Border Justice & Human Rights

Catalog description

This course examines the human rights implications of border practices, migration/refugee patterns, and environmental degradation set amidst increasingly contentious territorial politics, complex population movements, and record-shattering climate change events. Additionally, the course provides context to justice along the U.S/Mexico border as seen through a human rights lens. It examines issues of border conflict around the world. It also explores the history of the U.S.-Mexico border and examines historical and contemporary human rights issues impacting the region. The course is broken into three parts. The first part provides an introduction to the history of the U.S.-Mexico border region. This includes exploring the history of border drawing and its impact on populations living along the border. The second section examines the long history of violence along borders. It examines how border identities develop over time in the midst of violence, community building, and the contested spaces of borders. It also explores how drugs, immigration, and free trade has impacted border regions. Lastly after understanding the history and issues of violence along borders, the last section explores human rights issues of border regions. This section examines how social movements and human rights advocacy have impacted the protection of rights of communities living along borders.