Residents counter national and international influences to build shelter and incomes, albeit meager.
But the political machinery of both the U.S. and Mexico constrains the ability of these quintessential free traders to build political communities and organize around self-sufficient work and housing in visible ways. Experiences at the border, along a central gateway for capital, job, and labor movements, offer insights to readers as the globalized economy spreads and engulfs the heartlands of both the U.S. and Mexico. People's everyday victories in countering petty regulations can counter or feed the grand global hegemonies. In political science literature, which has not paid much attention to informality, Kathy Staudt takes an important step forward toward adequate theorization of informal activities. Scholars in economics and sociology, where most of the theorizing of informality has occurred, will benefit from an analysis which looks beyond the social and economic aspects of informality on which they typically concentrate.