March 18, 2026 • 59 mins
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Headlines turn migration into a single story about borders and crisis. We open the lens, traveling through the Caribbean and Latin America to reveal routes, identities, and cultural worlds that rarely make it into the frame. Joined by co-editors Dr. Patsy Lewis and Dr. Kristen Kolenz, we share how our new book, Unbordering Migration Studies in the Caribbean and Latin America, brings together scholars and artists to map movement beyond the U.S.-centric view.
We dive into case studies that challenge assumptions: Venezuelans navigating layered sovereignties in Curaçao and Trinidad, Haitian communities negotiating visibility and exclusion, and Chinese migration in Central America shaped by shifting ties between Taiwan and China. We unpack racial triangulation and diaspora politics from Miami to New York, examining how belonging shifts across languages, borders, and Blackness. Along the way, we discuss a people-centered approach that recognizes migrants as creators of social worlds, economies, and culture. Through interdisciplinary methods, we build a toolkit for studying migration that is rigorous, humane, and usable for students, organizers, and policymakers.
Patsy Lewis is Research Professor, Department of Africana Studies, Brown University. She specializes in the political economy and development challenges of the Caribbean. Her publications include Caribbean Regional Integration: A Critical Development Approach; Caribbean Integration: Uncertainty in a Time of Global Fragmentation, Co-edited withTerri-Ann Gilbert-Roberts and Jessica Byron; and Surviving Small Size: Regional Integration in Caribbean Ministates.
Kristen Kolenz is an assistant professor in the international studies program and co-chair of the gender studies program at Centre College in Kentucky. Before joining the Centre faculty in 2022, she was a postdoctoral associate in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown University and earned her PhD in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at The Ohio State University. She also recently published “Mesomapping the Borderlands: Seeing Life, Making Home, and Thinking Iteratively” in Aztlán.
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean
history and culture, hosted byme, Alexandra Miller.
Strictly Facts teaches thehistory, politics, and activism
of the Caribbean and connectsthese themes to contemporary
music and popular culture.
Hello, hello everyone, andwelcome back to another episode
(00:22):
of Strictly Facts, a guide toCaribbean History and Culture,
where we explore the historiesand movements that shape the
Caribbean and its globalconnections.
Today's episode turns ourattention to migration, one of
the defining experiences ofCaribbean life, but also one of
the most maybe misunderstoodwhen viewed through narrow
(00:45):
geographic and politicalframeworks.
Too often, migration in theAmericas is discussed through a
single lens that could becentered on the US border, south
to north movements, or north tosouth movements.
Caribbean and Latin Americanmobility has always been far
more complex, marked byintra-regional migration,
(01:06):
circular movement, east to westmovements, layered histories of
displacement shaped bycolonialism, labor demands,
environmental change, racialformation, and I could certainly
keep going.
In this episode, I'm joined bymy co-editors of a book that I
am very proud to have been partof and putting together.
(01:27):
We are so glad to have back onStrictly Facts Dr.
Lewis, who some of our earlierlisteners might remember having
joined us in the past, as wellas Dr.
Kristen Cullins to discuss ournew book on bordering migration
studies in the Caribbean andLatin America.
Dr.
Lewis is the research professorin the Department of Africana
Studies at Brown University,whose work focuses on political
(01:49):
science and history with anemphasis on Caribbean
regionalism, development,regional trade, agreements, and
international trade.
And Dr.
Collins is an assistantprofessor of international
studies at Center College, whoseresearch focuses on grassroots
resistance to state violencewith specific emphases on the
potential of community practicesthrough decolonial and
(02:12):
transnational feminisms.
Our volume brings togetherscholars and artists across
disciplines and regions torethink how we study migration
by decentering the United Statesand foregrounding the diverse
spaces, identities, andhistories that have long been
overlooked.
Together, we'll reflect on thecollaborative process of putting
(02:33):
this book together, why newscholarship on Caribbean and
Latin American migration is soimportant right now, and how
reimagining borders can help usbetter understand movement,
belonging, and identity acrossthe Americas.
So thank you both for joiningme.
Great to have you back, Dr.
Lewis, and great to have you,Dr.
Collins.
I'll first allow each of you tomaybe tell our listeners a
(02:55):
little bit more about yourselfand what brought you to this
work on Caribbean migrationstudies and Latin American
migration studies.
SPEAKER_02 (03:02):
Thank you, Alexandria.
Yeah, my interest in migrationstudies really comes out of my
interest with Caribbeandevelopment challenges.
And in that context, I looked atthe migration of skilled folk,
primarily nurses and teachers,to North America and Britain.
(03:27):
And I looked at it more from theperspective of development
challenges, brain drain, and theproposal at the time.
Encouraging the migration ofnurses in particular was
projected as a developmentstrategy because it brought
remittances.
And basically, you know, beingvery critical of that approach
to migration.
(03:48):
So that is the context in whichmy own interest in migration
developed.
But in terms of this specificproject, I would say that
originated in a MellonFoundation grant that we managed
to secure when I was director ofthe Center for Latin American
and Carbon Studies here atBrown.
And I worked in collaborationwith Professor Tony Books, who
(04:12):
was director of the Center forthe Study of Slavery and
Justice, which is now the RuudSimmons Center, and Professor
Brian Meeks, who was chair ofthe African Studies Department
at Brown.
And the purpose of this projectwas to shift, not just shift the
attention.
(04:32):
I mean, the migration at thattime had become highly
publicized as crisis.
You know, you had North Africanmigrants coming to the
Mediterranean, and you hadcaravans of people from Central
America crossing the US-Mexicoborder, and everywhere it was
(04:55):
projected as a crisis.
