Immigration is a major issue among U.S. presidential candidates and folks around many water coolers. But the topic raises many questions.

Why is there a wall along the United States border with Mexico? Why do people risk their lives crossing the Sonora desert to work in the United States? Is Operation Streamline constitutionally valid? How do border patrol checkpoints affect U.S. communities?

University of Michigan School of Social Work associate professor Sherrie Kossoudji and her students will seek to answer these questions and others on policy, strategies, and legal validity during their spring break class in Arizona.

About a dozen students will travel to the border to witness, record and reflect upon U.S. border enforcement in the Tucson/Nogales area. The goal of Contested Borders: Policy on the Ground is to understand the nuances of policies by observing the day-to-day activities that constitute the minutiae of a policy’s impact on the people who migrate, the people who enforce the policy, and the communities that surround the border.

The students will post blogs during their trip, which is from Feb. 27 to March 4. The link: http://ssw.umich.edu/blog