We are proud to announce that Andrea Lara-García has been named a recipient of the 2026 Mike Synar Graduate Research Fellowship, awarded by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.
The Synar Fellowship recognizes distinguished UC Berkeley graduate students conducting innovative scholarship that deepens understanding of political institutions, public policy, and civic life. Lara-García's project, "Who Owns the Border? Property and the Politics of Belonging in the Arizona and Texas Borderlands," explores how ranchers and border advocacy groups negotiate the politics of property in Arizona and Texas, two border states with radically different property landscapes. In the United States, private property implicates individuals and local governments in immigration debates by creating multiple scales at which exclusion can be enforced; the consequences of this are especially evident along the U.S.-Mexico border, where overlapping jurisdictional claims challenge the federal government for control over the international boundary. Utilizing ethnographic and community-engaged approaches, Lara-García analyzes the experiences of key actors to understand how differing property regimes shape the political landscape of the Arizona and Texas borderlands.
As part of the award, Lara-García will join fellow recipients in presenting her research at the Percy Synar Awards Ceremony on February 27 at 2:00pm. We hope you will join us to congratulate her!
This grant is made possible by a generous donation from the late Bill Brandt and his wife, Patrice Bugelas-Brandt. Bill and Patrice named the award after Congressman Mike Synar, a Democrat who represented the Second District in northeast Oklahoma from 1979-1995.