4252 - Critical Migration Studies and Under-explored Intersectionalities: Racialization, Global Geopolitics, and Indigenous Peoples’ Mobilities

Session Submission Type: Paper Session (100 min)

Description

The panel will explore the parameters for a Critical Migration Studies. Existing research on restrictive/exclusionary policies or racist nativism has problematized ideologies and practices that are intended to “keep immigrants out.” In contrast, there are critical sensibilities that have highlighted the relationship between modern migration and the Western-imperial nation-building projects of the late colonial era. From this perspective, migration regimes are inherently oppressive, even when they are “most welcoming” of immigrants, and the dynamics of migrant incorporation are inextricably related to the history of white supremacy, as well as the consolidation of class power and male domination that has defined the domestic politics of the modern-nation state. These critiques have drawn attention to major transformations in the way that global migration works today that have not been sufficiently accounted for by established theories of immigration, especially theories of immigrant integration and assimilation. We welcome papers that explore the ways that race, gender and heteronormativity shape migration processes, the international migration of indigenous groups from individual nation-states, and the links between contemporary geopolitics, the historical relationship between the sending region/country and the host country, and migrants' ethnic and racial status and experience. For example, how did Japanese migrants, who were interned, subsequently become “model” minorities? How does the neo-colonial relationship between the Caribbean and Latin American countries and the United States shape portrayal and treatment of migrants? How is the ethno-racial experience of migrants from southwest Asia (“the Middle East”) influenced by the United States’ interest in the natural resources in the region? How can we push the field to use critical sensibilities to surface qualitatively different kinds of problems, social positionalities, and national- and transnational-spaces?

Sub Unit

• Section on International Migration / Critical Migration Studies and Under-explored Intersectionalities: Racialization, Global Geopolitics, and Indigenous Peoples’ Mobilities

Presider

• Hadi Khoshneviss, Rhodes College

Individual Presentations

• Banished Men: The Gender, Geography, and Politics of Mass Deportation - Abigail L. Andrews, University of California-San Diego

• Inferiority By Association: Migration Narratives, Animality, and Chicana/Ecofeminist Possibilities - Garrett Bunyak, Georgia Tech

• Legal Status Fluidity: Theorizing Legal Status Transitions and How Filipinos Navigate Immigration Pathways - Daniela Pila, University at Albany

• Making Home Amidst Empire: Indigeneity, Immigration and the Re-Making of Race in Hawai‘i’s Public Housing - Jennifer Rene Darrah-Okike, University of Hawaii-Manoa; Nathalie P. Rita, University of Hawaii; Philip M.E. Garboden, University of Hawaii-Manoa

• White Spaces in Brown(ing) Places: Toward the Spatialization of Critical Immigration Studies - Aaron Arredondo, University of Missouri; Juan José Bustamante, University of Arkansas

Discussant

• Payal Banerjee, Smith College

Session Organizers

• Sofya Aptekar, CUNY - School of Labor and Urban Studies

• Jane H. Yamashiro, Mills College