Where do Border Studies participants attend school?

Students from the following colleges and universities have participated in the program: Anderson, Antioch, Albion, Carleton, Denison, DePauw, Earlham, Hope, Kalamazoo, Kenyon, Lewis and Clark, Macalester, Oberlin, Smith, University of California, Vassar, Western Washington University, Wooster.

Is there a typical Major?

Border Studies participants represent a wide array of majors. They include: American Studies, Art, Biology, Comparative Language and Linguistics, Conflict Studies, Economics, English, Geography, History, Human Development and Social Relations, International Studies, Latin American Studies, Music, Peace and Global Studies, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Religious Studies, Sociology/Anthropology, Spanish, and Women's Studies.

Here is an opportunity to meet some of the students who have participated on the Border Studies Program.


Ginger Leigh,
Ginger Leigh, an American Studies major and 2008 graduate of Earlham College, participated in the program in the fall of 2007.

I am only beginning to realize how deeply the Border Studies Program affected my life. I left that place, the Border, with all its contradictions and confrontations, and could not imagine how I would metabolize all that I had seen and experienced. I learned about the long tenure of questionable U.S. policies and the hemorrhaging of Mexico’s population seeking economic asylum, lived with a family who welcomed me into their home and cared for me more attentively than I have ever known, and worked in a detention center where I met and worked with scores of kids who had just been deported from the U.S. The semester was full with the flurry of a new place, new friends, and new frameworks, and I left without a clue that in a few months I would be plagued with the nagging need to return to the detention center after my graduation.

So here I am, graduating and dropping all plans for grad school for now to go back to Albergue Bolivia (the detention center) on a whim because I think that no matter how complicated my presence there might be, kids deserve to have a childhood filled with the magic of learning to read, to write, to create, to imagine. I am currently in the grant writing stage of an educational project for unaccompanied minors designed to incorporate the learning of practical skills to avoid workplace exploitation (like simple math and English), the fostering of creative expression about their lives, loves and losses, and emotional support for kids, some of whom have been to hell and back. What lies on the border is a complicated world filled with questions, some answers, privilege, history and a future that is yet to be determined. What do I understand to be my experience on the Border? Well, it’s not over yet.

Beth Leeman

Beth participated in 2005. She chose the program because of the opportunity to assert her independence as well as challenge herself in new ways.
Before going to the Border, Beth traveled to Central America. In retrospect, many of the issues encountered on the border helped her to better understand her experiences in Central America.
While on the Border, Bethworked at two field study sites: Casa del Migrante and Biblioteca Infantil. Casa del Migrante is a center in Ciudad Juárez that provides shelter, food, and medical and legal services to immigrants passing through Juárez. Beth divided her time between helping with the upkeep of the center and distributing information to immigrants recently deported into Mexico. In orienting the deportees to Juárez, Beth provided useful information like where to buy phone cards, cash checks, and directions to the Western Union. Many of the immigrants deported into Mexico are not from Juárez, but from Hondorus, Guatemala, El Salvador, and southern Mexico, thus unfamiliar with the city.
Biblioteca Infantil is located in Rancho Anapra, an outlying community of Juárez where many Maquila workers live. Their mission is to provide a safe atmosphere where children from the community can come and learn. At Biblioteca Infantil, Beth taught two after school classes, one to middle school students and the other to 3rd and 4th graders. Her responsibilities included designing and implementing lessons in the subjects of math, spelling, and geography. The experience of working at Biblioteca Infantil and learning from her supervisor, Cristina helped her to better understand the injustices poverty can cause.
Beth's most meaningful part of the BSP experience was interacting with three very dynamic women: her host mother and both of her field study supervisors. Each was a wealth of information, and her relationships with them were amazing, in part because she was able to laugh a lot with each of them.
Beth hopes that future BSP students will learn to enjoy their commuting time! “Students on the border do a lot of walking & bussing but if you can relax, reflect, and observe it can be one of the most rewarding parts of the whole experience”.
Next year Beth hopes to be part of Teach for America in order to return to the border.

Sean Abbott-Klafter

Sean Abbott-Klafter, a student at Oberlin College, participated in Border Studies during his Junior year, in the fall of 2004.

While on the program, he interned at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA) in El Paso. The organization works largely with migrant farmworkers, ensuring that employers pay their workers in full and do not violate the terms of their contracts. Sean’s work consisted of doing research for cases, communicating with clients, and doing intake interviews to determine eligibility of potential clients. “Working there made me realize that lawyers have an important role to play in protecting and asserting workers’ rights,” he says. “It also helped me gain a more concrete understanding of many of the difficulties that immigrant workers face while in this country.” The work, too, has remained important to him since returning from the program; he now has an internship for the Immigrant Worker Project, an organization that works to develop leadership within the Ohio Latino community. They do this through classes on worker rights, computers, ESL, and microenterprise, as well as provide translation for medical and court appointments, and job interviews. He calls the work he does for IWP “a natural extention of the work I did at TRLA, as well as of the issues we talked about on the program.” Sean is considering continuing legal advocacy work relating to workers’ rights after he graduates from Oberlin in 2006.

Rachel Lord

Rachel Lord, a Spanish and Latin American Studies interdepartmental major at Earlham College, participated in the Border Studies Program during the fall of 2004. She chose to study on the border because she liked the idea that her study abroad experience would address issues involving both Mexico and the US.
While on the program, Rachel did her field study at Maternidad La Luz, a midwifery clinic in El Paso. The clinic receives many clients from Juárez, establishing what Rachel calls “a true border environment.” Her tasks ranged from making phone calls and updating patient files to doing initial interviews with new patients and assisting midwives during births. Her work at Maternidad La Luz greatly influenced her understanding of the border region; she says, “Working there humanized my experience. I was surrounded with birth and life.”
Of her experience taking classes at the University of Texas, El Paso, Rachel enjoyed the chance to attend a large university.
Rachel also loved living with a host family in Juárez. They provided her with a supportive home environment throughout the semester. “They were family,” she says

Nancy Nguyen

Nancy Nguyen, a history and creative writing double major at Oberlin College participated in the Border Studies program in 2003.

When searching for an off-campus program, Nancy was looking for a place where she could “intern with an organization for credit so that she could try a life that she had imagined” and a place where she could practice her Spanish. After Gypsy came to talk about the Border at Oberlin, she new it was a good fit.
While on the Border Nancy worked at Casa Amiga, a sexual and domestic violence crisis center in Ciudad Juarez. She also had the opportunity to do service workin El Paso at the Opportunity Center for a UTEP Class project. She “loved both experiences, and both gave her a greater understanding of the imposed duality of the area”.
Nancy lived with a family in Ciudad Juárez, who she loved and now misses dearly. For Nancy her host family truly provided a second home, a place where she felt personally and mentally secure. When things got stressful Nancy loved having a home where “everything was right and wonderful”.
Nancy feels like she got to know the city through the soles of her feet, walking is “such an integral part of the program”. Walking gave her the time to ruminate and to think about what was going on in her life.
For Nancy each small piece of the “border experience” was significant, each part fit together and lent itself to another part or experience, “the heat, the dryness, the people, the discomfort, the love, the work, the questions, the passion, the mountains, the bridges, the silence, the confusion, and the walks.. All together everything that happened was significant- if you isolate one incident it becomes strange, disconnected and loses meaning”.
Nancy’s advice to future border studies participants, “Leave your comfort zones. I’m not talking about allowing yourself to sweat, or giving up privacy or anything as mundane as that. I’m talking about the box that you have constructed your identity in. Or the box that you have constructed your identity around- it’s all the same. Come here prepared to leave the box altogether!”

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