Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 7
4 pm
Comm 120

Amer­i­can Stud­ies, Uni­ver­sity of Texas, Austin

The Latino/a child cit­i­zen sub­ject has become the focal point for all sorts of dis­courses about cit­i­zen­ship, be they the fig­ure of the Anchor Baby, Dora the Explorer as a poten­tial ille­gal immi­grant, the Dream Activists of Free­dom Uni­ver­sity, or a newly emerg­ing unpro­tected group, unac­com­pa­nied migrant chil­dren fac­ing depor­ta­tion pro­ceed­ings. In this talk, I demon­strate the ways in which race, immi­gra­tion sta­tus, social mobil­ity, skin color, social class and gen­der deter­mine whether or not a child is in fact deemed wor­thy of cit­i­zen­ship, wor­thy of being saved, and wor­thy of being incor­po­rated into the nation. Larger media trends have made such Latinas/o child-citizen sub­jects increas­ingly vis­i­ble in the last fif­teen years as the U.S.-Mexico bor­der is more mil­i­ta­rized than ever.

Nicole Guidotti– Hernán­dez is Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can Stud­ies and Asso­ciate Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Mex­i­can Amer­i­can Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­sity of Texas. Her book Unspeak­able Vio­lence: Remap­ping U.S. and Mex­i­can National Imag­i­nar­ies was pub­lished by Duke Uni­ver­sity Press in 2011. She is cur­rently work­ing on two new books: ¡Santa Lucia! Con­tem­po­rary Chi­cana and Latina Cul­tural Rein­ter­pre­ta­tions of Saint Icono­gra­phies and Red Dev­ils and Rail­roads: Race, Gen­der and Cap­i­tal­ism in the Transna­tional Nine­teenth Cen­tury Mex­ico Borderlands.

Pre­sented as part of B/ordering Vio­lence: Bound­aries, Gen­der, Indi­gene­ity in the Amer­i­cas, a John E. Sawyer Sem­i­nar in Com­par­a­tive Cul­tures gen­er­ously funded by the Andrew W. Mel­lon Foun­da­tion and co-sponsored by the Latin Amer­i­can & Caribbean Stud­ies pro­gram, the Jack­son School of Inter­na­tional Stud­ies, the Simp­son Cen­ter for the Human­i­ties, and the Insti­tute for the Study of Eth­nic­ity, Race, & Sex­u­al­ity (WISER). For more on the B/ordering Vio­lence Sem­i­nar Series, visit www.borderingviolence.com

Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 1
4 pm
Thom­son 317

Mike Wil­son (Tohono O’odham) is a pol­icy direc­tor of the Bor­der Action Net­work. His work cen­ters around pro­vid­ing human­i­tar­ian aid to undoc­u­mented peo­ples who cross through the deserts of south­ern Ari­zona. As a mem­ber of a sov­er­eign Native nation and a mem­ber of the Bor­der Action Net­work, Mike Wilson’s per­spec­tive pro­vides insight into the con­text and impact of U.S. Bor­der Patrol actions on the U.S.-Mexico bor­der and within indige­nous homelands.

Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 31
3:30 pm
Allen Auditorium

“Under Arpaio” shows the grass­roots resis­tance to Mari­copa County, Arizona’s Sher­iff Joe Arpaio, who prides him­self on being the “tough­est sher­iff in Amer­ica.” Arpaio prides him­self on immi­gra­tion raids on migrant and Latino neigh­bor­hoods, human rights vio­la­tions in his jails, and wast­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of tax­payer dol­lars. “Under Air­paio” fea­tures the grass­roots activists from low-income migrant com­mu­ni­ties, the attor­neys, reporters, elected offi­cials, and indige­nous peo­ple who speak truth to power.

7 pm, Wednes­day, Novem­ber 7
Kane 110

Law­son con­sid­ers the ethics and prac­tices of care in the global era and invites a col­lec­tive con­ver­sa­tion about how we frame social cit­i­zen­ship, how we care and who cares for whom. As the demand for care in the U.S. is rapidly increas­ing while pub­lic sup­port for care is falling dra­mat­i­cally, care needs are increas­ingly met in the mar­ket place where care is simul­ta­ne­ously com­mod­i­fied and deval­ued. Accord­ing to Law­son, this “cri­sis of care” is often borne by low-income care providers, many of whom are racial-ethnic women who may be immi­grants and who are often assumed to be undoc­u­mented. Here, she con­tends, the cri­sis of care meets a bor­der crisis.

Since 1996, immi­grants’ rights have been cur­tailed and bor­der enforce­ment has been inten­si­fied and rescaled. Law­son explores how efforts to con­trol the move­ment and work of undoc­u­mented migrants and asy­lum seek­ers have unleashed new spa­tial strate­gies of bor­der enforce­ment that have shifted where the bor­der is, and for whom the bor­der comes into being. In some states, bor­ders are being enforced in com­mu­ni­ties, work­places, hos­pi­tals and schools. These bor­der prac­tices inten­sify the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of low-wage care providers regard­less of their cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus, and con­tribute to the deval­u­a­tion of care.

An inter­na­tion­ally respected fem­i­nist geo­g­ra­pher, Law­son is co-founder of the Rela­tional Poverty Net­work and Mid­dle Class Poverty Pol­i­tics project. A past-president of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Geo­g­ra­phers, she is also the author of Mak­ing Devel­op­ment Geog­ra­phy (2007) and serves as edi­tor for the jour­nal Progress in Human Geography.

The Asso­ci­a­tion for Bor­der­lands Stud­ies invites pro­pos­als for indi­vid­ual papers and com­plete pan­els related to the study of bor­ders. The orga­niz­ing theme for the 2013 annual con­fer­ence is BORDERS, TRANSNATIONALISM AND GLOBALIZATION: Con­tra­dic­tions, Chal­lenges and Res­o­lu­tions. This theme encom­passes a wide range of top­ics and approaches, and it focuses on the con­tin­u­ing the­o­ret­i­cal chal­lenges of defin­ing what bor­ders are and how they work. Are bor­ders actu­ally chang­ing in the 21st cen­tury? Are we resolv­ing the basic ques­tions of how bor­ders both stop and allow, define and per­mit, open and close, sep­a­rate and join? What we do know is that bor­der­lands func­tion as lab­o­ra­to­ries to under­stand changes due to glob­al­iza­tion and transna­tion­al­ism, and they allow us to cap­ture and ana­lyze these com­plex processes.

http://www.absborderlands.org/pdfs/ABS%202013%20call%20for%20papers_English.pdf