Uncharted Terrains: New Directions in Border Research Methodology, Ethics, and Practice

Conclusion

275 Conclusion Scott Whiteford, Anna Ochoa O’Leary and Colin M. Deeds The intent of this concluding chapter is not to summarize but to explore emerging border ethics issues, methodological directions, and policy challenges raised by the chapters of this book. Rapid political and socioeconomic change underlines the importance of how research and ethics are intimately interwoven regardless of discipline or research goals, especially in the context of international borders. For this reason, these parting summations also serve to introduce another important collaborative product of the Border Research Ethics and Methodology (BREM) workshops and conferences: The Code of Personal Ethics for Border Researchers (CEBR). Globalization has changed the nature of all international borders, from the Middle East to Latin America, while creating new units with different boundaries. Consequently, states throughout the world continue to create new technologies for surveillance, controlling data on citizens and noncitizens alike, and reinforcing borders in the name of security, thus raising new images of nationhood and citizenship. At the same time, the processes generating change, including the expansion of digital technology , social media with instantaneous international communication, and new forms of capital flows, flow into and often collide with existing norms, resulting in a flourishing of new ways of creating new alliances based on religious, humanitarian, academic, familial, and political affiliations. Within the short time period that has initiated the twenty-first century , we have witnessed remarkable transformations on the Mexico–U.S. border, including multidirectional changes in migration rates, and mobility patterns, increasing levels of federal investment in border security, 276 • Conclusion outbreaks of violence, increased flows of commodities (including drugs), and binational collaborative efforts for combating illegal trafficking and for enhancing health and resource management. The transformations have fused with existent modes of social and economic organizations, the result of generations of community-building. The only thing certain about the pace of these synchronizing changes is that they will intensify, resulting in unanticipated directions and outcomes. The border itself has increasingly become a focus of both the Mexican and the U.S. federal governments as they invest vast resources in the name of security, defined differently in the United States and Mexico, including the U.S. construction of a border fence. This trend, generated by uneven economic growth and power, will continue, at least until new bilateral strategies for addressing poverty are realized. At the same time human ingenuity and determination to forge a better life will continue to create remarkable stories of individual and household risk-taking, calamity, and, in some cases, economic and social success. Understanding and documenting the structural causes of poverty and inequality as well as people’s struggles to improve their lives will raise new methodological and ethical dilemmas and challenges for researchers, as the authors highlight in the chapters of this book. Both the United States and Mexican governments have become increasingly responsible for funding science—including social science research. The power inherent in federal government funding raises a number of questions about potential research agendas and ethics. Many of the chapters in this volume focus on the heterogeneity of the people living in the borderlands, but give special emphasis to the most vulnerable, particularly the migrants moving both ways across the border. With a growing allocation of resources focused on national security on both sides of the border, and the private capital investment over the last 50 years especially on the Mexican side of border that drives migration northward, it is important to underline the point that vulnerable populations are part of vast economic and political power networks driven by interests outside the borderlands themselves. The low-income families of the region or those passing through it have limited voices, but their remarkable stories document agency and determination. Despite the struggles of the diverse, vulnerable populations primarily impacted by these global trends—there continue to be stories that are rich with perseverance and triumphs—many researchers feel the ethical obligation to help give them voice and search for ways that governments and NGOs can help them improve their lives. Sharing the results of good Conclusion • 277 research with the public is an ongoing challenge. Inherent for many researchers is the assumption that research will impact public opinion and policy, which of course is not always the case. How social justice, economic opportunity, and human rights can be enhanced will be the subject of debate and mobilization over the next decades for researchers, writers, planners...