UC Santa Barbara

ABSTRACT‘It's like the border is in your head’: Stories from Transborder Students in the U.S.-Mexico Border. by Emma Laura Zamora Garcia This project studies communities of former transborder students, all U.S. citizens born in the United States, who lived in Mexico and crossed the U.S.-Mexico border to pursue their K-12 education in el norte. The individuals in my study are not alone or unique. It is estimated that around 39,599 transborder students regularly cross the border to attend middle and high schools across California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Transborder students live in Mexico, but possess documentation that allows them to commute between the United States and Mexico. In oral interviews, these students have identified the reasons or motivations for their commute. They include, family reunification, affordable housing, scarce educational opportunities in Mexico, and a desire to receive a bilingual education for better work opportunities on both sides of the border. The project looks at the personal and structural factors that make (or made) the experience of crossing the border difficult for some transborder students and straightforward for others. This project works to answer the following questions: What are the push and pull factors that motivated transborder students to begin commuting for school? When did it become difficult to cross the border? What were transborder students’ experiences when interacting with border patrol agents at the port of entry? To what extent do experiences of crossing the border resemble what women of color theorize as a “third space”? What was the nature of the relationships between the transborder students and their U.S.-based educators? How can educators be more conscious of the experiences of transborder students/students of mixed-status families and what can the teachers do to create a more welcoming classroom environment? To answer the central questions of this study, this work relies on a set of 10-15 interviews of former transborder students, U.S. citizens, of all genders, between the ages of 18 and 30, who spent at least a year during their K-12 schooling, crossing the border to go to school in the United States. The first-person narratives reveal the personal and emotional toll as well as the joys and everyday triumphs of successfully navigating transnational political boundaries in the transborder students’ effort to access the educational opportunities afforded to them as U.S. citizens. The final goal of this study is to provide educators, K-12 staff, and members of the local communities, who interact with transborder students, with resources and recommendations on how to best support this population.