So we wanted to shift the focusfrom migration as a crisis to
thinking about migration outsideof those, you know, highly
politicized and publicizedspaces to look more at what was
happening within our region.
And Latin America and theCaribbean had actually grown in
(05:17):
significance as a place for themovement of people.
I mean, historically, the regionis founded on migration, right?
And that hasn't changed.
Migration is very much part of,you know, continued migration of
the regional experience.
In terms of looking at LatinAmerica and the Caribbean,
there's a lot of thingshappening.
(05:39):
Increasingly more movementwithin the region, but um
movement back from North Americato the region.
But also you had two really hugemovements of people.
First, Haitian migrants,particularly after the 2010
earthquake, and then as economiccollapse and political
(06:00):
instability and politicalcollapse became more dominant,
then you know, Haitian migrationbecame a focus.
And then that was surpassed bythe migration of Venezuelans as
the Venezuelan economy collapsedand parties collapsed under
pressure from the US government.
So that's where that came up.
There's a lot happening outsideof North America and Europe when
(06:24):
it comes to thinking aboutmigration.
SPEAKER_01 (06:27):
Thanks, Alexandria, for having us.
It's really fun to be backtogether.
This was kind of a long road asthese kinds of works always are,
but it was a really coolopportunity to work with the two
of you, especially because mywork isn't focused on the
Caribbean.
Mine is focused on CentralAmerica and really in particular
Guatemala and Central Americansin migration.
(06:49):
So it was fun for me to kind ofput myself a little bit outside
my own, not just likedisciplinary kind of comfort
zone, but also regional comfortzone to think critically about
how we can move the center ofconversations about migration
away from like especially kindof the US-Mexico border, border
(07:10):
crossing, and to think about thereally interesting histories and
futures of migration that isintra-regional when we think
about Latin America and theCaribbean.
So, like you said, um, my worklooks at kind of grassroots
responses to state violence andwhat people are doing to talk
back.
And so my involvement in theseminar, like Patsy said earlier
(07:34):
and in this project, was rootedin my work with art created by
immigrants who are held insideStewart Detention Center, which
is an ICE facility in southwestGeorgia.
So I'm really excited to have myown chapter in the book that
focuses on some of that work andthe exhibit I was able to curate
with the support of the Sawyerseminar during my time as a
(07:55):
research associate at Brown.
And I've continued to be able towork on that project and uh work
on it with my students here inKentucky.
So it's been a really cool wayto jumpstart this work and to
now come back and celebrate kindof its origin in this really
cool collaboration with scholarswho focus on regions all over
the hemisphere.
SPEAKER_00 (08:15):
Definitely.
Thank you both so much.
Just to sort of give ourlisteners a little bit more
context, because as Kristensaid, this has definitely been a
long time coming.
Um, so after Dr.
Lewis was able to secure theMelon Sawyer seminar grant, um,
Kristen and I joined as part ofthis collaborative effort in
2021 to 2022, if I'm notmistaken, which seems wild that
(08:38):
it was so long ago, but alsodoesn't feel that long ago.
Dr.
Collins joined Brown as ourpostdoc.
Um, and I was the graduateassistant and was able to
support our efforts from sort ofa student perspective.
The whole year culminated interms of some of the work that
we did.
(08:59):
As Kristen mentioned, um, we hadthis exhibit that she put
together given her work um withStudent Detention Center, as
well as um two conferences thatwe put on.
And this is really where thecrux of you know some of our
work from this book comestogether.
So people from, you know, allover the world, we had two
(09:20):
conferences.
One was fully remote online,because as our listeners can
imagine, this was COVID times.
And then we also had one thatwas dually enabled both um
virtually, and some of thosejoined us in person.
Um, and I think, you know, fromme as a grad student at the
time, and I think stillnavigating what my interests
(09:41):
are, of course, as our listenersare sure, I'm obviously
interested in Caribbean history.
Um, but I think being able to bepart of this project um and
overall the Sawyer seminar on awhole helped me to really push
my considerations, I think, uhin terms of what my my interests
are in Caribbean history.
Migration, as Dr.
(10:02):
Lewis mentioned, is of course abig part of who we are as a
people, my own family's historyum in general.
But I think being able to seehow when we put together various
things like migration witheconomies, um, with women's
history, and you know, the listcan go on and on.
We all come together in terms ofdifferent points of view, in
(10:24):
terms of what we study.
I think this conversation isreally important and this book
is really important because aswe can perhaps allude to and
talk a little bit more about,there are some gaps.
I think certainly, as we also umalluded to in terms of studying
migration.
Um, I think, as we all said, thebig one has been there's sort of
(10:46):
this focus on US and Mexico interms of migration studies.
And there could be a lot ofreasons for that.
Um, we might not necessarilyhave time to get into all of
those.
But what do you all maybe see assome of these gaps and how do we
intend to maybe make a changeor, you know, create some leeway
(11:07):
in terms of conversations inmigration studies with the um
premise of unbordering migrationstudies, our book?
SPEAKER_01 (11:14):
So like the the idea of addressing the
disproportionate amount ofattention on like certain issues
related to migration, like yousaid, Alexandria, the border and
the US-Mexico dynamics, likethat was kind of like an impulse
for us, I think.
And like Patsy said earlier,we're like concerned with
especially like media attentionon the idea of crisis over
(11:38):
defining the ways that peoplewere moving across the
hemisphere.
And so the concept ofunbordering that comes out of
like a series of conversationsabout like how do we give this
book a name, which I think isthe hardest part of doing any
project is titling it.
Um, how do you boil it down intoone concept?
