Rebecca Galemba

Examines how rural communities on a clandestine road crossing the Mexico-Guatemala border stake claim over this route while deligitimizing state control. Argues that the margins of the state can be critical junctures for examining how everyday people and state actors continuously negotiate and reconfigure the shifting materializations and meanings of territory, state power, and (trans)national space.

Discusses anthropological dimensions and conceptions of legality and illegality. Investigates concepts of "illegality" and "illegalization" alongside studies of the state, power, ethics, and the law.  Draws on and critiques scholarly contributions to this arena. 

Demonstrates the effects of neoliberal trade policies on locals' buying and selling of corn along the Mexico-Guatemala border. Finds that as locals participate in this growing trade and negotiate with state officials, they may contribute to the neoliberal economic dynamics, increasing regional inequalities, and patron-client state relations they otherwise protest.

Posits new directions in the study of legitimacy, legality, and morality in borderlands. By making illegality central, the article reveals the politics and power dynamics that shape how people differentially experience the law, using illegality as a theoretical lens to reexamine what constitute worthy subjects of research and standards for ethical and methodological practice.

Addresses issues of power, positionality, and engaged service-learning by evaluating an evolving collaborative relationship between a Master's Level International Development Course at the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver (DU); Natik, a grassroots NGO working on development in Chiapas, Mexico, and Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala; and Natik's partner communities in the field.