Borders Word List

BORDERS

Artificial divisions separating humanity

WATCH

1. Sin Nombre — Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2009 · Film · Central American migrants crossing Mexico toward the US border; brutal and human.

2. Which Way Home — Rebecca Cammisa, 2009 · Documentary · Children riding La Bestia train north toward the US border alone.

3. Documented — Jose Antonio Vargas, 2013 · Documentary · An undocumented journalist’s coming out and what borders do to identity.

4. Dheepan — Jacques Audiard, 2015 · Film · Sri Lankan refugees constructing new lives after crossing into France.

5. The Italian — Andrei Kravchuk, 2005 · Film · A Russian orphan’s border crossing into a new family and the identity it threatens.

6. Capernaum — Nadine Labaki, 2018 · Film · A Syrian refugee child navigating a world of closed borders and no documentation.

7. Icarus — Bryan Fogel, 2017 · Documentary · How national borders become tools of political and athletic deception.

8. No Man’s Land — Danis Tanović, 2001 · Film · Two soldiers from opposite sides trapped between borders at war.

9. The Visitor — Thomas McCarthy, 2007 · Film · An undocumented immigrant facing deportation; what borders take from people.

10. Bordertown — Various, 2016– · Series · Life and death along the US-Mexico border from both sides.

LISTEN

1. Latino USA — Maria Hinojosa · Life along and beyond borders; essential journalism on the US-Latin America relationship.

2. Futuro Media: Border reporting — Maria Hinojosa · On-the-ground immigration and border journalism.

3. This American Life: Border episodes — Various · Intimate stories from people whose lives are shaped by the US border.

4. The Daily: Immigration — NYT · Border policy in real time; journalism that humanizes the numbers.

5. Borderlines — Various · The human experience of crossing and living on borders globally.

6. Caminante — Various · Stories from migrants crossing Latin America toward the US.

7. America Dissected: Immigration — Abdul El-Sayed · Public health and humanitarian perspective on border policy.

8. Threshold: Border episodes — PRX · Deep reporting on the ecological and human impact of border policy.

9. Radiolab: Borders — WNYC · The philosophy and reality of what borders are and what they do.

10. La Linea — Various · Life along the US-Mexico border from the perspective of those who live it.

READ

1. Enrique’s Journey — Sonia Nazario · A boy’s 1,200-mile journey from Honduras to find his mother in the US.

2. The Devil’s Highway — Luis Alberto Urrea · Fourteen men dying in the Arizona desert trying to cross the border.

3. Tell Me How It Ends — Valeria Luiselli · A writer processing child refugee cases at the US-Mexico border.

4. American Fire — Monica Hesse · Arson and community breakdown in a town made vulnerable by border economics.

5. The Line Becomes a River — Francisco Cantú · A Border Patrol agent’s reckoning with what borders demand of those who enforce them.

6. Illegal — Francisco X. Stork · A young Mexican teen crossing the border; the human stakes in a novel.

7. The Dispossessed — Ursula K. Le Guin · A sci-fi meditation on what borders mean politically and philosophically.

8. The Unwanted — Hasan Blasim · Refugee stories from Iraq; what borders do to bodies and souls.

9. Homelands — Cynthia Gorney · Reporting from border zones around the world.

10. Undocumented — Dan-el Padilla Peralta · A scholar’s journey from undocumented immigrant to classics professor.