...At the risk of sounding glib and/or "twee," I must mention that
the Canada-U.S. and Mexico-U.S. borders are NOT unique as
transcontinental boundaries here in North America. In the subregion
to the south more commonly known as "Central America," there are
four others: Honduras-Nicaragua, Nicaragua-Costa Rica, Costa
Rica-Panama, and Panama-Colombia. The last is also an example of a
transcontinental interCONTINENTAL boundary. Furthermore, Mexico's
southern boundary, with Guatemala and Belize, is transcontinental,
as is Guatemala's southern boundary with El Salvador and Honduras.
Whew.
Numbing technicalities aside, there are numerous studies of the two
transcontinental borders of the United States. In my own experience,
Mexico - U.S. border studies are typically economic in focus,
whereas Canada - U.S. research tends toward the socio-cultural. For
example, my M.S. thesis (1998) was an attempt to delineate
socio-cultural differences in the transborder Cascadia region core
shared by Canada and the U.S., including Seattle and Vancouver. At
any rate, please contact me separately for details on references
I've encountered for either border.
I'm no expert on economic integration or related topics such as
NAFTA, but it seems ironically that greater economic integration is
found where the cultural and economic divide is more pronounced,
i.e. U.S.-Mexico. Perhaps this arises both from the tendency of U.S.
industry to seek ever-cheaper labor and the fact that Mexico and the
U.S. are less competitive than are the U.S. and Canada. NAFTA aside,
Canada appears more predisposed to resist encroachment from its
neighbor across the border in economic as well as cultural matters,
possibly as yet another manifestation of their emphasis on cultural
sovereignty.
--
B. Keathe Wright
Seattle, Washington, USA
Planet Three
edress: [log in to unmask]
“UP BETIMES, and to BED...”
- From “The Diary of Samuel Pepys -
The Collected Saturday Morning Entries”
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