Drawing inspiration from Hirschman’s work on bottom-up development, this chapter explores the epistemic challenges, and theoretical and emancipatory possibilities of “co-producing” knowledge and civic strategies with communities navigating unjust asylum and migration policies at the US-Mexico border. It describes a way of doing political theory that is “grounded” in horizontal practices of engagement, in which the theorist accompanies struggle and seeks dialogue with people receptive to collaborative thinking and civic action. The case study is the UCSD Community Stations, a network of civic spaces on both sides of the Tijuana-San Diego borderwall designed in partnership with grassroots agencies. These practices of engagement ground Forman’s critical account of citizenship as a fluid, performative concept that emerges in shared practices of living, surviving, and transgressing in a disrupted civic space. While prioritizing local civic identity and action, the chapter also seeks to develop broader solidarities through “elastic” cultural experiments and “unwalling” imaginaries that “nest” local borders experiences in incrementally broader spheres of circulation and interdependence.