But I'm really kind of proud ofhaving come to the idea of
(11:58):
unbordering because it is alittle bit artful, but it also I
think emphasizes that we'retrying to offer frameworks for
thinking differently aboutreally like any global issues,
but in particular migration,because we've kind of prompted
the authors to think about theirwork through the lens of how it
like opens up a new pathway thattakes us away from uh like
(12:22):
centering, I think, the globalnorth in particular and
centering the ways that we thinkabout humans and human mobility
from the global north.
For example, I'm thinking aboutum Lucy Leni Yamkis's essay, and
the her chapter is about uhmobilities between Buenos Aires
and like the kind of rural areasof Argentina and Paraguay.
(12:44):
And so in her essay, like we'rethinking about movement from the
rural to the urban, and a lot ofthat movement is actually sort
of like southward.
Um, and then she's thinkingabout the ways that people kind
of like bring their memoriesinto the construction of their
new homes in really difficultplaces.
So her chapter, I think, isreally emblematic of the ways
that we try to think differentlyabout what a border encloses,
(13:08):
what a border means.
And we are trying to urge theauthors that we are in community
with and now the readers of theanthology to, I would say, think
about what migrants andimmigrants construct, whether
that's in a social context,whether it's thinking about the
environment like uh Lucilla didin her chapter, or um, whether
(13:30):
it's more focused on like us thesocial world or the legal world.
The different chapters aretouching on these different
areas of human life through thelens of migration and what
migrants produce, what migrantstheorize outside of the context
of just how are they getting tothe US and how are they leaving
the U.S.
SPEAKER_02 (13:48):
Absolutely.
You know, in the title of thebook, Caribbean and Latin
America and migration, we wantedto have more conversations, you
know, that included theCaribbean with part of that
broader discussion aboutmigration, because um, the
regions tend to be treatedseparately as if there is no
(14:10):
interconnectedness.
And there are lots of points ofconnections which we were uh
deliberately trying to bringout.
And even if all the articlesdon't have that, you know, kind
of trans Caribbean, LatinAmerican, Central American
migration, quality trade, byputting these different case
studies almost together, youknow, it gives you a more
(14:33):
complex sense of what ishappening in that broader
region.
And Kristin commented ondifferent ways of thinking of
migration and the experiencesthat migrants have.
But I'm thinking about one ofour chapters by Natalie Dietrich
Jones that speaks aboutVenezuelans in Curaçao and you
(14:57):
know the complexity of having akind of relationship short of
full independence, which bringsup the question of who is
responsible for borders, whetherit's the dependent territory or
the kingdom, but also speakingto longer movements of migration
(15:21):
between Venezuelans and Curaçaoand the communities that exist
there that tend to get theselonger histories, which also
came up in Shilen Gomez'sarticle, chapter on Trinidad and
Trinidad's contemporary reactionto Venezuelan migrants, that
(15:42):
suggests that there are longerhistories of migrations that can
get lost in this contemporaryfocus that is highly
politicized.
So I think that we really thinkthat there's a lot more to
looking at migration throughhistorical lenses, looking at
migration in terms of race, likewho gets to move, like Mimi
(16:06):
Shell's wonderful article, whichlooks at the question of
mobility and immobility and umhow Haitians experience
migration and closure.
So I think there's a lot.
Those are just a few examples ofsome of the different kinds of
ways.
Um Monica De Hart has a reallyinteresting article of Chinese
(16:29):
migration in Central America andwhat happens when geopolitics
comes into play and countriesshape their formal diplomatic
relations from Taiwan to China.
And we see that that actuallyhas an effect on the different
Chinese associations and howthey move forward.
(16:50):
So a story that's notnecessarily seen as part of a
migration dynamic.
So I just think that this isjust a small suggestion of what
is possible when we think aboutmigration beyond these points of
crisis and illegality andlegality that you know dominates
the media now.
SPEAKER_00 (17:12):
You guys both provided um a bit of a snapshot
on a few of our chapters, butespecially for me as a student,
being able to be in sort of inthe room in these conversations,
right?
Sort of the the majority of thenarrative is always the
quote-unquote developed world ordeveloping world rather moving
to the quote unquote developedworld.
(17:32):
And that's usually the storyabout migration and oftentimes
the influx of um whatever needsare then put on the developed
world for having taken in, or ofcourse gets very complicated in
terms of the politics aroundmigration.
But I think what for me wasreally a standalone from this
(17:54):
collection, our ability to putthis together, is that it not
only decentered, of course,these quote-unquote more
dominant countries or colonial,neocolonial developed countries,
uh, but also I think reallyhumanized migration in ways that
I don't think is often at thecenter, right?
(18:16):
Stories, especially today, aretalking about taxes and, you
know, how this inhibits, youknow, the structures of certain
countries and what are theygoing to do without also
realizing that migrants arepeople, right?
And I feel like that might be asimple statement to make, but
it's really not when we actuallyunderstand the complexities of
(18:38):
what we we've been able to puttogether in this work.
And I think that sort of bringsme to my next question because a
lot of our contributorsapproached this topic of
migration studies from variousperspectives, right?
We've got works that arecertainly historical, we've got
works that are artistic, we haveworks that are kind of um
(19:00):
economic even, but alsoliterature focused.
There's a broad range, I think,beyond just the scope of um, you
know, people focusing ondifferent countries or different
regions.
And so, how do you feel like,you know, we sort of attempted
to balance to create balancefrom these diverse voices while
still maintaining um a cohesiveintellectual framework for the
(19:22):
value?
