Andrea Lara-García is a PhD candidate in the department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. A graduate of the University of Arizona, she studies the relationship between private property and state territoriality in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. In addition to the Mike Synar Graduate Fellowship, her work has been supported by the Arizona Historical Society, Bancroft Library Fellowship, and Mentored Research Award.
Dissertation Title: Who Owns the Border? Property and the Politics of Belonging in the Arizona and Texas Borderlands
This project explores how ranchers and border advocacy groups negotiate the politics of property in Arizona and Texas, two border states with radically different property landscapes. In the United States, private property implicates individuals and local governments in immigration debates by creating multiple scales at which exclusion can be enforced; the consequences of this are especially evident along the U.S.-Mexico border, where overlapping jurisdictional claims challenge the federal government for control over the international boundary. Utilizing ethnographic and community-engaged approaches, I analyze the experiences of key actors to understand how differing property regimes shape the political landscape of the Arizona and Texas borderlands.