Texas State lands NSF grant to study impact changing policy has on migrants, border regions

U.S.-Mexico Border

A research team led by Texas State University has received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study how recent and changing policies have radically transformed the border and impacted migrant patterns and vulnerability to organized crime.

The 3-year, $500,000 grant will support "Geographies of Migration and (In)Security." Sarah Blue, associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Texas State, will serve as principal investigator (PI). Jennifer Devine, associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Texas State, Marie Price, professor of geography and international affairs at George Washington University,  Caroline Miles, professor in the Department of Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and Carla Angulo-Pasel, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at UTRGV, will serve as co-PIs.

The project addresses border security through a focus on organized crime and migrant vulnerability via innovative, policy-oriented research that engages with policy makers at the nation’s capital and with those impacted by changing policies and shifting responses of organized crime at the U.S. southern border: migrants, their advocates and U.S. and Mexican border patrol.

The researchers will leverage new developments in geospatial technologies to map and narrate migrant journeys, thus advancing survey and mapping methods in migration studies. Through this, they hope to identify root causes of insecurity and the unintended consequences of asylum policy that has reproduced precarity and vulnerability for migrants. The program will examine how policies of expulsion are reshaping border practices as evidenced by externalization policies that force migrants to shift their migration and survival strategies to countries outside of the U.S. The researchers will also analyze how asylum policies of expulsion empower organized crime and paradoxically threaten U.S. national security.

The program involves faculty at two Hispanic Serving Institutions—Texas State and UTRGV—and will provide dozens of underrepresented students with opportunities to strengthen their research, policy analysis and academic writing skills to prepare them for graduate studies or careers in academia.