Beyond the Border is a semester-long international and cross-cultural student reporting project developed by Dr. Celeste González de Bustamante, from the University of Arizona School of Journalism, and Prof. Yvonne Latty, from the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. The project aimed to give undergraduate and graduate students hands-on journalism experience in areas of historical and contemporary conflict.
The collaborative university project between the UA and NYU started when 17 NYU students and three faculty members traveled to Arizona-Sonora from Oct. 15-18 to report on issues and problems affecting the peoples of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, such as migration, violence, environmental degradation, and ethnic and racial conflict.
On Nov. 7-10, eight UA students and two faculty members traveled to New York City to report “beyond the border,” alongside freelance mentors from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, on issues and problems facing Latino communities, including ethnic and racial tensions in emerging Mexican and Mexican-American enclaves in New York City neighborhoods.
This cover package is the result of the work by UA students who traveled to New York City.
Photos and multimedia packages found online at TucsonWeekly.com tell stories of immigrants, some of whom crossed through Arizona, and others who came as young children with their parents. These are the faces, the voices and the lives of those who now live, struggle and thrive in the bustling boroughs of New York City.
González de Bustamante and UA adjunct professor Rogelio Garcia mentored students on broadcast pieces; Profs. Jay Rochlin, Maggy Zanger and Terry Wimmer mentored on print stories; and John deDios, the project administrator, worked with the students’ photography. In addition to the students’ work, González de Bustamante and Garcia are producing a film that documents the project and the students’ stories.
If you are interested in donating to the project and/or the documentary production, e-mail celesteg@email.arizona.edu.
Aside from the Tucson Weekly, support for the project came from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Marshall Foundation of Tucson, the UA College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, UA Student Affairs, the NAHJ-UA Student Chapter, and the UA School of Journalism’s Journalism Student Advisory Council.
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2010.
First of all, I enjoy the weekly, for the most part. I do not like it when you refer to illegal aliens as “migrants”. They are illegal immigrants and are in violation of the law since they jumped or crawled under the fence on Arizona’s southern border. The ICE personell sould go and round these people up and give them a free one-way flight back to their country and if they care to come back the should get in line and do it the legal way. Sure it takes a long time but legal is the correct way.
Twowheeler would have us further dehumanize those that have shown the courage to whatever has to be done to survive.
We all know the story of these migrants. This commentary is about dehumanization. UCLA Professor Otto Santa Ana rightly observed a few years ago that: Only humans have human rights. If you dehumanize, you can do anything to someone not considered human.
This notion of concern for legality is a canard. We all know that all law is narrative.. why else is every Cuban “legal” as soon as they touch U.S. soil? Why in the 1980s during the height of civil wars were refugees from Nicaragua welcome but not those from El Salvador and Guatemala?
What’s “legal” is not written in stone. We should also look at what’s moral. As I tell critics: at one time, slavery was legal as was segregation and discrimination. To have followed the law would have been immoral and complicity in those evil institutions.
Fixing the immigration crisis can be fixed by placing human beings at the center of any agreement.