This thesis explores Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of mestiza consciousness and its relation to Mexican American performance and poster art. It examines how the traditional conceptions of mestizo identity were redefined by Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera in an attempt to eradicate oppression through a change of consciousness. Anzaldua’s conceptions are then applied to Guillermo Gomez-Peña’s performance art discussing the intricacies and complexities of his performances as examples of mestiza consciousness. This thesis finally analyzes various Mexican American posters in relation to both Anzaldúa and Gomez-Peña’s art works. It demonstrates that the similarities in the artist’s treatment of hybridity illustrate a progressive change in worldview, thus exhibit mestiza consciousness.

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This dissertation brings critical visual culture studies to bear on mediatized representations of borders and migration in U.S. and Mexican contexts. In particular, this study examines how the human price of the North American Free Trade Agreement is represented and/or disappeared in popular visual culture. I deploy an eclectic methodological framework whose elements emerge from the confluence of Border Studies, Visual Cultural Studies and theorizations of neoliberalism in order to study how television, print media and narrative and documentary film serve as sites for both the visual constitution and critical contestation of neoliberal agendas. For example, I view objects of visual culture such as the Border Wars television program, Backpacker magazine and films Sin dejar huella and AbUSed: The Postville Raid as powerful and privileged sites for the analysis of political discourses.

This dissertation explores the ways that immigration and border enforcement regimes have shifted deportees' relationships to violence in border cities. By taking a feminist geopolitical perspective, I use first hand accounts of deportation to interrogate the complex connections between space and violence. What are U.S. authorities causing along the border through their escalated enforcement practices? How do organized crime, drug trafficking and migration intersect in border spaces? How do people react to being dropped off in unfamiliar and often dangerous border towns? The three articles that comprise this dissertation follow these questions. The first explores the newly anointed consequence delivery system (CDS), an enforcement program designed to deliver ever-increasing punishments to immigration offenders. The second article traces migrants' experiences with drug trafficking while crossing the border, showing how spatial overlap and other enforcement mechanisms have pushed these two activities into largely shared terrain. The third article addresses migrant kidnapping and the different purposes that it serves for transnational criminal organizations. Through ethnographic work, combined with in-depth surveys, this dissertation provides new analysis about the intersections of drug violence and migration along the border. For the conclusion I discuss the need to expand the nascent literature on deportation studies, and focus squarely on the post-deportation impacts–namely, what does deportation cause? How does it harm people and families in the days, weeks, months and years following removal? This is at the core of studies on deportation, since little is really known about what it means to be deported, and what this system of mass removal is doing to hundreds of thousands of individuals each year.

Στην εργασία αυτή, μελετήθηκε η δομή του σύγχρονου ίντερνετ από την σκοπιά του δικτύου και κατέστη σαφές το πως διασυνδέονται οι πάροχοι υπηρεσιών και οι τερματική χρήστες, πως γίνεται η δρομολόγηση και ποιοί αλγόριθμοι χρησιμοποιούνται για τιν επίτευξη της. / This diploma thesis focus on how modern networks connect together in order to create the internet and which algorithms used for the routing of informations that traverse through them.

The present study utilizes survey data (n = 415) collected in the Migrant Border Crossing Study from repatriated Mexican migrants to examine three important questions regarding unauthorized migration attempts through southern Arizona. First, what factors explicate migrants' modes of crossing? Second, do coyote fees vary among people who rely on smuggling services to cross the border? If so, what accounts for this variation? Third, what factors shape encounters with bajadores while traversing the desert? The present analyses expand on previous studies examining the unauthorized crossing in multiple ways. For instance, I empirically test the role of a "culture of migration" in explaining modes of crossing, coyote fees, and bajador encounters. I also differentiate between two main types of coyotes: "border business" and "interior." I then examine whether crossing with a coyote mediates the risk of encountering bajadores during the journey. Overall, there are important differences in crossing modes and coyote fees. Women are more likely to travel with both coyote types, while the opposite is true for more experienced migrants. Older migrants and people who cross during summer months are less likely to travel with an "interior" coyote. The strongest predictor of higher smuggling fees is the region of a person's U.S. destination. Higher coyote fees are also associated with immigrants' higher educational attainment, being married, being the sole economic provider for one's household, and higher household income. More experienced migrants, and those crossing in larger groups or during the summer also pay higher fees, however fees do not vary by gender, age, or social capital. These findings are somewhat consistent with the extant literature on human capital and risk tolerance/aversion, but run counter to the vast migration literature emphasizing the importance of social capital in the migration process. Finally, the risk of encountering bajadores is not higher for males, young adults, the less educated, and the more impoverished, which contradicts extant findings in the victimology literature. With the exception of crossing corridor and time spent in the desert, no other factors increase the risk of encountering bandits more than traveling with a coyote. Implications and possible future research are discussed.

