Chad Richardson

Now thoroughly revised and updated, this classic account of life on the Texas-Mexico border reveals how the borderlands have been transformed by NAFTA, population growth and immigration crises, and increased drug violence.

This first comprehensive, multidisciplinary, longitudinal study of the “off-the-books” economic systems that fuel the Laredo-to-Brownsville corridor examines the complex repercussions of these legal and illegal forms of border commerce.

A sociological study of issues ranging from health care to immigration to criminal justice drawn from interviews conducted by the Borderlife Research Project at the University of Texas–Pan American.