SPEAKER_02 (19:24):
I I think um the lesson there is that you can
just well, you can, but I thinkthere's a lot of richness in
listening to different ways inwhich people think about
migration, differentdisciplinary perspectives,
right?
I mean, the idea that you canuse literature as Esteban
Lustenov's really, reallyfascinating chapter, looking at
(19:49):
um return migration of MS-13members, and looking at that
through literary lens, lookingat that question through lens of
film, and coming up with somereal insights about what
motivates people.
Um, you have that alongsideAlyssa Trott's article that
(20:11):
looks at something completelydifferent, right?
How governments, despite theidea that they are removing
border restrictions, areactually policing how women move
across borders, which you knowgives you uh I think a richer
perspective.
And for me, it really opened meup to thinking about migration
(20:34):
differently.
Kristen's photo essay, right,and the personal ambitions and
pain and you know desires thatthat that brings out and Tanya's
you know documenting Copplerosas signs, symbols of hope and
support as people transitionacross, you know, hostile
(20:58):
terrain to move to new places.
I think that bringing togetherthat is just so rich.
And how we organize the volume,we looked at the range of
incredible papers over twoconferences.
Of course, we are constrained bythe size.
(21:19):
There are lots of you knowreally brilliant authors we
couldn't invite because you knowwe had limitations on how much
we can actually put in a volume.
We tried, I think, initially, atleast my feel was to get us
wider geographical spread andrange of issues.
(21:42):
Um, I think that was whatinitially drove my eye, but then
discovering, and of course, wewould have discovered this
through the conference itself,the different ways and different
theoretical approaches and ordisciplinary approaches that
people took.
And, you know, keeping an eyethat these were also included,
(22:04):
there were a couple of papersthat we would have liked that
ended up not, you know, makingit into the volume.
But um that just happens withevery volume.
SPEAKER_01 (22:15):
I just want to recognize that I think the way
that this book was able to cometogether, it really reflects
Patsy's vision for the Sawyerseminar as a whole.
And I like want to take a minuteto just like celebrate what it
takes for um a scholar todisplace their own expertise and
(22:36):
um show such generosity ininviting uh new people to think
alongside her.
And um, I think Patsy for me hasbecome like a really important
like mentor in my professionalcareer because of that.
Like you can hear just in ourthe way that we're talking about
the book and our own work, howdifferent our perspectives are.
Um, and Patsy hired me to workon this project um out of a lot
(23:01):
of applicants and sure becauseit was a great job.
It sounded like a lot of fun.
And at first, I think we we sortof like struggled to find our
common ground because we don'thave a ton of common ground in
terms of our disciplinary focus,our regional focus.
But I think that what we bothfound, and maybe what Patsy was
able to see when she was puttingall of this work together, was
(23:23):
that we have a shared vision ofwanting to think critically but
differently broadly, but reallyseriously and specifically at
the same time, um, about how wecan kind of like come together
around these serious issues thatare shaping our world and to and
to do something that mattersfrom academic spaces.
(23:43):
And for me, Patsy has become amodel of humility and of
generosity in creating a spacewhere we can't control it
because we don't talk aboutthose places or those issues or
those disciplines or thosemethods.
And this book is, I thinkexpresses what's possible when
scholars are willing to kind ofstep aside and be a part of a
(24:05):
conversation that doesn't centerthem.
And I that's a really importantmessage, I think, for any field
of study, but especiallymigration studies right now,
when all we hear every day isabout how like terrible and
violent things are.
Um, what we need is like fresh,open, generous, and humble
perspectives to think throughhow things can change for us in
(24:27):
the world.
SPEAKER_02 (24:28):
I just want to say that we always knew that we
wanted to have artisticexpression, right?
And the whole project, the wholeSawyer seminar, um, we we
brought film, we talked aboutfilm and literature, but Kristin
really brought some veryconcrete connections to the
(24:50):
arts, right?
And also an insistence that thishas to be part.
I mean, we were open, so itwasn't like it was a lot, but
Kristen brought um uh awell-known Guatemalan feminist
performer, Rebecca Lane, to theproject, and she was in person.
(25:10):
The first event we had in personafter a year of you know meeting
online, she also mobilized umgroups in Mexico and other parts
of Latin America to do a Zoomperformance when we couldn't
unmeet.
And so it became very importantto be able to express some of
(25:34):
that in the book.
And the book opened to the poemby Danger Ake, right?
Which again, we have to tell hewas one of the people who
performed on Zoom, and we werereally grateful that Kristin
followed up um with his agent sothat we can get um that
(25:56):
important quotation from one ofhis songs, the open our book.
SPEAKER_01 (26:01):
And I think like Alexandria's role in the seminar
too had a lot to do with thatbecause I'm not like a music
person.
I think I like I study music andI care about music politically.
Um but I think that likeAlexandria's like focus on
culture and the importance ofculture was like a huge part of
keeping us centered on I thinklike some of the joyful aspects
(26:23):
of what that means and not justsome of the like politically
important aspects of what thatmeans.
It was really a coolcollaboration between the three
of us, and I'm glad to have hadthis at the beginning of my
career because it it really hasreminded me of like what this is
even for.
SPEAKER_00 (26:39):
I agree, and I think the scope of what we were able
to put together conference-wisemaybe doesn't fully translate.
Um, because as Dr.
Lewis mentioned, you can'tcapture everything in in the
book.
But um, we also had JirleneJoseph, who is the founder of
the Haitian Bridge Alliance, um,who was also part of our
conferences.
SPEAKER_01 (27:00):
We kind of captured her representation as part of
the conference in theintroduction to the book.
And we worked really hard tofigure out how we could bring
her into like onto the pagesbecause her presentation, her
way of talking about Haitiansinside these migration systems
is so powerful.
