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AbstractMarch 2005 witnessed the heads of state of Canada, Mexico, and the United States signing theSecurity and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), a new international framework for cross‐border cooperation in North America. The SPP features two important agendas relevant for the post‐September 11th era: one revolving around national security and the other around economic prosperity.In this paper, we explore how the SPP impacts the dominant narrative of the U.S.‐Canada border. After tracing the historical trajectory of the border, we suggest the emergent narrative eschews the notion that security and trade at the frontier are incompatible and instead maintains that regulatory policies can achieve both through bilateral and trilateral cooperation. The SPP agreement, and related accords such as ‘Smart Borders,’ signals, at least for a time, a new way of perceiving and managing the border. That vision has been recently set back for reasons discussed in this article.This paper analyzes the SPP in several ways based on historical research and interviews conducted with policymakers in Ottawa and Washington, D.C., during 2005. First, we look at the SPP in terms of Milner's International Political Economy framework for international cooperation, arguing for the primacy of national domestic interests. Second, we examine the dynamics of cross‐border bilateral cooperation, focusing on ‘routinization’ and bureaucratic policymaking. Finally, we explore how multidisciplinary scholarship may assist us in determining whether the SPP is a model for other border regions.

AbstractThis article examines contemporary migration and border controls in the U.S.‐Mexico borderlands through the prism of ‘risk society,’ a theoretical approach that reconceptualizes security and social change. Specifically, it analyzes the interplay between undocumented migration flows, policy reform, and the new ‘Smart Border’ regulatory regime initiated by the United States to police its frontiers. The events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent focus on possible terrorism across U.S. borders, altered the political equation on migration and other bilateral issues in favor of technologically‐oriented border control systems. These systems, along with a potential guest worker program, are seen as a response to the difficult to detect threats inherent in and complicated by risk society; they are designed to facilitate free trade but at the same time screen out terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, illicit drugs, and undocumented migrants. These risks are insecurities introduced, in part, by processes of modernization and globalization themselves. The article concludes by arguing for a cooperative transnational approach to deal with some of the challenges of maintaining border security in risk society.