The Duke Forum for Scholars and Publics presents Borders Beyond the Border! 

WHAT IS BORDERS BEYOND THE BORDER?

Since 2000, North Carolina’s immigrant population has grown faster than that of nearly every other state in the U.S. The new arrivals have come to work in agriculture, construction, and meat processing, as well as other industries. Counties, cities and towns have adopted very different approaches to the influx, creating borders that are rarely seen but widely understood: between documented and undocumented immigrants; between races and ethnicities, and each group’s rich and poor; between government institutions that are more welcoming or more exclusionary; and ultimately between those communities that treat immigrants as a blessing, and those that see them as a burden.

The goal of the Borders Beyond the Border project is to document and analyze the contemporary experience of immigrants in North Carolina through articles, documentary film, and photography. We do so through a range of collaborations involving Duke University faculty and students, journalists, community activists, and artists. Through in-depth journalism and documentary arts combined with a range of academic scholarship, Borders Beyond the Border aims to produce a body of work that will be both analytical and emotionally compelling, full of stories and characters, in the hopes of offering a deeper understanding of the changes occurring in North Carolina.

Visit the newly launched site and find out more about the work done over the past two years! There were videos produced by MFA and PhD students, and newspaper articles written by undergraduates students and local journalists. This is an ongoing project, so if you have ideas you'd like to pitch that relate to a crossroads in journalism, documentary arts, and migration, contact us directly! 

Special thanks to Joan Clifford, Deb Reisinger, Yuri Ramírez, Qué Pasa Noticias, The News & Observer, Géraldine Smith, Eloy Tupayachi, Andrew Bartuska, Wei Wang, Church World Service, Qathi Hart and all the students, community members, and organizations involve in making this possible.