Borders as Membranes:

Political borders are controversial and contested spaces. In an attempt to better understand movement along and through political borders, we applied the metaphor of a membrane to look at how people, ideas, and things “move” through a border. More specifically, we employed this metaphor in a system dynamics framework to construct a computer model to assess legal and illegal migration on the US-Mexico border. Results from both quantitative and qualitative data searches were used to modify a 1977 border model to demonstrate the dynamic nature of illegal migration. Model runs reveal that current US-policies based on neo-classic economic theory have proven ineffective in curbing illegal migration, and that proposed enforcement policies are also likely to be ineffective. The modeling supports views expressed in the current literature suggesting that demographic and economic changes within Mexico are likely to slow illegal migration by 2060 with no special interventions made by either government.