Social Attitudes Predict Biases in Geographic Knowledge*

Three principal components were found to underlie Texas university students' experiences with and attitudes toward Canada, the United States, and Mexico: diversity orientation, Mexican experiences, and Canadian experiences. Diversity orientation included positive attitudes toward Hispanics, Canadians, minorities, interethnic friendships, and dating and was negatively correlated with natio‐centrism (e.g., believing U.S. citizens receive the world's best education). Diversity orientation and natio‐centrism were not related to experiences with Mexico or Canada. Students estimated the locations of Canadian cities too far north and Mexican cities too far south. Biased estimates for Mexican cities were negatively correlated with diversity orientation, not experience with Mexico.     

CIRCULATION PATTERNS AND TEMPERATURE FIELDS ASSOCIATED WITH EXTENSIVE SNOW COVER ON THE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT

Weekly snow cover areas, derived from the NOAA/NESS Northern Hemisphere Digitized Snow and Ice Cover Data Base, were correlated with weekly temperature anomalies across the United States and with weekly 700-mb geopotential heights over the North American sector. The correlations were computed for snow cover across the entire North American continent as well as the western and eastern United States for the winters 1966–67 through 1979–80. Extensive snow cover is associated with negative temperature anomalies across most of the continental United States. The strongest relationship occurs along the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains from the Canadian border to the central Great Plains and reflects the southward movement of cold arctic air masses toward the Gulf of Mexico. An anomalous trough over the western part of North America is responsible for extensive snow cover in the winter. The surface storm track is displaced southward during winters with heavy snow cover, with cyclones occurring more frequently in the southern Plains and southeastern United States. Moist Gulf of Mexico air advected northward by the southerly flow aloft is an important prerequisite condition for the occurrence of extensive snow cover in the eastern United States during the first half of winter.     

The Asymmetric Border: The United States’ Place in the World and the Refugee Panic of 2018

The year 2018 saw a moral panic in the United States in the media and among many citizens over the treatment of refugees/asylees at the U.S. southern border, particularly the separation and detention of children apart from their parents. This happened in the context of a period in U.S. political history in which “immigration,” without much discernment about different types of immigration, was central to political discourse. In fact, in terms of numbers, there was no immigration crisis at the border. Undocumented migration from Mexico across the southern border of the United States has been in decline for many years, and the irregular movement of people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras is currently small by historical standards. The only crisis, to which the U.S. panic was a response, has been a human rights crisis. Families and children seeking asylum from horrendous civil‐rights conditions in their countries of origin were criminalized and denied their right to asylum hearings. The panic points both to the extreme politicization of immigration in the United States, particularly since Donald Trump's entry into national politics in 2015, and to popular confusion over categorizing different types of immigrants. But it also raises questions about the nature of the U.S. southern border in relation to the United States’ place in the world. Rather than thinking about the United States as simply the rich destination country of unfortunate people coming from poor origin countries, the refugee panic of 2018 brings into the focus the fact that the United States itself is complicit in the conditions in those countries that produce so many refugees in the first place.     

不均衡的跨国人口流动：对美墨移民历程与政策的思考

美国是全球最大的移民接收国,墨西哥是美国最大的移民来源国,特殊的地缘关系和巨大的发展差距使众多墨西哥人移民美国。墨裔移民为美国提供了充足的劳动力,在美墨边境地区,移民集聚带动了两国边境地区的发展。但族裔矛盾始终是美国主要社会问题之一,特别是“9·11”事件后,少数族裔和非法移民问题加剧美国社会分裂和对立,成为美国国内政治博弈的焦点。基于区域地缘关系的视角来看,美国与墨西哥之间长期不对等的国际关系决定了跨国移民的流入状态和生存境遇,也是美国族群矛盾的主要原因之一。移民问题政治化将持续强化墨裔移民政策的不确定性,使移民个人与家庭面临更大的融入困难。     

North American Natural Gas: Data Show Supply Problems

Natural gas is increasingly the fuel of choice for domestic and industrial use and for electric power generation. With pipelines in all 50 states, gas now fuels more than one-half of United States homes. Demand for all uses is projected to rise. United States production peaked in 1971, and is in decline. The United States in 2002 imported 15% of its gas from Canada, which amount was 56% of Canada's production. However, Canada's production now also is in decline. Mexico's production declined from 1999 to 2002 against rising demand. Mexico is increasingly a net gas importer from the United States. In both the United States and Canada, intensive drilling is being offset by high depletion rates. Frontiers for more production include deep basin drilling, improved exploration and reservoir development technology, increased coalbed methane exploitation, and access to lands not now accessible because of environmental and other restrictions. Stranded gas in Arctic regions of the United States and Canada offer some potential for additional supplies, but pipeline access is at least five years to ten years or more away. Additional LNG landing facilities are needed, and are planned, but these are several years away in significant numbers. For the immediate future, rationing of available gas by the market mechanism of higher prices seems the only option. In the longer term, it seems North America will be increasingly dependent on LNG.     

GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS

THE HUMBOLDT CURRENT: Nineteenth‐Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism. By Aaron Sachs WHITE ROADS OF THE YUCATÁN: Changing Social Landscapes of the Yucatec Maya. By Justine M. Shaw COLD WAR, DEADLY FEVERS: Malaria Eradication in Mexico, 1955–1975. By Marcos Cueto GOLDEN GULAG: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. By Ruth Wilson Gilmore BECOMING BRAZUCA: Brazilian Immigration to the United States. Edited by Clémence Jouët ‐Pastré and Leticia J. Braga     

MUEBLES RÚSTICOS IN MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES

ABSTRACT. Sales of muebles rústicos, or rustic wooden furniture made in Mexico, have grown rapidly in the United States since 1994. Analysis of the recent rise of the industry tracks manufacturing and marketing methods in major production areas of Mexico. Consumer taste for “authentic” handmade goods of simple design and the vogue of the “Santa Fe” style across the American Southwest mesh with Mexican producers' need to seek foreign markets during an economic crisis. Changing style preferences, along with the furniture's handcrafted appearance, its competitive cost, and the makers' flexible production methods, are reasons for the increased popularity of this folk commodity.     

基于复杂网络理论的中美原油进口空间格局演进比较

依据中美原油进口源地数据,运用网络分析法,比较了中美原油进口贸易空间结构的演化轨迹与特征。研究表明,相同的认知活动使两国的原油进口策略取向变得一致。1993年后,美中原油进口来源国数量有着几乎相同的增长趋势;但美国原油进口权重基本趋于平稳,中国原油进口权重基本处于上升通道中,同时中美贸易联系不仅存在强度上的差异,分区域的强度次序也存在重大差异;美国原油进口空间格局的权重熵经历了由高到低的演变,权重熵的比较揭示出1993年之后中国原油进口系统有序性要低于美国。以上结果表明追求多元化不应以均质化为目标,不同的主体要依据各自所面临的客观环境选择适合自己的区域合作伙伴,才能更好的落实多元化进口策略,切实解决可能面临的石油供给危机。     

Geologic and societal factors affecting the international oceanic transport of aggregate

Crushed stone and sand and gravel are the two main sources of natural aggregate, and together comprise approximately half the volume and tonnage of mined material in the United States. Natural aggregate is a bulky, heavy material without special or unique properties, and it is commonly used near its source of production to minimize haulage cost. However, remoteness is no longer an absolute disqualifier for the production of aggregate. Today interstate aggregate routinely is shipped hundreds of kilometers by rail and barge. In addition, during 1992, the United States imported 1,317,000 metric tons of aggregate from Canada and 1,531,000 metric tons from Mexico. A number of ports on the Atlantic Coast and Gulf Coast of the United States receive imports of crushed stone from foreign sources for transport to various parts of the eastern United States. These areas either lack adequate supplies of aggregate or are augmenting their supplies because they have difficulties meeting current demand. These difficulties may include poor stone quality, environmental permitting problems, or transportation. Certain societal and geologic conditions of New York City and Philadelphia along the Atlantic Coast, and Tampa and New Orleans along the Gulf Coast, are discussed to demonstrate the different combinations of issues that contribute to the economic viability of importing crushed stone.     

IDENTITY AND SPACE: THE CASE OF TURKISH AMERICANS*

ABSTRACT. Until recently, Muslim Americans have often been overlooked in studies on immigration, ethnicity, and race. Their loyalty to America and their integration into the larger culture have frequently been questioned by the media, and academia's interest has mostly been limited to establishing links between Muslims, fundamentalism, and terrorism. Muslim American experiences‐their social, political, and cultural institutions and spaces in the United States‐have drawn little attention from geographers. But stereotypes play an important role in intergroup relations and public‐policy making. Thus, it is important to understand Muslim ethnic‐group experiences of immigration and their place‐making activities in the United States. Based on research in the greater New York metropolitan area, this study explores one facet of the Muslim experience in the United States by investigating Turkish American identity‐construction spaces and their role in the preservation and reformation of Turkish American identity; that is, how these spaces emphasize and shape particular identities and discourage others.     

GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS

FINDING THE WALLS OF TROY: Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik. By Susan Heuck Allen . THE WORLD OF ANDRÉ LE NÔTRE. By Thierry Mariage . Translated by Graham Larkin . “WHAT NATURE SUFFERS TO GROE”: Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680–1920. By Mart A. Stewart . SURVEYING THE RECORD: North American Scientific Exploration to 1930. Edited by Edward C. Carter II. BEYOND THE NEON LIGHTS: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century. By Hanchao Lu . LIVING HERITAGE: Vernacular Environment in China. Edited by Kai ‐Yin FROM AZTEC TO HIGH TECH: Architecture and Landscape across the Mexico‐United States Border. By Lawrence A. Herzog . SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN: An Environmental History of the Twentieth‐Century World. By J. R. McNeill .     

Regional Comparisons of Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Migration in the 1970s and 1980s: Age and Place Implications*

Over the last thirty years, nonmetropolitan regions across the United States have experienced volatile population shifts ranging from rapid growth to persistent decline. Several authors have suggested that the age structure of the population may contribute to these population trends. In the 1970s, the older baby boomers were entering labor and housing markets, while the younger boomers were enrolling in nonmetropolitan colleges and universities. By the 1980s, this large cohort was aging into a different stage in the life course. This article examines metropolitan and nonmetropolitan population shifts during the 1970s and 1980s within an age‐cohort framework. Using Public Use Microsample data from 1980 and 1990, the analysis explores relationships between housing market, labor market, place characteristics, and the migration flows of different age cohorts. The analysis focuses on cohort‐specific in‐migration to two regions: New England and the Four Corners states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. The results are consistent with a life‐course understanding of migration behavior, especially during the late 1970s, with older cohort shifts directed towards nonmetropolitan destinations and younger cohort shifts more influenced by labor and housing‐market variables. The results further demonstrate a large potential for future nonmetropolitan population growth, yet these growth experiences are likely to be regionally differentiated. These results have important policy implications for nonmetropolitan regions.     

Transnationalism,emotion and second‐generation social mobility in the Filipino‐Canadian diaspora

Through the case of Filipino‐Canadian youth experiences, this paper examines socio‐economic mobility among the children of immigrants in the context of transnational social fields and emotional engagements with the diasporic homeland. The Filipino‐Canadian experience is distinctive in terms of immigration patterns, settlement trajectories, policy frameworks and the historical and contemporary construction of ethno‐racial identities. Using educational attainment as a proxy for a wider process of social mobility, the paper shows that outcomes among Filipino youth have been anomalously poor. The explanations for this situation are multiple, but this paper draws particular attention to the ways in which negative emotional engagements with the Philippines as a diasporic homeland may shape self‐esteem and aspirations among Filipino youth in Canada and thereby play a role in social mobility.     

Comparative spatial inequality dynamics: The case of Mexico and the United States

In this paper we examine the trajectory of regional income inequality dynamics for two neighboring national systems. Using data on 3038 US counties and 2418 Mexico municipios, from 2000, 2005, and 2010, we employ recent extensions of spatial Markov chains and space-time mobility measures, to consider the following questions: Are regional inequality dynamics fundamentally distinct between Mexico and the United States? Does the role of spatial context influence the distributional dynamics of the two systems? Finally we examine if there is a distinct international border region that displays inequality dynamics different from those of the internal regions of the two national systems. Strong evidence of spatial heterogeneity in regional income mobility is found between the two national systems, with Mexico having higher mobility relative to the US. The international border region is found to have distinct mobility dynamics from either national system, experiencing the strongest mobility. Extensive evidence of spatial contextual effects are found throughout the US-Mexican pooled data set indicating that a region's transitional dynamics are influenced by incomes of neighboring regions.     

