Entering the Field

I arrived in Brownsville at 11 a.m. Having mentally rehearsed my romantic exit from the plane into the sun-kissed land of the unknown, my actual exit was far removed from the cinematic scene I had envisaged. Instead, I stepped out to be greeted by an unseasonable chill and an overcast skyline. My daydreams of future academic brilliance on the flight over—sleep deprivation, not vanity, I promise—were quickly extinguished as I immediately found myself impossibly lost in what must be the smallest airport in the US. Devoid of a pop backing track, I very un-cinematically fumbled my way to baggage reclaim. After reorienting myself, I navigated the actually rather well-signposted exit. Humbled but excited, I began perusing the line of cars in search of one that matched the description I had been given.

My eyes locked on a large, dusty blue people carrier, the friendly waves visible from inside peeking out from behind a cracked windscreen. Taking in Sarah for the first time, she warmly ushered me into her car as though we were old friends rather than two people whose relationship had, until that moment, consisted solely of a few Facebook messages and a choppy Zoom call. She and her family had offered to host me for the duration of my fieldwork—an act of generosity that still warms my heart. In reality, they gave me far more than a place to stay. They brought me up to speed on all the informal context needed to understand this place. They answered all my questions, and even answered those I ought to have asked but didn’t think of. They gave me company and conversation (and pancakes) after long days. They also gave me the encouragement that my work—and my presence in their hometown—was justified.

Brownsville is a city nestled in the southernmost reaches of Texas, where the western Gulf Coast meets the vital rhythm of the U.S.-Mexico border. Separated by a large and tightly patrolled bridge, Brownsville has long engaged in a constant, complex dance with its southern neighbour, Matamoros, Tamaulipas—each shaping the other in ways both subtle and striking.

Brownsville, Sarah told me on our drive, was 96% Hispanic, with English spoken as a second language, if at all, in some cases. The white minority—for the most part—don’t speak Spanish and, from my observations, enjoy a position of socioeconomic advantage versus that of the Hispanic majority.

Leaving the airport behind, I took in the sleepy city’s demeanour. The main roads, loud with the growl of traffic and the occasional 18-wheeler, were impressively wide and smooth, yet the buildings on either side felt frayed and deserted, abandoned both by time and attention. A large supermarket loomed to the side, its exterior tired and unapologetically unglamorous. Yet just a few turns away, on the street where I would be staying, the atmosphere shifted. The grass was neatly manicured, the roads were clear, the houses peered modestly over high fences.

Sarah, who was doing an excellent job of playing tour guide to her slightly baffled passenger, offhandedly explained that most of her neighbours owned guns. Furthermore, they found it deeply odd that her family didn’t. She also spoke of the strong evangelical Christian movement that had recently found its footing within the region, conflating religion with politics and promoting an unwavering stance on guns, abortion, and the death penalty. Under the nose of the right-wing minority, Sarah told me that Brownsville is frequently visited by pregnant Mexican women who cross the border on travel visas to receive prenatal and intrapartum care in Texas’ birthing clinics and hospitals. Under the principle of jus soli, they return home not just with a newborn but with an American citizen. I concealed my reaction as Sarah recounted unsettling stories of Texan midwives, in the midst of labour, praying over Mexican women’s bodies, relying on faith rather than medical expertise to guide difficult births—an uncomfortable confluence of ontologies.

Sarah and I spoke about race, specifically about how racism in Brownsville had a historic legacy stretching back to the 1800s. Originally part of New Spain, it became Mexican territory in 1821 following Mexico’s independence. It was then absorbed into the United States after the Texas Revolution and the U.S.-Mexico War. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) sealed the transfer, though it did little to quell the tensions between Anglo-American settlers and the Tejano population. A decade later, Juan Cortina, a wealthy Tejano rancher, led an armed resistance against the Anglo-American authorities, railing against the growing disenfranchisement of Tejanos. Yet the land dispossession, racial violence, and systemic exclusion Cortina fought against form the bedrock of contemporary racial and economic divides in the city, made manifest in the neighbourhoods, schools, professions, and lifestyles inhabited by the more affluent minorities.

Generally, Brownsville was not a site of economic prosperity. Sarah explained that many find themselves anchored to jobs they hate, both due to the lack of career opportunities and the high cost of living. Economic precarity in the Hispanic population of Brownsville is coupled with very high rates of obesity and diabetes. Against this backdrop, the pandemic’s damage was brutally magnified—hospitals at capacity, patients housed in tents under a suffocating 35-degree heat, conference rooms turned into makeshift morgues when the body bags ran out.

I sat in the car absorbing all of this, my new reality coming into sharp focus. Had we then moved onto football team allegiances, we would have successfully ticked off the entire list of topics discouraged on first encounters. Yet discussing race, poverty, religion, guns, abortion, migration, violence et al., felt strangely easy with Sarah—perhaps because these were not abstract concepts for her, but vivid, tangible, everyday realities. In Brownsville, where the personal and the political are inextricably linked, each conversation carries a heavy weight of lived experience that one must, as an outsider, tread carefully around.

I had come to study health among asylum seekers, to unravel the material and symbolic components of their survival as they navigated the treacherous path toward the safety North America promises. Brownsville was only one stop along this trajectory, yet it is irrevocably shaped by the lives, bodies, and experiences that flow in and out of it. This same story could be told of countless other cities, towns, and communities that find themselves swept into the currents of migration, whether they want to be or not. The scale of influence is undeniable and ubiquitous in this part of the world.

This brings me to an unavoidable truth about research, journalism, or any form of storytelling: so much is left beyond the frame. In my case, it is those with whom I spent the most time—the ones who opened their homes, shared their histories—whose stories remain relegated to the margins. My efforts were instead focused on stitching together fragmented pieces from the asylum seekers who passed through, whose brief words, collected en masse, formed the overall picture I sought to present. I would, however, never claim this picture—this story—to be complete.

With greater resources and experience (whilst it may not please my mother’s blood pressure), I would strive toward a project akin to that of Jason De León, who has spent years living and traveling with asylum seekers, coyotes, border patrol workers—taking the transience out of his fieldwork and adding an otherwise uncommon layer of longevity to studies of lives in motion. For now, I must content myself with piecing together these fleeting moments, leaning heavily on the contributions of journalists like Nick Paton Walsh, whose dispatches from the Darién Gap—my next subject—helped fill the visual gaps in my own understanding.

The point being, no story is ever complete. Whilst we may stamp out beginnings, middles, and ends, the reality is that lived experiences do not fit into neat narrative arcs. They are sprawling, unfinished, tangled with contradictions and unanswered questions—an unsettling but necessary reminder that, for those whose lives are dictated by borders, the journey itself is rarely the conclusion.