NOV 2018

Ieva Jusionyte explores the spirit of first response in an area where dangers don't care about boundaries.

• By Peter C. Baker

Updates to stories from the Pacific Standard archive.

• By Pacific Standard Staff
• Member Exclusive

Ajo, Arizona: Heavy-duty, non-biodegradable canteens—occasionally insulated with clothing or blankets to prevent chafing—scatter the desert in the Tucson sector of the United States border with Mexico.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Juan Carlos Lopez is braving local violence so that indigenous workers can get a share of the profits.

• By Nathaniel Parish Flannery

Sindo Ferry passengers have their passports checked and their luggage x-rayed before they board, but they are divided about how meaningful national boundaries are.

• By Francie Diep

Imagine peeling an orange, then trying to lay the peel flat. Map-making is the art of manipulating the orange peel until it yields.

• By Adrienne Bernhard

Identities that govern seemingly innate experiences, such as the taste of food—or even racial bias—can be harnessed to create positive social change.

• By Emily Moon

Since ancient times, border walls have simultaneously assuaged and stoked our fears of outsiders. But a history of walls can't tell the full story of civilization.

• By Peter C. Baker

Katya Cengel tracks the lives of four families following the fall of the genocidal Khmer Rouge.

• By Peter C. Baker

Updates to stories from the Pacific Standard archive.

• By Pacific Standard Staff
• Member Exclusive

East of San Diego, California: In 2013, Border Patrol Agent Jacopo Bruni looks south over a border fence in the mountains.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

In a recent study, the behavior most strongly linked to a negative recommendation was abandonment.

• By Tom Jacobs

Updates to stories from the Pacific Standard archive.

• By Pacific Standard Staff
• Member Exclusive

Our online identities have become a part of who we are in the real world—whether we're always aware of it or not.

• By Kevin Lincoln

Three years after India and Bangladesh exchanged exclaves to simplify the world's most complex border, many who chose to move rather than to change their citizenship find that their prospects are not what they'd hoped.

• By Robin Hemley

San Luis, Arizona: A United States Drug Enforcement Administration official aims a flashlight down a 55-foot-deep drug-smuggling tunnel that spans a distance of nearly 240 yards under the U.S.-Mexico border. Drugs ran north, and weapons and cash ran south.

• By Pacific Standard Staff

In a land known for war, the Midburn gathering offers a vision of peace and love.

• By Yardena Schwartz

Twenty-four hours in rattlesnake country.

• By Caroline Benner

An archive works to conserve the stories of the 1947 Partition of India.

• By Ariel Ramchandani

Hermosillo, Mexico: Central American immigrants walk to a soup kitchen for some much-needed sustenance after traveling by Mexican freight train—known among the caravaners as "the beast."

• By Pacific Standard Staff

Efforts to contain protests inevitably create boundaries—and raise questions about restricting free speech.

• By Shilpa Jindia

In the Brazilian state of Roraima, newcomers arrive every day by car, bus, and bicycle.

• By Chris Feliciano Arnold

A tiny territory on the Black Sea hopes to boost its bid for nationhood by welcoming Syrians fleeing civil war.

• By Laura Kasinof

From Liberland to Sealand, a partial tour of semi-autonomous, breakaway states.

• By Jack Denton