decade. We find three clusters of representations: (1) male laborers portrayed as outside the bounds of society but often unfairly victimized (2) migrants portrayed as criminal in encounters with law enforcement, and (3) all other migrants, often portrayed in ways that valorized those who had “made good” or fit in. These clusters initially appeared to employ entirely separate tropes about different demographics of migrants. However, we find that they instead often reflect the same migrant demographics in different geographies and at different moments of the migration trajectory. We argue that these tropes collectively reflect and promote the cultural and economic logic of neoliberal multiculturalism, serving the neoliberal state and legitimating the precarity of migrants in labor markets.

The images people hold about any city affect its ability to attract tourists, shoppers, and inves... more The images people hold about any city affect its ability to attract tourists, shoppers, and investment. This study of urban image in Tijuana examines institutional place promotion efforts in two vital sectors: industry and tourism. It also explores a diverse set of efforts to shape city image from the bottom-up, through blogs, grassroots organizations, and entrepreneurialism. This analysis of differently positioned actors working to shape perceptions in a time of crisis illustrates how “urban image work” comprises a broader phenomenon than urban branding or place promotion, and one that better captures political contestation over rival city images.

What happens in historical white-flight suburbs when social hierarchies can no longer be marked e... more What happens in historical white-flight suburbs when social hierarchies can no longer be marked easily by physical distance? What kinds of anxieties about boundaries and borders are evident, and with what consequences? This study examines these questions through a 1997 ethnographic study of a largely white, middle-class neighborhood in Irvine, California ("Ridgewood") that depended heavily upon service labor by working-class immigrant Latinos. The Ridgewood case suggests that the social landscape of the household service economy is unlikely to usher in a new era of pluralist integration or to promote a cosmopolitan outlook in global suburbs. Instead, it appears to generate anxieties about both physical and social boundaries. Middle-class residents of Ridgewood marked social distinction through a wide range of everyday practices: through the "talk of crime" and the fortification of physical boundaries, through the legal and informal regulation of aesthetics, and through daily practices that regulated the behavior of service workers within community space. Such practices maintained social distance in circumstances of spatial proximity and even intimacy. These patterns are not entirely new, of course: in many ways they resurrect the dynamics of servitude and social distinction in colonial contexts or in the antebellum American South. However, the Ridgewood case also illustrates what we might expect of emerging global suburbs, and how concerns about local and national border control intersect.

The growing household service economy (e.g., domestic service, gardening) introduces social heter... more The growing household service economy (e.g., domestic service, gardening) introduces social heterogeneity both within and near suburban regions that have previously been segregated by race and class. The author examines this dynamic through an ethnographic study of a community in Orange County, California, and argues that the shifts in social geography accompanying the household service economy in this neighborhood had exacerbated existing anxieties about security and contributed to the popular desire among residents to “fortress.” The findings of this study suggest that in a bifurcated economy in which household services proliferate, more suburban neighborhoods may retreat into highly regulated, gated communities.

Social & Cultural Geography, 2014

This study examines the counter-paradigmatic migration of Westerners into Thailand, focusing on m... more This study examines the counter-paradigmatic migration of Westerners into Thailand, focusing on men in transnational intimate relationships in the northeastern region. We explore how the particular spaces in which they settled affected these migrants' capacities to perform what they saw as hegemonic masculinities over time. We find that they initially experienced an increase in status that they were able to convert into assets in romantic relationships, permitting them to position themselves as ‘providers’ and ‘real white men,’ drawing on masculine ideals from their home countries as well as a diffuse neocolonial imaginary. In the long run, however, these identity constructions were subject to internal contradictions and attrition. They were also place-bound, creating both financial and social obstacles to a return home, particularly for those without ties to transnational capital. The ways these patterns differ from those in existing scholarship underline how both the particular spaces of migrant settlement and temporal dimensions are critical for the analysis of migrant masculinities.

Center For Comparative Immigration Studies, May 28, 2003

Even in the best of economic times, the reputation of a place matters to its ability to attract c... more Even in the best of economic times, the reputation of a place matters to its ability to attract commerce, shoppers, tourists, and investment. In times of acute economic crisis, the place identities of cities and regions can become paramount, determining the life prospects of their citizens. This project examines the strategic representation of Tijuana and San Diego, in the context of the multidimensional crises that have dominated the headlines in recent years. Using qualitative interviews with people on both sides of the border who have an interest in city image and cross-border commerce, we examine how their different structural positions translate into different kinds of images of San Diego and Tijuana as neighbors in a regional economy. The project maps out the landscape of competing interests in the border region in order to inform future efforts toward cross-border collaboration. It also builds theory about the consequences of particular place identities in terms of whom they ...

Page 1. The DuaZ Discourse About Peruvian Domestic Workers in Santiago de ChiZe: CZass, Race, and... more Page 1. The DuaZ Discourse About Peruvian Domestic Workers in Santiago de ChiZe: CZass, Race, and a NationaZist Project Silke Staab Kristen Hill Maher ABSTRACT This article examines the functions of the “dual discourse ...

Labor Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, 2004

United States, immigrant women have become ubiquitous as nannies and house-keepers, and not only ... more United States, immigrant women have become ubiquitous as nannies and house-keepers, and not only among the rich. In such places, the institution of domestic service is once again common enough among the middle class to be a taken-for-granted part of the social landscape. ...

Latino Studies, 2006

Latino Studies has been published since 2003. It has swiftly established itself as a leading, int... more Latino Studies has been published since 2003. It has swiftly established itself as a leading, international peer-reviewed journal. Not only has Latino Studies received awards and accolades, but also the active support of the scholarly community.

SAIS Review, 2000

Given a common misconception that there are endless numbers of people from poor states clamoring ... more Given a common misconception that there are endless numbers of people from poor states clamoring to enter rich economies, immigrant-receiving countries share a crisis mentality about immigration control. The primary purpose of Saskia Sassen's Guests and Aliens is to historicize and ...

Political Science Quarterly, 2009

Since the 1990s, local communities in the U.S. have come under pressure to help enforce federal i... more Since the 1990s, local communities in the U.S. have come under pressure to help enforce federal immigration law. This phenomenon represents a major shift, both for the federal government’s exclusive legal jurisdiction over immigration, and for the politics and practices of local policing. Policing Immigrants examines how local communities have been responding. Given the sheer variety of communities involved and a rapidly shifting landscape, it is a formidable and ambitious undertaking. These authors begin with an outstanding history of immigration federalism, tracing the court cases and political shifts that first placed immigration under federal control and, a century later, inspired federal authorities to look to local law enforcement as a “force multiplier,” developing various “federal-local policing partnerships” (27). They then examine original surveys of police chiefs and county sheriffs as well as case studies of seven cities to demonstrate how the push for federal-local partnerships ended up producing a complex patchwork of policies within overlapping jurisdictions. One of the key themes across chapters is how the fragmented patchwork of policies leaves a great deal of discretion in the hands of individual officers as they encounter immigrants as suspects, witnesses, or victims. Overall, this timely book offers broad insights into the causes, dynamics, and implications of the devolution of immigration policing to local communities.