Um, and she's a real superstarwhen it comes to doing this work
(27:21):
day in and day out.
SPEAKER_00 (27:22):
Certainly, I think, you know, for me, being able to
put these events and theneventually the collection
together brought to me this ideathat, you know, and it I think
is maybe something that I'vetried to capture both in
strictly facts, but also justbroadly in my career as a
scholar, um, that, you know, thework that we're doing should not
(27:43):
really live in a bubble, right?
The fact that, as we've beendiscussing, right, bring
together scholars, artists,creatives, um, nonprofits,
student groups, because therewere certainly student
organizations on campus who werepart of um of the work that we
were doing, bring all of thesepeople together, I think, not
only for the sake of, you know,historicizing and documenting um
(28:08):
what we're calling migrationstudies, of course, for the for
the book, but also moregenerally to really humanize the
study, um, that it's not just,again, I feel like a kind of
broken record at this point, butI think it was a major takeaway
for me, right?
That these violences are veryimportant, very critical to the
lives that people lead.
(28:29):
Um, and if we continue to talkabout things in frameworks of
numbers and, you know, theworries of the state and all
these sort of capitalist ways offraming things, we negate these
very lived and real experiencesthat are certainly part of and
very much integral to not only,you know, people's intentions or
(28:51):
reasons for moving, but youknow, why we have this thing
called migration studies on awhole.
SPEAKER_02 (28:57):
Kristen and Alexandre, you guys just maybe
realize that we have one majoromission from the book.
Now that we're going back tothinking about why didn't we
have an article on food?
Because we had this wonderfulpodcast that Kristin did with
five migrant restaurant in RhodeIsland.
(29:18):
And, you know, what food meantto them.
Community was a very importantaspect of that.
And we even had at the launch ofthe exhibition, we had food
brought by these differentrestaurants.
And food is such a crucial partof the migration story, right?
(29:40):
It's so central.
And just thinking it would havebeen so easy, but maybe with the
space would have been alimitation to have just brought
those interviews.
SPEAKER_00 (29:50):
Well, maybe we just save it for book two, Dr.
Lewis.
You know, there's always thatpossibility.
SPEAKER_01 (29:56):
Yeah, yeah, we kind of this is just a start, so that
all the people Well, I think wealso we did find a great way to
capture the work that we did onthat podcast.
Um, Kennedy Jones, who was agrad student at the time in the
Center for the Study of Slaveryand Justice, she worked with a
(30:16):
photographer and a team tocreate like an in-person
experience that accompanied whatnow exists as a audio series
online.
So folks are welcome to checkthat out.
I actually use it um every timeI teach my Latin America class,
a kind of like intro to theregion.
I choose a couple of thosepodcasts for the end of class.
(30:36):
And so my students get to keeplistening to them.
They're really cool stories,especially now that everybody's
talking about Puerto Rico andPuerto Ricans.
You can listen to um the storyof um Milena Palan and Little
Sister, which like skyrocketedafter um I talked to her for
that interview.
They are living online and umreally, really cool work that
(30:58):
Kennedy Jones did to make thispodcast series um last and
become a little bit morematerial.
SPEAKER_02 (31:05):
Yeah, I also use that podcast in my undergraduate
class on migration.
And um I also use it witharticles on food, and you know,
one of which is looking at theways in which foods then become
gentrified.
If we want to say food canbecome gentrified or modernized,
(31:29):
you know, and we have some richdiscussion about, you know, why
is it that Mexican food needs tobe improved, you know, to be so
there's some interestingconversations that one can have
around food when thinking aboutmigration.
There's something else we did.
We also had exhibitions, JasmineGolvan's brilliant exhibition of
(31:54):
her art at Trinidadian artists,and her movement is from
Jamaica, she's Jamaica.
She studied and lived and workedin New York, then she went back
to Jamaica and then eventuallywent to Trinidad and is based in
Trinidad and has the mostincredible.
Started off as a jeweler andthen ended up, you know, with
(32:18):
most culture.
I mean, really elaborate andexquisite, really exquisite
work.
There's just so much when wethink about migration we can
think about that goes beyondcriminalizing people, othering
people.
I think that that is what drovethe project, and I think we've
(32:38):
managed to capture some of thatin the book.
SPEAKER_00 (32:41):
Definitely.
I did want us to hit on what Ialso find were a few key themes
or major kind of um throughlines across some of the
chapters.
And for me, that would be likerace or the racialization of
migrants, belonging, um, anddiaspora, which I think we all
(33:03):
kind of throw diaspora as a wordnow, and it it's true, you know,
like there is, I would say,like, you know, Dr.
Lewis, you and I are certainlypart of the overarching
Caribbean diaspora living inRhode Island, for instance,
right?
But um, I think the way that wewere able to sort of maybe
complicate or tease outdifferent definitions of those
(33:24):
frameworks when it comes tomigration.
Um, how do you all think we wereable to sort of complicate those
terms in general?
SPEAKER_02 (33:33):
Alexandria, thanks for raising that question
because there are two reallyinteresting um chapters in the
book that, you know, handle thattheme.
And both of them are focused ondiasporas in the US.
And that's Donnet Francis'shegemonic whiteness and looking
(33:54):
at how white Cubans in Miamihave defined whiteness, what it
means to be white, which isdifferent from the kind of um
the American norm of what itmeans to be white.
And tells you a lot thatmigrants, especially if they are
in large numbers and are verywell placed in a particular
(34:18):
milieu, are able to change.
You know, this is not commentingon, you know, what is not
included, right?
