Emergency responders on the US-Mexico border operate at the edges of two states. They rush patients to hospitals across country lines, tend to the broken bones of migrants who jump over the wall, and put out fires that know no national boundaries. Paramedics and firefighters on both sides of the border are tasked with saving lives and preventing disasters in the harsh terrain at the center of divisive national debates.
Ieva Jusionyte’s firsthand experience as an emergency responder provides the background for her gripping examination of the politics of injury and rescue in the militarized region surrounding the US-Mexico border. Operating in this area, firefighters and paramedics are torn between their mandate as frontline state actors and their responsibility as professional rescuers, between the limits of law and pull of ethics. From this vantage they witness what unfolds when territorial sovereignty, tactical infrastructure, and the natural environment collide. Jusionyte reveals the binational brotherhood that forms in this crucible to stand in the way of catastrophe. Through beautiful ethnography and a uniquely personal perspective, Threshold provides a new way to understand politicized issues ranging from border security and undocumented migration to public access to healthcare today.
Awards:
Winner of the Society for the Anthropology of Work Book Prize, 2020
Winner of the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing (Third Place) 2019
Juan E. Méndez Book Award Shortlist 2018
Winner of the California Series in Public Anthropology International Publishing Competition
Reviews:
“[Jusionyte] writes movingly of the collaborative efforts between Nogales, in Arizona, and its counterpart across the border, Nogales, Sonora—the two towns’ fire departments have frequently called upon one another for aid. Jusionyte explores the sister towns bisected by the border from many angles in this illuminating and poignant exploration of a place and situation that are little discussed yet have significant implications for larger political discourse.”
— Publishers Weekly
“A staggering work of public anthropology, one that is richly detailed, finely argued, and written in an engaging, even captivating style that brings the reader right to the frontlines of the so-called ‘hostile environments’ and ‘tactical infrastructures’ that now mark the US-Mexico border.”
— Public Anthropologist
“Threshold takes the reader close to realities so easily overlooked that no public figure has even gotten around to lying about them.”
– Inside Higher Education
“Ieva Jusionyte’s captivating account of often-collaborating US and Mexican firefighting and rescue units on both sides of the border yields startling and original insights. This beautifully written, lucid book demonstrates how powerfully close observations, precise descriptions, and stories of landscape and people can transmit thought and feeling, and earned knowledge, too.”
– Francisco Goldman
“At a time of nativist talk and wall building, Ieva Jusionyte’s breathtaking Threshold weaves a fiercely honest and personal narrative of first responders along the Sonora-Arizona border. A wonderful read that defies rhetoric and exposes an illuminating, sobering truth.”
– Alfredo Corchado
"Instructive, enlightening, theoretically important, and ethnographically rich [...] Jusionyte’s “insider” knowledge and skills certainly supported an advantage that, coupled with her fine ethnographic and theoretical eye, gives us a splendid and most timely ethnography of the region and its diverse populations through the looking glass of first responders.”
– Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez
“Threshold demonstrates in clear and riveting prose the deep and unexpected insight that the anthropological lens can provide in a place where the simplistic (and well-worn) migration tropes are difficult to escape. This book breaks new ground for border studies while simultaneously refusing to be pigeonholed in that genre.”
– Jason De León
“Jusionyte’s experience allows her to provide readers with an exceedingly unique and valuable view of life in the borderlands, and to introduce a complex array of individuals, some of whose political views counter her own. A skilled ethnographer, she lets them speak without judgment. At the same time, her analysis, solidarities, and commitments are clear.”
– NACLA: Review of the Americas
“Threshold is a timely book that will appeal to academic and public audiences interested in a more nuanced understanding of security and humanitarianism on the border. […] Medical anthropologists will be especially interested in Jusionyte’s nuanced approach to violence. Moving beyond theoretically informed structural understandings, Jusionyte urges her readers to understand violence in the ways emergency responders do, as immediate and urgent.”
– Medical Anthropology Quarterly
“A remarkable contribution to the anthropology of borders.”
– American Ethnologist
“While providing important insights into the politics of border control and emergency response, this book is a timely and beautifully written contribution to public anthropology.”
– Allegra Lab