Browsing by Subject "Border"

Now showing 1 - 19 of 19

Adult Consent Form: ENLACE (Spanish version)
(2014-09-23) Parra-Medina, Deborah
The purpose of this study is to determine if a promotora-led intervention that takes a comprehensive, multi-level, community-based approach to promoting physical activity (PA) is effective among a particularly underserved segment of Latinas. We hypothesize that Latinas in the promotora-led PA Intervention will significantly increase minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) compared to Latinas in the attention-control group.
AnthroFitness Data Sheet – Visit 1: ENLACE
(2017) Parra-Medina, Deborah
The purpose of this study is to determine if a promotora-led intervention that takes a comprehensive, multi-level, community-based approach to promoting physical activity (PA) is effective among a particularly underserved segment of Latinas. We hypothesize that Latinas in the promotora-led PA Intervention will significantly increase minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) compared to Latinas in the attention-control group.
Atmahaú Pakmát
(2017-05-08) Quevedo, Cameron Gates; Howard, Donald Wayne; Ramírez Berg, Charles; Raval, PJ
A journey into the heart the US-Mexico borderlands reveals a world of ancient rivers, mud, and brick.
Baseline Visit 1 Survey (Spanish version) : ENLACE
(2015-09-03) Parra-Medina, Deborah
The purpose of this study is to determine if a promotora-led intervention that takes a comprehensive, multi-level, community-based approach to promoting physical activity (PA) is effective among a particularly underserved segment of Latinas. We hypothesize that Latinas in the promotora-led PA Intervention will significantly increase minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) compared to Latinas in the attention-control group.
Baseline Visit 1 Survey: ENLACE
(2014-11) Parra-Medina, Deborah
The purpose of this study is to determine if a promotora-led intervention that takes a comprehensive, multi-level, community-based approach to promoting physical activity (PA) is effective among a particularly underserved segment of Latinas. We hypothesize that Latinas in the promotora-led PA Intervention will significantly increase minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) compared to Latinas in the attention-control group.
Baseline Visit 2 Survey: ENLACE
(2015-09-03) Parra-Medina, Deborah
The purpose of this study is to determine if a promotora-led intervention that takes a comprehensive, multi-level, community-based approach to promoting physical activity (PA) is effective among a particularly underserved segment of Latinas. We hypothesize that Latinas in the promotora-led PA Intervention will significantly increase minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) compared to Latinas in the attention-control group.
The Borderlanders
(2009-12) Rodriguez, Marcel Bernard; Stekler, Paul Jeffrey; Perez, Domino; Ramirez-Berg, Charles
The following report describes the pre-production, production, and post-production of the short film, The Borderlanders, set and shot in South Texas. Its story centers on an immigrant youth who tries to escape the tensions that arise in one family coming together after many years of forced separation because of current immigration policies. It is a meditation on family dynamics and the intimate politics of the border. The report discusses the thought process behind creating images of Latinos in film, the writing of the film, and analyzes the creative choices that gave shape to the film. The original screenplay is included as well as the credits.
Corrido de Gabrielito
(2022-05-06) Treviño, Jesus Gabriel; Sutherland, Dan, 1966-; Yancey, John
This report narrates an incident involving barbed wire at a family ranch that became central to the work I’ve been making during my time in the graduate program at the University of Texas at Austin. I’ll be recounting my experience revising the site and reflecting on the underlining poetics of the story which led to the development of a corrido, a few paintings, and an installation; all of which serve to be commemorative monuments to my family and home along both sides of the Rio Grande.
ENLACE Session 1 Manual
(2014-11-04) Parra-Medina, Deborah
The purpose of this study is to determine if a promotora-led intervention that takes a comprehensive, multi-level, community-based approach to promoting physical activity (PA) is effective among a particularly underserved segment of Latinas. We hypothesize that Latinas in the promotora-led PA Intervention will significantly increase minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) compared to Latinas in the attention-control group.
