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  • Shaping the Immigration Debate: Contending Civil Societies on the US-Mexico Border by Cari Lee Skogberg Eastman
  • Josiah Heyman
Shaping the Immigration Debate: Contending Civil Societies on the US-Mexico Border. By Cari Lee Skogberg Eastman. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012. Pp. xiv, 220. Illustrations. Maps. Appendixes. Bibliography. Index. $65.00 cloth.

Shaping the Immigration Debate centers on three case studies of activist organizations that engage in direct action on the issue of unauthorized immigration at the U.S.Mexico border, in particular the Arizona border. The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps drew attention to unauthorized immigration and advocated strengthened border enforcement. Members considered themselves to be “helping” the U.S. Border Patrol by conducting reconnaissance near the border, spotting people, and contacting that agency. The organizations Humane Borders and No More Deaths both advocate for a reformed border enforcement and immigration policy that reflects a universal human right of mobility and reduces risk of harm and death in migration. Humane Borders stocks water supply locations in the desert where migrants cross, at risk of death from hyperthermia. No More Deaths operates assistance encampments in the desert that provide water, food, shelter, and first aid.

All three organizations are value-driven. The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps valorizes the nation-state. Its members affirm the values of legality, through a critical view of illegal migration, and national security as expressed by controlled territorial borders. The relationship between the U.S. state and the Minutemen is important but unclear. The Border Patrol politically benefitted from this movement and some units and officers may have encouraged it, though official statements strongly discouraged volunteer enforcement activities near the border. The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps is, in the main, a secular organization.

Humane Borders and No More Deaths have a strong faith basis, though many members are not religious. The faith basis provides critical distance from the U.S. state, and their key values center on the inherent worth of all human beings, regardless of legal status or spatial location. In several cases, activists in these two groups have been arrested and prosecuted for their activities. The book has rich material showing how individuals are drawn to these groups precisely in order to act directly on their values.

Indeed, this book pivots on political theory. Eastman sees these groups as, in some regards, fulfilling a democratic theory that places members of civil society in active roles in governance and policy making. Her own position, resembling those of Humane Borders and No More Deaths, is openly revealed, but she treats members of all the aforementioned organizations fairly, with honesty and clarity about their ideas and stances. Her perspective is that people engaged in peaceful direct action are taking responsibility for important collective decisions.

The interplay between direct action, media communication of ideas and images, and political decisions is central to Eastman’s analysis. She notices that media coverage of the border and migration motivates people to go beyond their ordinary activities in order to take on the considerable added burden of direct action. At the same time, these organizations interest the media and in many instances, feed the media. Eastman [End Page 156] correctly points out that the media image of the border—which contains both realities and mystifications—has emerged as a crucial symbol in U.S. political struggles over migration. It is hardly a criticism of her capable study and analysis to point out that the processes of political struggle over the border and migration include other actors and forces, including border-resident community organizations as well as nationally oriented activists (to be accurate, all three organizations she studied involved border-region residents as well as outsiders drawn to the border).

This is a capable book. It consults appropriate literature, and contains a useful historical background survey on Mexican migration to the United States. The writing is clear. Its multiple perspectives would make it useful for teaching; my experience is that students are best and most democratically engaged when they hear and discuss all sides of an issue, even when I find one side problematic in public policy and ethical terms (as with the Minutemen). The high cost of the hardback version of...

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