Social justice in the borderlands:

reflections on service learning collaborations

Neil Harvey, NMSUJune 20, 2012

Service Learning: Social Justice on the US-Mexico Border

Proactive education, responding to problems with:

• Increased border enforcement

• Social and environmental injustice

• Poor labor conditions

Resisting normalization of “the camp” and “the ban”

Immigration

• Anti-immigrant sentiment; raids, deportations, divided families

• Local police enforcement of federal immigration laws

• Fear of deportation

• Situation for women, domestic violence and lack of support

• Lack of information

Environmental injustice

• Environmental injustice on the border: landfills and trucks at Sunland Park; landfill proposed at Chaparral; ASARCO; CEMEX and dust from quarries at Vado; water contamination due Helena chemical fertilizer plant and Mesquite dairies; solid waste and litter; asthma, skin diseases; dirt roads, flooding – sal si puedes…

Sal si puedes: Leave if you can…

Farmworker conditions

• Low wages (no increase in 20 years)• Unsecure work• Mechanization and unemployment• Urban development and loss of smaller

farms, less jobs for agricultural workers• Poor working conditions, lack of food,

water• Families separated – harder to return to

Mexico

Turning things around…

3 service learning projects

1. Immigrant rights

• brochure for women (bilingual)

• Immigrant rights manual (bilingual)

• Anti-profiling law and cultural magazine (cultura firme)

(ACLU and Taskforce for Immigrant Advocacy and Services, TIAS-NM)

2. Colonias and human rights

• Environmental justice and clean-ups

• Youth media project

• Water as a human right

(Colonias Development Council, CDC)

3. Migrant farm workers’ rights

• Brochure on bracero history

• Newsletter with testimony of ex-braceros

• Power point presentations for workshops on bracero history

(Border Farmworkers’ Center)

1. Immigrant rights

• Brochure for women victims of domestic violence (see safety flyer)

• Immigrant rights manual (English and Spanish) see: http://www.tias-nm.com/

• Training youth in UN Declaration of Human Rights, and anti-profiling law in New Mexico (see Cultura Firme magazine:

http://culturafirme.yolasite.com/

2. Colonias and human rights

Clean-up in Vado del Cerro

Clean-up near I-10, Vado del Cerro

Discussion after clean-up, Vado del Cerro

3. Border Farmworkers Center/Sin Fronteras

• Preparation of workshops on labor rights prior to the chile harvest

• Service learning project to develop brochure for workshops (see bracero brochure and power point)

• Interviews with male and female farmworkers to identify current problems

Downtown El Paso

Sacred Heart Church

Before El Centro de los Trabajadores Agricolas Fronterizos was built, this was just an empty lot filled with trash,

abandoned cars, and drug dealers.

This “Center with Spirit” is the result of more than 10 years of struggle by the leaders and founders of Sin Fronteras

organizing Project.

Visit to Border Farmworkers Center, summer 2010

Herb “Tio” Cooper apartments is the result of 4 years of putting pressure on housing authorities to build a safe

haven for farm workers and their families.

The camp

• Marie Woodling: - Agamben: sovereign power spatialized in the “camp” (concentration camps throughout history; refugee camps; Guantánamo; clandestine prisons; detention centers – all are places where the normal rule of law is suspended; they are “zones of exception” – allow for atrocities; there is no “due process”)

The Ban

• Didier Bigo sees the work of the camp (and camp guards) being more dispersed, throughout society

• Ban has no spatial limit, it is everyday routine (SB1070 in Arizona?)

• At the border, banning of the Undocumented is everyday routine (becomes “normal,” as long as it is not applied to citizens)

resistance

• Undocumented presence defies sovereign power

• Solidarity of Undocumented and citizen occurs in “zones of indistinction” (when camp or ban affects all)

• Prevent the normalization of the camp and the ban (the twin pillars of “attrition through enforcement”)

Recommendations

• Continuity through research and advocacy for human rights in borderlands – to bring together academic research and community organizations; use the university more

• Support from NMSU for service learning classes; continuity of projects

• Share findings among similar programs at other universities