ENLACE Session 1 Manual (Spanish version)
(2014-11-04) Parra-Medina, Deborah
The purpose of this study is to determine if a promotora-led intervention that takes a comprehensive, multi-level, community-based approach to promoting physical activity (PA) is effective among a particularly underserved segment of Latinas. We hypothesize that Latinas in the promotora-led PA Intervention will significantly increase minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) compared to Latinas in the attention-control group.
ENLACE: Baseline Visit 1 Survey (Spanish version)
(2015-09) Parra-Medina, Deborah
The purpose of this study is to determine if a promotora-led intervention that takes a comprehensive, multi-level, community-based approach to promoting physical activity (PA) is effective among a particularly underserved segment of Latinas. We hypothesize that Latinas in the promotora-led PA Intervention will significantly increase minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) compared to Latinas in the attention-control group.
Examining the sociocultural influences on the academic identity development of highly educated borderland Latin@s
(2017-05-08) Martinez, Guillermo, III; Saenz, Victor B.; Reddick, Richard J; Somers, Patricia A; Greer, Samuel J
Much has been written about the struggles of Latin@s in higher education. Researchers have noted the many obstacles and barriers to academic success throughout the educational pipeline. Mostly absent from the literature, up until recently, is an asset-based approach to understanding Latin@s and their path towards academic success. Much less literature exists on borderland Latin@s, who typically must leave their hometowns in pursuit of higher education. This phenomenological study examines borderland Latin@s from Eagle Pass, Texas that have earned a doctorate, medical doctorate, or juris doctorate. This study adds to the literature by investigating two major questions: (1) What sociocultural and lived experiences influenced the academic identity development of highly educated borderland Latin@s? (2) What gender differences exist between the academic identity development of highly educated borderland Latin@s? The conceptual framework utilized for this study is Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth model, which incorporates multiple sociocultural variables influencing Latin@s development while taking an asset-based approach to understanding. I follow Asencio and Acosta (2010) and Carrillo (2013a) through the use of “@” in Latin@ to “acknowledge equally the experience of women and men in the construction of this diverse and heterogeneous community” (p. 70). Recent literature has used the term Latinx in a similar acknowledgement.
The Implementation and Legacy of Mexico’s Southern Border Program, PRP 208
(LBJ School of Public Affairs, 2019) Leutert, Stephanie
Over the last two decades, Mexico has enacted multiple domestic programs and international initiatives to manage the movement of migrants and illicit goods across its southern border states. In July 2014, Mexico launched its most recent major initiative, the Southern Border Program (Programa Frontera Sur), amid the arrival of an unprecedented number of Central American minors traveling through Mexico to the U.S.-Mexico border. This report provides an analysis of Mexico’s Southern Border Program, setting it within a historical context, describing the program and its consequences, and examining its legacy.
Making space for respite : care work in the immigrant rights movement on the U.S.-Mexico border
(2021-08-12) Márquez, Alejandro Márquez; Rudrappa, Sharmila, 1966-; Ward, Peter; Rodríguez, Néstor; Young, Michael; Das Gupta, Monisha
My research focuses on nonprofit organizations, part of a broad immigrant rights movement, working on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands to provide much-needed assistance to migrants and asylum seekers. These organizations manage physically and emotionally demanding tasks that highlight the practical implications of helping displaced people. In my dissertation I ask, why do frontline caregivers assisting migrants and asylum seekers on the border stay committed despite low or no pay? How do they manage organizational resource scarcities that increase individual workloads and result in burnout? I answer these questions by analyzing how staff and volunteers provide legal aid and hospitality services in two nonprofit organizations in El Paso, Texas. During 2017-2018, I conducted participant observation in a legal aid office and at a migrant shelter for a combined 13 months while also conducting 51 interviews with caregivers. This allowed me to investigate the relationship between the practical and emotional hardships within the social movement helping migrants and asylum seekers. I find that these resource-scarce organizations manage not just the physical conglomeration of migrants and asylum seekers, but also their collective suffering. Caregivers and their organizations become selective service providers, favoring migrant cases that are winnable in the case of the legal aid office, or families that are more self-sufficient and easier to manage in the case of the shelter. Individuals physically and emotionally distance themselves from caregiving while maintaining cognitive attachments to the work. Case selectivity and detached attachments, as I respectively term these coping strategies, are articulated in the everyday life of the movement. These practices also generate meanings and moralities that enable caregivers to care adequately for the migrants they can care for, and manage their own emotions when they cannot. Research on emotions and social movements mostly focuses on how highly emotional experiences make people join social movements. I look at how emotions are also an outcome of the practices taking place in social movements. I show that everyday caregiving practices in social movements shape, in this case sustain, commitment to social change.