In that definition of whitenessand and what it is pushing back
against.
Um, but it's just the poor of adiaspora to change very strong
(34:40):
existing norms.
Then you have um Lopez Oro, wholooks at Gary Funa in New York
and raises the question of whathappens when you migrate and
you're no longer visible as partof the place you come from,
which is Central America.
So when you're in the diaspora,Central Americans don't think of
(35:03):
Gary Funa as being part ofCentral Americans when they
think about Latin America.
And then they're not visible asblack to African Americans.
And how do you navigate thatkind of liminal positionality
from migration?
And again, give you some of thedifferent ways in which migrants
(35:24):
either find a way to redefine,you know, the places they end up
at or struggle to find anidentity, right?
Both a connection to the placethey left as well as to the new
place that they've come to.
Yeah, I think those are tworeally interesting ways of
(35:44):
thinking about race that, youknow, are kind of different from
how we think about race ordifferent examples of how race
operate.
SPEAKER_01 (35:53):
Yeah, and those two chapters, they sit alongside the
four other chapters in the firstpart of the book.
We divided the book into twoparts.
In that first part, we also havethe chapters that focus on
intra-regional migrations andalso Monica de Hart's chapter
about um Chinese migration inCentral America.
I think that that set of sixchapters helps us to really
(36:15):
focus on like racializingmovements, racial formations
that are happening because ofmigration all over the world.
I think that we're used tothinking, and as um Donette
Francis' chapter tells us, likewe're used to thinking about
racial formations happening inthe global north, in the Anglo
North.
And she displaces that bythinking about the those places
(36:35):
as, especially Miami as a placeof triangulation.
I think that that framework alsolets us look at these other
places of triangulationthroughout the hemisphere and
how they're producing these waysof seeing bodies.
So, like in Cecilia RochaCarbuch's chapter, she's talking
about migrant workers,especially from Peru and Chile.
(36:55):
And while she's not using a lotof racial language in her
chapter, I think that when wesit it next to Donna Francis'
idea of triangulation, like wecan really think about what's
happening in these other pointsof convergence throughout the
hemisphere and how people wholike look different, who are
eating differently, who areworking differently, who are
(37:16):
thinking about themselvesdifferently, are producing these
new theories of categorizationfor better or for worse uh
throughout the hemisphere.
And I think it's that's a reallyimportant um contribution of the
book and something we reallyworked hard at doing is what
happens when we think of theseframeworks next to each other,
not just in terms of likeputting these regions in
(37:36):
conversation with each other,but using theories
interchangeably throughout thechapters to think really
critically about what migrantsproduce.
SPEAKER_00 (37:44):
It certainly gets to our point on belonging, right?
And how that functionsdifferently depending on where
you are.
So for instance, in DonetFrancis' chapter, the
conversation of belonging isvastly different from, say, Dr.
Paul Lopez Oro's because of theway that, as both of you
uplifted for us, um, race andthis triangulation of movement
(38:07):
work differently in each locale.
And so I think we're able tosort of tease out a different or
maybe deeper understanding of,you know, I think too often the
conversation of migrationbecomes you were not from here,
right?
You don't quote unquote belonghere.
Um, and these are the the sortof justifications of why the
(38:33):
people who were quote unquotethere originally feel this way
or that way, right?
We've been able to sort ofchange the scope of that um
based off, you know, puttingtogether these works to say that
in certain places people havecreated, um, like Miami, right,
an environment where that sortof instance of belonging looks
(38:53):
drastically different um fromwhat the quote unquote norm is.
I think there are there are justa lot of ways and I think maybe
entanglements that we were ableto bring together throughout
this book.
Um, and that's why for me it wasreally a joy.
And I think, you know, as we'vebeen talking and reflecting on
it, um, you know, having putthis together 2021 to 2022, even
(39:16):
now it I won't say some of thethings feel old, but it's it's
interesting to see how thingshave changed, you know, in the
last what three to four years umsince being able to have these
conversations.
And so I'll maybe turn that alsoto you.
I think it's obviously a joy tosee everything come together
this way through our text, buthow do you feel, you know, since
(39:39):
having these conversations threeyears ago, some of the things
that we talked about then andsome were of the very critical
discussions um that were goingon at the time have maybe
shifted or even deepened since Ithink we had that anxiety when
we were working on the book andjust like how long these
processes take, that maybe thatthese conversations like
(40:00):
wouldn't hold up in a few years.
SPEAKER_01 (40:02):
I think our point is still the same emphases on
immigrants as criminal, as goingfrom less developed to more
developed places, as crisis, asall of these things.
I don't think that that hasshifted significantly.
And so our major point with thiswork remains that we have to
(40:23):
think differently.
We have to think creatively, andlike especially through new
collaboration, new synthesis,um, and like new perspectives.
So I think like in that sense,unfortunately, this is like more
relevant than ever.
I think, especially because ifwe're thinking about the way
that media is representingmigration right now, it's it's
really kind of abysmal.
(40:44):
And I think even in the bestcases, we're only focusing on
violence.
And what this work was asking isasking, is that we just focus on
literally anything else.
Through the same process of theseminar, I produced another
article that isn't in this book,but that is about exactly that.
If we only ever look at theviolence of migration, like
(41:06):
we'll never see anything elseabout it.
And I think anybody who is froman immigrant community who lives
any kind of migrant life willtell you that there's so much
more to their life thanviolence, like so much more to
their community than suffering.
And um I don't think thatanything about that conversation
has been exhausted yet.
SPEAKER_02 (41:26):
I also think we shouldn't overestimate the time
that, you know, and whether thisis salient, because in 2023,
which is really when the projectended, is when we invited
authors to contribute, right?
