A participatory pop-up exhibition breaks down traditional disciplinary boundaries between art and anthropology to inform wider audiences about the humanitarian crisis occurring at the United States–Mexico border.
Migration
15 posts
A deeply interdisciplinary visual artist creates objects that are both art and ethnography. Her installations produce space for immersive, social forms of understanding.
2019 Council on Anthropology and Education Outstanding Book Award winner Gabrielle Oliveira recounts findings from the ethnographic study that formed the basis of her award-winning book.
The deterministic view that climate change invariably causes migration, competition, violence, and collapse is overly simplistic. Bioarchaeology shows us that human responses are far more complex and diverse.
Ted Powers interviews Gregory Feldman about his 2019 book, The Gray Zone: Sovereignty, Human Smuggling, and Undercover Police Investigation in Europe.
The government and media call them “immigrant detention centers.” They are meant to be temporary holding facilities—up to 72 hours—for migrants and asylum-seekers crossing the southern US border. But the average length of stay has become much longer and the facilities have become overcrowded and unsanitary. In a word, the conditions are inhumane.
The criminalization of accompaniment is also an attack on the production of knowledge, particularly the day-to-day knowledge generated by accompanying migrants en route.
I figure I was seven years old when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. I remember being at my neighbors’ house, sitting on their oval braided rug, watching the small-screen TV. I can still picture those fuzzy black and white images of the spacecraft and astronauts. Neil Armstrong uttered his famous words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” I get chills when I replay that moon landing on the internet.
In a transnational context, co-residence and touch are not possible due to the geographic distance among family members. Instead, calling has become an elder care practice: sharing everydayness on the phone by sharing the details of one’s daily life is a way of enacting co-presence at a distance, not only as a feeling, but as a concrete practice that involves parents, their children, and phones.
Public discourse across North America and Europe is increasingly defined by a tension between the (constitutionally protected) rights of citizens and the international human rights of noncitizens. This is also the case in Russia, where activist-organized schooling for refugee and migrant children creates a space in which ideals of citizenship and belonging are negotiated.
Trump’s immigration metaphors set a divisive tone from the top. His immigration metaphors do not constitute “plain speaking,” “strong language,” or “passionate debate,” nor can they be innocently excused as his “own style." His language is textbook demagoguery, and his immigration metaphors help constitute our current sociopolitical moment.
