In This Frontera Moment is a microgrant program supporting U of A graduates working on interdisciplinary projects that respond to the current, rapidly evolving realities shaping life in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands. The program prioritizes projects that engage the “in this frontera moment” impacts of shifting immigration and border conditions. The program funds proposals that document, analyze, interpret, or creatively respond to the immediate realities facing border communities today. This includes how communities are navigating profound and ongoing changes in immigration systems, asylum processes, border enforcement practices, legal frameworks, environmental pressures, and public narratives unfolding in real time and that are reshaping the lived experiences of migrants, asylum seekers, Indigenous communities, border residents, and transborder families. Grounded in Fronteridades: Nurturing Collaborative Intersections in the U.S.–Mexico Border, this program supports work that centers lived experience, amplifies underrepresented voices, and fosters interdisciplinary inquiry across the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
Mario Alberto Aguilar Buenrostro | PhD Mexican American Studies | College of Social & Behavioral Sciences
Lo que Sembraron, lo Seguimos Cosechando: An Intergenerational Archival Testimonio of Farmworking Labor, (Im)migration, and Well-being from the Bracero Program to the H-2A Visa System
Lo que Sembraron, lo Seguimos Cosechando documents the collective memory and labor experiences of intergenerational agricultural workers across two field sites, Yakima, Washington, and La Manzanilla de la Paz, Jalisco, Mexico, tracing the historical continuity between the Bracero Program (1942 to 1964) and the contemporary H-2A temporary agricultural visa system. Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa’s theorization of the borderlands as a living, embodied condition rather than a fixed geopolitical line, the project uses oral history interviews, personal archival documentation, and participant-shared archival imagery to produce a manuscript, a curated intergenerational personal archive, and a bilingual traveling pop-up exhibit all centering the voices of mixed-status farmworker families, H-2A visa holders, and former Braceros as living archives of an evolving border regime and U.S. immigration labor policy.
Aidos Amirgaliyev | SJD Candidate Indigenous Peoples Law & Policy | James E. Rogers College of Law
Divided Nations: Indigenous Peoples, International Borders, and U.S. Obligations Under Article 36 of UNDRIP
Divided Nations examines how international borders affect Indigenous communities whose traditional territories extend across state boundaries, focusing on the United States–Mexico border and the obligations recognized in Article 36 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Through legal and interdisciplinary analysis, the project explores how existing legal frameworks fail to adequately protect cross-border Indigenous rights and proposes pathways toward more just and responsive policy.
Imelda G. Cortez | PhD Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies | College of Education
Ethnography of Place in Wakefield: Sonic and Visual Borders in a Redeveloping Barrio
Ethnography of Place in Wakefield develops an Ethnography of Place of Tucson’s Wakefield neighborhood through a place-based research project using photography and soundscape recordings in three iconic restaurants—Tacos Apson, Carnitas La Yoca, and Paleteria y Neveria La Michoacana. By documenting the barrio’s visual and sonic textures during a period of rapid redevelopment and educational restructuring, the project traces how borderland histories, migration, and redevelopment are lived, heard, and resisted “in this frontera moment.”
Khansa Kubra | MFA Creative writing, Department of English | College of Social & Behavioral Sciences
Sensory Ecologies - Light, Sounds and Surveillance at the US-Mexico Border
Sensory Ecologies employs documentary poetics to examine the Sky Islands and the border in Nogales, Sonora as a nocturnal infrastructure, where artificial light and sound shape movement, surveillance and ecological as well as human rhythms.
Brenda Sarahi Machado | MA Bilingual Journalism and Latin American Studies, School of Journalism, School of Global Studies | College of Social & Behavioral Sciences
Sheltering Change: A Documentary Photojournalism Investigation of Humanitarian Organizations Adapting to Post-2025 Immigration Policy at the Mexico Border
Sheltering Change documents how humanitarian aid organizations in Nogales, Sonora, have restructured their operations in response to post-2025 U.S. immigration policy shifts, including CBP One cancellation and expanded asylum restrictions, through in-depth interviews, participant observation, and documentary photography. The final deliverable will be a publicly accessible website featuring a photojournalism portfolio and organizational profiles that amplify the work of frontline humanitarian actors and expand their digital presence.
Caroline Scheuer Neves | PhD Second Language Acquisition and Teaching | Graduate Interdisciplinary Program
Lived Bordering in the Classroom: Language Ideologies and Learner Identities in Portuguese for Spanish Speakers in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
Lived Bordering in the Classroom examines how language ideologies shape lived experiences of belonging, difference, and mobility in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, focusing on Spanish-speaking learners of Portuguese. Through analysis of institutional discourse, it produces a place-based research project and journal article that re-centers borderland multilingualism as lived bordering.
Olivia Carmen Otero | Master of Library & Information Science | College of Information
Preserving Legacy: Protecting Black History in the Borderlands
Preserving Legacy utilizes archival storytelling through a community archive, supporting local Black history, and challenging traditional documentation theory and praxis.
Sheldon Patten | MFA Photo, Video and Image | College of Fine Arts
Randolph
Randolph is and ongoing photographic project focuses on Randolph, Arizona one of the state’s oldest historically black communities, that has been directly subjected to environmental racism. Environmental racism refers to the systemic placement of environmental hazards and the withholding of environmental protections in communities of color, leading to disproportionate exposure to pollution and related harms.
Richard Lane Whitmer | MA Bilingual Journalism, School of Journalism | College of Social & Behavioral Sciences
Bordernote: A documentary project sharing images and first-person narratives of borderlands musicians
Mario Sosa
Bordernote is a documentary photography and storytelling project that explores the lives of musicians along the Arizona–Sonora border through portraits and first-person narratives. This phase will culminate in a public exhibition and a companion book amplifying the voices and lived experiences of borderland artists.