Smuggling, the myriad signs in border towns, legal and illegal immigration, and the use of unneighborly names between neighbors are parts of this picture of accentuated concern with the trade in goods and the flow of people. The border is an environment of opportunity. Individuals find work enforcing or avoiding the laws that regulate movement. Companies use national differences in labor and environmental regulations to pursue their advantage. Border society thrives on difference, and people and institutions come there to exploit niches in its environment.
Borders are artifacts of history and are subject to change over time.
An approach to describing a society constructed by difference is necessarily many-voiced. Rather than a central, authoritative perspective, we strive for a de-centered point of view, one with many authoritative speakers. Of course, this is more easily achieved in the Festival of American Folklife program, where citizens of the border region speak and perform for themselves and their communities. But even in this printed medium, through translation and transcription, a variety of authorities are represented. Border society is an abstract concept compounded of ideas about the sovereignty of nation-states, the intensification of commerce and social discourse, and strategies of cultural representation.