Moving Forward: Migration Research and Social Justice

In the context of the debate about immigration legislation reform taking place in the United States in early 2013, The New York Times began a series of articles examining security along the United States-Mexico border called ‘Watching the Line’. In the first article of the series, ‘Long Border, Endless Struggle’, Damien Cave assessed the realities of the border that make it difficult simply to build a (literal) fence to keep undocumented migrants out of the United States, despite the popularity of the idea among many Americans. As Cave noted, ‘the international divide is not a line or a series of doors to be locked and guarded … It is more like a 2,000 mile shoreline with ever-changing currents of migration, legitimate trade, and smuggler tactics’ (Cave, 2013).