Nation, Immigration, and Environmental Security

Using the lens of postcolonial feminism and with particular focus on immigration accross the U.S.across/Mexico border, this book explores the processes by which security threats are identified and interpreted, and thus the relationship between national, civilizational, and environmental security within mainstream environment security discourse in the United States. Another distinctive element of the book is that its focus on the broader discourse of environmental security and immigration, examining the articulation of environmental security concerns over immigration across U.S. institutions such as the media, the state, NGOs, and academia to unpack the ways these threats are identified and interpreted.

"Dr. Urban dissects the dangerous and obfuscating rhetoric that links environmental degradation, hunger, and poverty with immigration and women's fertility. Her clear-headed analysis and accessible language makes this timely book an indispensable resource for students, scholars, organizers, and policy-makers on this crucial and urgent issue." - Gwyn Kirk, Ph.D., Women for Genuine Security

"Nation, Immigration & Environmental Security interrogates the greening of hate from an intersectional postcolonial feminist perspective that exposes the lethal, neo-Malthusian politics of Environmental Security frameworks in academic, media, policy, and mainstream environmentalist discourse and foregrounds the political analysis and transformative social vision of the growing, immigrant-led movement for human rights and environmental and economic justice in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Urban's work offers a crucial and timely intervention in contemporary scholarly, activist, and policy debates over border security, global social justice and environmental sustainability."

- Zoe Hammer, Ph.D., Scholar/Activist, Border Action Network, U.S.-Mexico Border & Immigration Task Force, Prescott College for the Liberal Arts and the Environment

"At last a book that makes the critical link between all too commonly accepted neo-Malthusian ideologies of environment and security and the militarization of border control. Through careful textual interpretation and political investigation, Urban not only shows how these ideologies function to scapegoat immigrants, but how feminist intersectional analysis and activism help open the way to a more progressive vision that connects immigrant rights to environmental and social justice." - Betsy Hartmann, Ph.D., Director of the Population and Development Program, Hampshire College, and co-editor of Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties

Jessica LeAnn Urban is Assistant Professor in the Women's Studies Program, Humboldt State University.