The recyclists : bikes, borders and basura
(2009-12) Melanson, Michael P., 1978-; Dahlby, Tracy; Minutaglio, Bill; Cash, Wanda
In January, 2009, I joined Bikes Across Borders, a local grassroots organization, on their yearly bike caravan to Mexico. The group works to promote bicycles, both here and in Mexico, as an environmentally and financially sound alternative to motorized transportation. Each winter, members ride bicycles they build out of salvaged parts to border cities in Mexico. They give these bicycles to maquiladora workers who would otherwise spend a large portion of their income on transportation. These workers make a fraction of what they would in the U.S. and live in shacks amid the pollution from the factories they work in. This is the story of one group’s attempt at making a difference in the lives of these workers.
Refusing to be buried alive : burial and African immigration in Afro-Hispanic literature
(2016-12) Bobbitt, Brian; Afolabi, Niyi; Robbins, Jill, 1962-; Arroyo-Martínez, Jossianna; Leu, Lorraine; Rodríguez, Néstor; Ricci, Cristián
In this study, I analyze the imagery and semantics of burial in prose and poetry as written by African authors who compose in Castilian Spanish. The examination will be of interment in four literary works: El diablo de Yudis (1994), by Ahmed Daoudi; Desde la otra orilla (2004), by Abderrahman El Fathi; El metro (2007), by Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo; and El motín del silencio (2006), by Mohamed Bouissef Rekab Luque. I explore how burial is conceived discursively and spatially in a manner that questions rigid, Eurocentric concepts of identity and modernity, thus challenging the rise of xenophobia in Spain since the passing of the Foreigner’s Act. I look at how the role of burial as a space and semantic signifier facilitates a fresh understanding of African subjects as agents who rise above their sociopolitical milieu, taking the initiative to change their sociopolitical leverage toward obtaining and achieving cultural and social autonomy for themselves and for their families. Employing a theoretical analysis that includes Walter Mignolo’s border gnosis, Judith Butler’s passionate attachments, Néstor García Canclini’s understanding of modernity, Kathleen Brogan’s approach to burial, and Cathy Caruth’s writings on trauma, the study delves into the consequences and implications of freedom and agency in the aftermath of colonial violence and human degradation. These theoretical approaches allow for the negotiation of an autonomous identity that challenges traditional ideas of borders, geographical territorialities, and the porousness of bodies both personal and geopolitical. With sustained critical study, the analysis points to different solutions to stepping outside of colonial narrative, affirming the life of humans whose lives, usually subaltern, are often considered not worthy of grieving. Simultaneously, the study’s intent is to also de-center hegemonic systems of control and information, usually Western and Eurocentric, that threaten to make communal living between Africa and the rest of the globe an impossibility. By examining the authors’ intent in choosing to include burial scenes in their novels, the idea is to open up burial as a strategic literary device, space, and trope that can make achieving equality an attainable working goal, locally and globally.
