Brittany (Britt) Dawson

In the Mexican border cities of Tijuana and Rosarito, a shelter for Muslim migrants, mosques, and musallas (places of prayer) built by Muslims in the last decade testify to the increasing rates at which Mexicans are leaving the Catholic Church for Islam and new paths through Latin America taken by Muslim migrants from around the world. Life in the Tijuana area is largely conditioned by the various layers of U.S. and Mexican security and surveillance in addition to an unstable political situation and cartel violence. At the same time, the Mexican borderlands are a site of refusal, invention, and transformation where traditions and ways of life are reworked and reimagined to encompass the particularities of the place and its conditions. How do Muslim migrants and converts confront the challenges of life in the Mexican borderlands? My research ethnographically explores the lives of Muslims in Tijuana and Rosarito, examining how they live and experience Islam there.