WHY WAS HUMBOLDT FORGOTTEN IN THE UNITED STATES?*

ABSTRACT. In the nineteenth century Alexander von Humboldt was acclaimed as “the second Columbus” and “the scientific discoverer of America.” His prestige and fame were such that on 14 September 1869, the hundredth anniversary of his birth, a grand celebration was held with parades, speeches, concerts, and the unveiling of memorials in cities across the country. Humboldt's popularity in the United States endured for the remainder of the nineteenth century, but he dropped from public consciousness in the twentieth century. To account for the eclipse of Humboldt's fame in the United States three hypotheses are discussed: a shift in the character of scientific endeavor; the quality of Humboldt's written work; and the rise of anti‐German sentiment with a concurrent rush to “de‐Germanize” the United States in the early twentieth century.     

Mexico's drug networks: Modeling the smuggling routes towards the United States

Drug smuggling routes are chosen to maximize profit while minimizing costs. Routes with the least drug transportation costs and the lowest risk for drug confiscation and gang fight are most preferred. This study attempts to predict the ground trafficking corridors for transporting marijuana and opium derivatives from Mexico to the United States border. The cost surface, representing impedance to transport illicit drugs, is modeled by considering physical, socio-demographic, and drug violence factors. The impedance is then transferred to the road network to represent the cost for moving drugs along the roads, which becomes the main input for network analysis. The results from the routes simulation confirm largely the known territory divisions and the drug trafficking routes of the major Mexican drug organizations. The findings help us understand the development of drug trafficking routes in Mexico, which can potentially enhance our capability to predict the dynamics of drug smuggling routes.     

THE SUPREME COURT'S ROLE IN CHOCTAW AND CHICKASAW DISPOSSESSION*

ABSTRACT. During the nineteenth century, Indian groups throughout the United States saw their lands taken from them through a variety of means, including land cessions and allotment. The Choctaw and Chickasaw, two of the Five Civilized Tribes of the southeastern United States, endured this process of dispossession. Although the U.S. Congress promulgated much of this dispossession through treaty‐based territorial demands, the Supreme Court proved an able partner in the process by subverting treaty guarantees and expanding congressional power. The dispute over the area known as “Greer County” provides an example of the Supreme Court's role in Indian dispossession, for its ruling in 1900 extinguished the Choctaw and Chickasaw claim to most of southwestern Oklahoma, earlier treaty provisions notwithstanding.     

Maquiladora Myths: Locational and Structural Change in Mexico's Export Manufacturing Industry

Trends in location, labor force, and procurement practices in maquiladoras are examined using recent data sources. A growing proportion of maquiladoras are selecting interior locations, south of the borderlands. Once dominated by young women, the labor force is rapidly approaching gender parity. While far below prevailing rates in the United States, maquiladora wages are comparable with equivalent manufacturing sectors in Mexico. Majority ownership of maquiladoras is split almost evenly between Mexico and the U.S., however, maquiladoras have failed to develop domestic sources of materials and parts and remain dependent on imported material inputs. As the North American Free Trade Agreement is phased in, the regulatory environment of maquiladoras will change but their role as low cost assembly specialists will persist.     

INCIDENTS OF TERRORISM IN THE UNITED STATES, 1997–2005

ABSTRACT. The geography of terrorism remains underexplored. By focusing on the spatial patterns of terrorist attacks, the settings and land uses in which attacks occur, and the methods used to perpetrate violence, this analysis helps build a theory of terrorism geography. Between 1 January 1997 and 11 September 2005, 178 terrorist incidents occurred in the United States. Analysis of these incidents suggests three insights. At the national scale, terrorism in the United States clustered in large urban areas, with regional differentiation of terrorist motives and targets. At the scale of individual attack sites, terrorist motivations pinpointed offices, clinics, and public spaces; right‐wing violence, military, government, and infrastructural targets; and religious terrorism, commercial and special land uses. At the scale of individual interactions, terrorists crossed paths with victims in various ways. For example, the 2001 anthrax‐attack letters and lone‐wolf terrorism created alternative intersections of perpetrators with victims.     

Maquiladora Myths: Locational and Structural Change in Mexico's Export Manufacturing Industry

Trends in location, labor force, and procurement practices in maquiladoras are examined using recent data sources. A growing proportion of maquiladoras are selecting interior locations, south of the borderlands. Once dominated by young women, the labor force is rapidly approaching gender parity. While far below prevailing rates in the United States, maquiladora wages are comparable with equivalent manufacturing sectors in Mexico. Majority ownership of maquiladoras is split almost evenly between Mexico and the U.S., however, maquiladoras have failed to develop domestic sources of materials and parts and remain dependent on imported material inputs. As the North American Free Trade Agreement is phased in, the regulatory environment of maquiladoras will change but their role as low cost assembly specialists will persist.