As a respected scholar of immigration and politics on the U.S./Mexico border, Neil Harvey, government professor and department head, has taken his students across the border to visit Ciudad Juárez for 25 years to meet students and professors and learn about Mexican politics.
The pandemic suspended those visits. This spring, the visits are back.
In March, Harvey took a group of students from his border politics class to Juárez for a day of discussion on border issues with faculty and students from the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez along with a visiting group from George Mason University in Washington, D.C. The students also spent part of the day meeting with representatives of the municipal government.
“With a population of close to 1.5 million, Ciudad Juárez is the sixth largest municipality in population terms in the whole of Mexico,” Harvey said. “Therefore, the work of the municipal government is quite important. It's one thing to read about it and try and understand the policies and pros and cons of different countries, but it's another to actually go and spend time. This was just a one-day visit, but I think it gives students an opportunity to see it first-hand.”
Jasmine Garcia was among the NMSU students in Harvey’s group. “We met with some students there and they shared their stories and their studies,” she said. “Some of them went to survey migrants on the border to find out about their experiences. Dr. Harvey’s class showed me more about the U.S. Mexico border, but I am very interested in international relations.”
Garcia traveled to Europe last semester with Sabine Hirschauer, government professor. “We worked with migrants that are coming into Germany,” Garcia said. “I think you have to put yourself out there. It just really helps to decide if this is something that you see yourself doing or whether this is something you think that you can be a part of before making decisions career-wise.”
Harvey has been a principal investigator of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site Program on Immigration Policy and Border Communities since 2018. The award has been renewed through 2025 to help Harvey continue to train undergraduate students in Community-Based Participatory Research methods and mentor student projects on the nature and impacts of immigration policies in the southern New Mexico/El Paso-Ciudad Juárez borderlands region.
Using this research experience for undergraduates, Harvey and colleagues at the University of Texas at El Paso and Colby College in Maine published a chapter this year in “Migration, Displacement, and Higher Education, Political Pedagogies.” The chapter is focused on the question: “How can higher education advance knowledge of the harmful conditions faced by migrants fleeing violence and poverty in ways that support ongoing efforts to achieve change in how they are perceived and treated in the U.S.?”
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