Cross-border Dialogues

Book excerpt: This collection brings together assessments of a decade of social responses to economic integration between the United States and Mexico, documenting the emergence of social organizations and constituencies as key actors in the bilateral relationship. The studies address labor, environmental, trade advocacy, Latino and immigrant rights, small farmer, and pro-democracy/human rights movements. The authors include both key social organization strategists and researchers who have followed more than a decade of cross-border networking. This book tells the story of the uninvited guests to the transnational negotiating table, their strategies, frustrations, and limitations. For many of these broad-based social constituencies, this process involved a major shift toward thinking transnationally. Their recognition of the ways in which international policies were directly affecting their national and local interests led them to seek out counterparts across borders, though finding common ground required a willingness to agree to disagree. the terms of economic integration between Mexico and the United States succeeded in embedding social and environmental concerns on the international economic policy agenda and foreshadowed the widespread international questioning of globalization that followed.