The Border Crossed Us - by Justin Akers Chacón (Paperback)

About the Book

A compelling argument that re-building unions requires solidarity with migrant workers and opening borders.

Book Synopsis

A compelling argument that re-building unions requires solidarity with migrant workers and opening borders.

Review Quotes

"The Border Crossed Us is a meticulously researched manifesto on the US-Mexico border. Justin Akers Chacóoacute;n masterfully exposes how capital mobility necessarily criminalizes the movement of labor and, with radical and urgent clarity, he calls on all of us to strengthen the movement to open the border." -Harsha Walia, author of Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism

"At last, here is a book showing just how critical the demand for the freedom of workers' mobility is to the anti-capitalist movement. Justin Akers Chacón makes the urgent case for a new internationalism, one that openly rejects the divisive, racist, and anti-worker politics upholding national borders. With a clear-eyed examination of how labor repression is the core of the migra-state, Chacón's call for cross-border--and anti-border--organizing is shown to be a necessary part of working class politics everywhere." --Nandita Sharma, author of Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants

"This brilliant and timely book, The Border Crossed Us, lays bare the violent extortion and extraction of working-class migrant labor by untangling the hydra of the 'North American Model' of capitalist accumulation. Justin Akers Chacón's incisive temporal and geographic analysis of US capitalist imperialism sets the stage for the urgent and immediate mobilization within labor, migrant, and union organizing across borders. As a scholar activist, Justin Akers Chacón empowers us to sharpen our critique of the border paradox of open borders for capital and closed borders for people, and to finally dismantle and abolish the migra-state, from Free Trade Agreements to detention centers. Our communities depend on it." --Leslie Quintanilla, Co-founder of the Center for Interdisciplinary Environmental Justice and Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at San Francisco State University

"The Border Crossed Us provides a salutary antidote to the stale debate about whether immigration harms the working class. The book offers a convincing and comprehensive account of how the 'half-closed border' between the United States and Mexico gives more power to employers and makes workers on both sides more exploitable. As US capital has inundated Mexico over the past century, increasing its hold on the Mexican economy in the era of free trade, the border has kept Mexican people impoverished and limited their rights and alternatives both at home and in the United States. This book cuts through the distorted nature of our current debates on immigration and makes the most coherent case I've seen for how opening the border will help all workers, on both sides, by giving them the right to organize and fight for a decent life. The border only serves to prevent workers from fighting effectively against capital that has long been transnational." --Aviva Chomsky, author of Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

"This book captures the current political moment perfectly. It takes a look at the past and how we arrived at this point, and the crises that have harmed workers on both sides of the border. It also sheds light on the emerging worker movements that have arisen to overcome the ongoing efforts by capitalist industries to prevent or break grassroots and independent worker organizing. The question of open borders is one that we as workers have to ask ourselves. The borders are already open to finance, products, capital, and wealth, but remain closed for the people who create the wealth through our labor. Yet, it is more than just a labor issue. It is a human right to migrate, and to stay home as well. Our union congratulates Justin for writing a book that is asking the questions we have always had to contend with, while

About the Author

Justin Akers Chacón is an activist, labor unionist, and educator living in the San Diego-Tijuana border region. He is a Professor of Chicana/o History at San Diego City College. His other books include No One is Illegal (with Mike Davis) and Radicals in the Barrio.