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In northwestern Washington State, the United States Border Patrol expanded its operations inland from the international boundary with Canada in 2007. The expansion resulted in the frequent questioning and detention of community members who are Latino, non-timber forest workers, and people of color until such practices became less common by 2012. These tactics reflect a broader pattern of racial profiling through inland policing implemented across the US border with Canada. In this paper, I make the case for a critical race approach to understanding bordering practices in settings coded as 'peaceful' or without racial tensions. Towards this end, I analyze how racialized exclusions in northwestern Washington are articulated across scales, from local forest management, to federal policy. Further, I trace the relational construction of the western US borderlands with Canada and Mexico - spaces connected by a common heritage of conquest, although generally not conceptualized as such. My argument is that racial thinking is inherent to the production and maintenance of United States borders. A critical race approach is crucial at a time when practices carried out in the name of 'homeland security' threaten the wellbeing of borderland communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Americans and Canadians are reevaluating and reinventing the borderlines and borderlands that both divide and link two nation-states and many cultures and regions. The social construction of borderlands culture now conflates imagination, identity and affinity. Reimagination of the border is led inordinately by fear, and the powerful forces of securitization and militarization by the United States. Identity now requires verification at the border according to national standards where numerous hybrid, transient, and traditional forms are not acknowledged or tolerated. Borderlands, once an amorphous and extensive construct of affinity, are now emerging as scaled-down, managed corridors and gateways where “top down” visions for national security and identity fail to align with “bottom up” regional, community, and cross-border organizational reimagination of how the border works. Borderlands culture is challenged in the twenty-first century as Americans and Canadians attempt to reinvent the border between them yet risk the loss of the borderland integration that assures continuity and sustainability in a rapidly evolving global reconstruction of space and place. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]