Borders and border barriers can be breached and boundaries and political agendas can change. The Great Walls of China, Hadrian's Wall, and the Iron Curtain have lost their strategic value. Walls are contested presently in the Middle East. And the unpopulated DMZ in Korea, while still of strategic value, is being recognized for its biodiversity and resurgence of endangered flora and fauna. Presently, the United States is building a defensive wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in the name of national security and to stem the tide of drug and human trafficking. In the process it has waived numerous environmental laws thereby putting transboundary ecosystems in danger of irreparable harm. Why should there be interest? For the reason, as put forth by Mumme and Ibáñez, that while much attention has been paid to adverse environmental effects within the United States, "little attention has been given to the potentially complicated effects of the international boundary, water, and environmental agreements to which [the United States and Mexico] are party should Mexico choose to press its rights at the level of international law. . . . As international treaties and protocols, these agreements enjoy a legal standing that may supersede the authority of most domestic legislation." The implications are far reaching. Mexico has sent diplomatic notes to the U.S. embassy in Mexico and to the U.S. Department of State, and the Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT), Mexico's environment secretariat, has held informal talks with the Department of the Interior (DOI) and with the Secretary of Homeland Security--all apparently of no avail. Canada's notes have been similarly ignored by the Department of Homeland Security. What then for the U.S-Mexico border fence? Will it eventually become a relic of past political policy? Is the United States to ignore the lessons of the past and void its environmental treaties and agreements with Mexico? Should we not be concentrating on comprehensive immigration reform and the causes of drug abuse in the United States rather than a short-term solution to long-term problems?

This dissertation addresses native activism in response to United States and Mexico border enforcement policies on the U.S.-Mexico border among indigenous peoples whose communities are divided by the international line. Fieldwork for the dissertation was conducted in collaboration with an indigenous grassroots community organization with members in both the U.S. and Mexico who advocate for rights of border mobility among native border peoples. This work discusses the impacts of border enforcement policies on native community cultural maintenance, local interpretations and uses of international human rights tools, and the challenges faced by U.S.-Mexico border native activists in communicating their ideologies to a broader public. This work further addresses the complex identity construction of Native Americans with cultural ties to Mexico, and conflations of race and nationality that result in distinct forms of intra-community racism.

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to explore the understanding of pre-diabetes and the possibility of developing diabetes among Mexican Americans at the U.S.-Mexico border. This study also explored how Mexican Americans adjust to living with pre-diabetes. While extensive research has been conducted regarding pre-diabetes, diabetes, and how individuals perceive their susceptibility to these illnesses, few studies have examined how Mexican Americans understand pre-diabetes and the possibility of developing diabetes. The increased prevalence of diabetes among this population, the divergent understandings of risk held by diverse cultural groups, and the large presence of Mexican Americans in the U.S.-Mexico border region prompted this study.There are gaps in the literature about how Mexican Americans understand pre-diabetes and their possibility of developing diabetes. Current literature focuses on studies of causality, folk beliefs, symptoms, and treatments. Current studies do not provide a framework in which healthcare professionals can identify how Mexican Americans understand pre-diabetes and the possibility for developing diabetes or how to incorporate these lay understandings into their practice, research, and education.An ethnographic study, guided by Freire's framework (2000) was conducted to provide insight into the understanding of pre-diabetes and the possibility of developing diabetes among Mexican Americans living at the U.S.-Mexico border. An overarching theme Living with Pre-diabetes emerged. This theme emerged from two major themes: 1) Awareness; and 2) Adjusting to Living with Pre-diabetes.This study revealed that Mexican Americans may not understand pre-diabetes or their possibility of developing diabetes until told of having pre-diabetes by a healthcare provider. Becoming aware of pre-diabetes may not necessarily imply understanding of what pre-diabetes is. The study also revealed that an awareness of having pre-diabetes may lead to changes in lifestyle, but may not always make these changes sustainable. The use of Freire's framework may prove useful when addressing the needs of Mexican Americans with pre-diabetes.