“Hay tantísimas fronteras
que dividen a la gente,
pero por cada frontera
existe también un puente.”
“There are so many borders
that divide people,
but for every border
there is also a bridge.”
-Gina Valdés, Puentes y Fronteras, 1982
Cited in Borderlands: La Frontera – The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldúa, 1999, 107.

Regimes of border enforcement, militarization and externalization have implications for livelihoods, land and resource access, racialized criminalization, placemaking, and non-human ecologies (Johnson 2021; Miyake 2021; Mountz 2010; Radel et al 2018; Rosas 2019; Walia 2021). This session addresses the changing perceptions of borders, boundaries and land with regards to transnational migration and international conflict, broadly defined. We explore the multi-layered meanings of land —as livelihood, life, sacred, food source, economic asset, security, national identity, territory, access to social power, etc (Liboiron 2021; Hill 2017)— through the lens of social reproduction (Kofman 2014). How are localized assemblages of meaning conceptualized through Indigenous or non-Indigenous ways of being, and how are they changing? How does border militarization, forced migration, and structural inequalities influence meanings of land from different perspectives? How are human migration patterns tied to land access and displacement? How are human and non-human migrations differentially affected by theFse dynamics?

We invite presentations that decenter the “crisis” narrative from analyses of migration. Rather, we seek to discuss migration as a livelihood strategy within a set of historical processes and ongoing dynamics of climate and environmental change that exacerbate vulnerabilities. In attending to the localized impacts of transnational migration flows, centering the agency of migrants and families in communities of origin is paramount. How is organizing from within migrant communities (in sending or receiving locations) conceptualized as acts of resistance to racialized bordering projects, militarization or uneven development? How are these strategies and actions envisioning responses to the "crisis" narrative?
Organizers: Alicia Barceinas Cruz & Anika Rice

Please send your abstracts to Alicia Barceinas Cruz & Anika Rice at barceinascru@wisc.edu and amrice2@wisc.edu by 15 December 2023. 

Modality: In-person