And they have not just giventheir conference presentations,
(41:52):
people have done differentthings and had to make their
chapters current.
But even as we went along in theeditorial process and coming to
what's right at the end, weasked again if people had any
updates.
So, in terms of the specificcases that we present, I don't
(42:13):
think that those are dated orthere's anything dated there.
But I think, Alexandra, whatyou're saying more is that the
conversation around migrationhas intensified and has moved
even more in the direction ofcrisis, you know.
And now, again, you see whatwe're doing?
We're centering North America.
(42:34):
We are centering North Americabecause it sucks up all the air.
And one of the things that wedidn't pick up, but which is in
Lostano's um chapter, the wholeissue of return migration, I
think that that will become hugeas the US keeps expelling
(42:54):
people, and not just toterritories of origin, but to
places to which they have noconnection, especially to the
tiniest of places in theCaribbean and Latin America, to
the English-speaking Caribbean,places with under 100,000
people, right?
(43:15):
And one of the things uh wefound, I think, in writing this,
as much as we descend to the US,we couldn't exclude the US
completely.
Because the US is so veryimplicated in migration, the
story of migration in theregion, which is why, you know,
we did manage to shift it fromthe border.
(43:36):
But I think that increasingly itwould be difficult to have any
conversation about Latin Americaand the Caribbean without
thinking of how the US,especially in the last few
years, has upended migrationsystems across the region, has
(43:56):
upended people's lives, howreturn migration would more than
likely affect the places that ummigrants who have no connections
to a country have been forciblysent to.
So I think that there's a lotmore and you know unfortunately
(44:17):
again we would have to becareful not to be totally
swamped with all the negativestories but to to look for
stories of possibility and hopebut also acknowledging um how
the ground on which migrationyou know is occurring has
(44:40):
shifted in such a dramatic andyou know it's it's not
unprecedented.
Let's never say this is on whatis happening or is
unprecedented, right?
But definitely for our times wecan see a lot of the
contradictions and the harms ofthese policies.
SPEAKER_00 (44:56):
Wanna shift gears a little bit as Kristen said
earlier in terms of me being theculture girl or a culture I'll
say culture scholar in the ininstead um because I think
things just happen and I thinkin a way that are kismet and
just make sense.
But the the irony is certainlyum present to me that the book
(45:18):
is coming out like basically amonth after Bad Bunny's
performance at the Super Bowl umand how I haven't done a whole
episode on it.
That's also maybe something onthe horizon to do.
But um you know for me to to sitand watch it and also of course
see the myriad of conversationsthat have transpired in its
(45:41):
aftermath about culture, aboutPuerto Rico, about the unity and
togetherness that was alsodisplayed at the Super Bowl as
he shouted out countries acrossLatin America and the Caribbean
to show that you know we aretogether in more ways that we're
different, right?
And so I always ask this of ourlisteners, but what are some of
(46:03):
the ways that I think, you know,and we've certainly talked about
in terms of food in terms of theartists that have been a part of
our conference and eventuallythe book but what are some of
the ways that you think you knowculturally we have displayed
these instances of migration ofbelonging of community
(46:23):
togetherness that don't alwaysget taken up in sort of the the
story about migration studies?
SPEAKER_02 (46:29):
Alexandra can I just comment on Bad Bunny Sure one of
the things that has reallyinterested me and it speaks to
the problem of having theCaribbean being seen as part of
this region and the whole focuson Latin America Latin America
(46:50):
that totally um elides theCaribbean's presence right is
that to his credit Bad Bunnymentioned some Caribbean English
speaking Caribbean countrieswhen he was going up from the
South all the way up to thenorth he mentioned Guyana he
mentioned Antigua he mentionedJamaica and all of the
(47:13):
commentators I've heard and Ican't say that I listen to a
wide range of media right butboth in terms of people
commenting on Bad Bunny in apositive way as well as Latin
American people here and I don'twant to mischaracterize people
who are commenting and beingvery positive about his mention
(47:36):
in Latin America totally missthe point about the Caribbean.
They jump over the Caribbean butof course Cuba is the Caribbean
as far as a lot of people areconcerned right maybe Haiti but
hardly ever the English speakingCaribbean.
So they jump they talk aboutSouth Central and North America
and they totally and and I thinkthat's one of the problems that
(48:00):
I mean Caribbean scholars havebeen we we kind of anglicize the
Caribbean so when we speak aboutthe Caribbean we think of
Caracom with Haiti and Suriname,right?
When Latin Americans think aboutthe Caribbean they think about
Cuba and the Dominican publicand the rest of the English
speaking Caribbean is not reallyconsidered because Latin seems
(48:21):
to be the thing.
And I think that that's one ofthe things that our book really
was trying to get around toreally try to be inclusive.
This is our region.
We have so many problems incommon and we're also very
different.
So it's not to homogenize usthere is no beauty in that but
(48:44):
just to recognize that sometimesyou know we have common
challenges and we might havedifferent experiences within
that common challengerexperience.
And I think we need more of thatwe need more bad bunny to have a
more open view of what this thishemisphere is and where we can
(49:05):
find solidarity.
SPEAKER_01 (49:07):
And I think maybe bridging your question and Bad
Bunny and Patsy's insights umlike I said the work that I do
around immigration is based inAtlanta and one really really
cool thing about working um inany movement in Atlanta is the
the influence of civil rightsstruggle like historically and
(49:27):
contemporarily and um one thingthat has always been a part of
the work that we're doing whichcould very easily focus on um
like Spanish speaking immigrantsbecause that is kind of the the
skills that most of us that areinvolved with this work are
bringing to the like the tablethat we can speak Spanish.
