The State of the Border Report 2020

In 2013, the Wilson Center and its partners released the first edition of the State of the Border Report. The report rejected views of the border as a simple dividing line and sought to provide a comprehensive yet accessible look at the state of border management and the border region, focusing on a more inclusive set of four core areas: trade and economic development, security, sustainability, and quality of life. Now, in 2020, the Wilson Center is working on a second edition of the report. Much has changed since 2013, and this edition will document many of those developments, but the need to present policymakers and the public with a multidimensional view of the border and border region remains as important as ever. The 2020 State of the Border Report will cover the same four core areas while also delving deeper into some issues only briefly touched upon in the original report. The chapters will be released as individual papers throughout 2020 and put together as a volume at the end of the year.

The Mexico Institute is very happy to present the first component of the report, which, recognizing the context of COVID-19, analyzes the issue of quality of life in the border region through the very particular lens of public health and pandemic response. Erik Lee, a coauthor and editor of the original 2013 report, conducted a series of interviews with former policymakers from the United States and Mexico that were involved in the management of the H1N1 pandemic in 2009 and has drawn some important and relevant conclusions about emergency preparedness and pandemic response that he presents in the paper. Please enjoy his work and look for additional papers in this series on this webpage throughout the year.