Open, Undone, Memorialized, Erased: Blueprints towards Borderless Futures
Diana Ruiz, University of Washington-Seattle
What does border abolition look like? This chapter analyzes a constellation of artistic practices that produce alternative ways of seeing and sensing the US-Mexico border in ways that refuse its historical optical regimes. Through close readings of oppositional methods and imaginaries, this chapter examines critical perspectives of racialization, dispossession, and administrative violence intrinsic to bordering. As networked digital infrastructures and biometric economies are changing the look and feel of borders, this chapter insists on the necessity of studying creative strategies for eradicating enduring visualities that underwrite border violence.
Sanctuary on Wheels: Wayward Care in the City of the Deported
Barbara Sostaita, University of Illinois-Chicago
In Nogales, Sonora—often referred to as the "city of the deported"—Panchito Olachea, a nurse forcibly removed from the United States, offers medical care to migrants, deportees, and others without access. Based on sustained ethnographic research, this paper considers Panchito's ambulance as a "sanctuary on wheels," to use the nurse's own words. While sanctuary is often understood as a defense against deportation, here, I consider practices of refuge and direct aid in the wake of deportation—arguing that sanctuary cannot be contained by borders. Rather, I trace how migrants and other activists, Panchito included, practice sanctuary as transformation, mobility, and intimacy.
Respondent: Rafael Martinez Orozco, Arizona State University
Registration
This event is free, but all participants must register in advance and space is limited. Please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend.
About the Borderlands and Latino/a Studies Seminar
The Newberry Borderlands and Latino/a Studies Seminar provides a forum for works-in-progress from scholars and graduate students that explore a variety of topics in the field. Seminars are conversational and free and open to faculty, graduate students, and members of the public, who register in advance to request papers.