Social violence, social healing : the merging of the political and the spiritual in Chicano/a literary production
(2012-05) Lopez, Christina Garcia; Cordova, Cary, 1970-; Limón, José Eduardo; Lieu, Nhi; Perez, Domino; Cox, James
This dissertation argues that spiritual and religious worldviews (i.e. Mexican Catholicism, indigenous spiritualities, and popular religion) have historically intersected with social and political realities in the development of Mexican origin communities of the United States. More specifically, as creative writers from these communities have endeavored to express and represent Mexican American experience, they have consistently engaged these intersections of the spiritual and the material. While Chicano/a criticism has often overlooked, and in some ways dismissed, the significant role which spiritual and religious discourses have played in the political development of Mexican American communities, I examine how the works of creative writers pose important questions about the role of religious faith and spirituality in healing the wounds of social violence. By placing literary texts in conversation with scholarship from multiple disciplines, this project links literary narratives to their historical, social, and political frameworks, and ultimately endeavors to situate literary production as an expressive cultural product. Historical and regional in approach, the dissertation examines diverse literary narratives penned by writers of Mexican descent between the 1930s and the current decade. Selected textual pairings recall pivotal moments and relations in the history of Mexico, America, and their shared geographical borderlands. Through the lens of religion and spirituality, a broad array of social discourses emerges, including: gender and sexuality, landscape and memory, nation-formation, race and ethnicity, popular traditions, and material culture.
Solidarity, saviors, and the scales of authority : (social) media practices of the U.S.-Mexico border
(2021-05-06) Bordelon, Julia Jayne; Adams, Paul C.; Faria, Caroline V; Torres, Rebecca M
This thesis uses feminist geopolitics to interrogate the scales of authority in (social) media messaging about the U.S.-Mexico border. The deft use of media by the U.S. Border Patrol and immigrant advocacy and activist groups alike indicates evolving bordering practices. I bridge feminist geopolitical work on scale and geopolitical scholarship on media through a discursive analysis of media publications and Twitter posts from two advocacy groups, Border Angels and Southern Border Communities Coalition, and key leaders in the Border Patrol. This analysis explores how these three actors use media to scale their own authority, and the themes about the border that emerge from this authority. I find that the two advocacy groups build a capacious, shared authority that is scaled at the body and the local through grounded data, personal experience, and a sense of justice and responsibility. This authority discursively constructs a border at embodied scales, characterized by positive emotions, and predicated on the humanization of migrants. The Border Patrol, in turn, contours their authority through the appearance of control, self-referentiality, and a sole savior narrative. Although the agency’s messaging tends to reify national scales of the border, I find that social media has allowed them to embody the border and selectively share this embodiment, scaling their authority in new ways. The themes that emerge through their authority construct a border that is varied in scale and scope, rife with fear, and predicated on the dehumanization of migrants, but the humanization of Border Patrol agents. This work contributes to feminist geopolitical scholarship by positioning media, including and especially social media, as a terrain of everyday, embodied feminist research. Further, this thesis shows that attention to peace in migration research, as opposed to violence, can provide openings for grounding other securities in Border Security.
Tracing cultural memory in the work of Adriana Corral
(2019-05-13) Butts, Emily Lauren; Flaherty, George F., 1978-
Using ash and soil as her primary mediums, Adriana Corral presents loss by using what remains when matter is taken to its most basic form: the earth that we stand on and the burned remnants of what has been. To create ashes, Corral burns lists of victims’ names, or more frequently, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, gesturing toward gross human rights abuses, corruption, and state violence prevalent along the US-Mexico border, and a document’s inability to protect against it. She burns these documents and presents them as abstractions of themselves, appearing only as a fleeting trace of what used to be. In contrast to her portrayals of erasure, Corral incorporates the hypervisible emblems of nationhood into her practice: specifically, the flag under which people gather, and the bald eagle, the national bird of the United States, representing the country’s mindset of hemispheric dominance that relies on designating some people and groups invisible. This thesis seeks to interrogate both how the notion of erasure circulates within visual culture, and how we, as viewers, receive it