And so that's that's kind ofskewing what we're able to do.
(49:49):
But we've always been inconversation with groups who are
thinking about um the way thatblackness and anti-blackness
influence marginalization forimmigrants.
And so through being involved inthese movements like uh for
years I've been able to see theconvergence of different sort of
like interest-oriented groupscoming together to talk about
(50:10):
the ways that um immigrationenforcement affects people
across races.
And so that has been a way forum like protest spaces for
fundraising spaces to be verymixed between what we normally
think about as like LatinAmerican and Caribbean
separately.
And like as in most protestspaces there's dance and art and
(50:34):
all these things.
And I think we're gonna start tosee more of that and I think in
even like a global way when youknow the administration starts
to target certain groups thoseof us who have been organizing
around other groups you knowwe're gonna show up and so that
only makes our spaces ofresistance richer.
SPEAKER_02 (50:52):
For me it is food.
I would say food Trinidad hasthis wonderful dish called
pastels which is reallyVenezuelan origin.
And of course it's meat but Ihave an aunt in law who makes a
vegan who made a vegan versionthat was just out of this world.
(51:12):
Also when I was growing up wehad people in my community who
used to play the quattro whichis actually um and to play
parang which is music right andI grew up with that on Christmas
mornings because we also hadVenezuelan migrants to um
(51:33):
Grenada but parang is very mucha musical form that you know is
so typical of Trinidad andChristmas right a parang playing
and you know so those are justtwo examples that come up you
know when when you ask thequestion about what kind of
(51:55):
influences I would say I wouldsee from Latin American
migration to the Caribbean.
SPEAKER_00 (52:01):
That's what I think about I thought about it I went
the novel route this time whichI usually go music but I went
novels this time and I thoughtof I mean if if we were to sit
here and name novels onCaribbean Latin American
migration we'd be here all daybut I think for me some of the
ones that really stuck out wereAndrea Levy's Small Island, um
(52:23):
Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy, um TheLonely Londoners by Sam Selvett,
I think, you know the list goeson and on and I will be sure to
add all of those to our strictlyfact syllabus for our listeners
tuning in.
But I think as we've alldemonstrated right there are so
many different avenues when itcomes to culture that migration
(52:45):
underscores and really upliftsand helps shape who these
communities are that they arewritten about, that they are
points of activism, that theyare just who we become when we
evolve and come in contact witheach other as Dr.
Lewis demonstrated through food.
And so there are so many waysthat I hope you know our
conversation helps to alsodemonstrate that for our
(53:07):
listeners who may not evenrealize how integral these
things come to the fore just interms of our own lives.
SPEAKER_02 (53:16):
Alexandra reggaeton that too reggaeton which started
in Panama with the with Jamaicanmigrants and their offsprings
who listen to Jamaican radio andbring it back with their own um
influences and then export itback out and adopt it by Puerto
(53:37):
Rico.
So people think it's PuertoRican right but then we all get
enjoy it.
So in a sense it's it's thatwhole movement that we're seeing
you know from the Caribbean toCentral America from Central
America to Puerto Rico fromPuerto Rico to the US to every
you know that I think is is is alovely story about migration.
SPEAKER_00 (53:59):
Having you know known both of you all and gotten
to work with you all I know oneof our definite interest and
passions I think in putting thisbook together was that it'd be
really accessible to a mass ofpeople right regardless of their
work their background theirunderstanding of migration um
(54:20):
and that it's you knowaccessible to not just scholars
and students right butpolicymakers, community members.
SPEAKER_02 (54:26):
That was definitely an intention in the way that we
crafted this and so you knowwith that intention in mind and
you know who this book hopefullyspeaks to what do you hope that
the variety of people walk awayfrom this book with there are so
many amazing stories there somany ways to understand people
(54:48):
and their experiences that youwill not get in the usual
conversations that most of ushave.
And it's an insight intodifferent lives different ways
in which people think ofthemselves different challenges
they have or different you knowways of of expressing themselves
(55:09):
that that I'm hoping and thatopens up us to understanding or
at least being more open tounderstand difference and to
appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01 (55:18):
Absolutely that and I think that there's also a lot
of potential for people to atthe same time that they might
see themselves in one of thestories that they read because
maybe it connects to somethingthey study or something that
they've lived or somebody thatthey know I think that if they
go on to read a second essay,they're going to learn something
new.
And that's how I felt when I wasworking on putting this volume
(55:41):
together is that as much as Ifelt like I really was part of
certain conversations that werestarting, I've spent almost no
time thinking about the DutchCaribbean as somebody who
focuses on Central Americanmigration.
So I had that experience as Iworked on it and I think that's
what I really hope, especiallyfor students who are maybe
(56:03):
reading this work as part of aclass or people who are um like
really immersed in one area ofof migration studies that this
will just like give a littlewindow, a sort of welcome into
thinking a little bit morebroadly about their own work,
their own interests and theirown lives I think for me it was
a few things.
SPEAKER_00 (56:22):
I think the the general being that despite the
differences put against us,right, or the ways that there
are certainly you knowdifferences intra-regionally
interregionally amongst us thereare so many similarities and
that's something that we drawout through this this text
together that you know beingable to understand migration
(56:45):
studies from this perspectivehelps us to create a broader
narrative where there arecertainly so many more
commonalities.
(57:10):
I think some of those were interms of of course the artistic
celebration um we kind of alsomade a a very pertinent
description of how gender playsa role in migration as well and
you don't have to do this froman academic standpoint of course
(57:30):
right but the work that needs tobe done is multi-tiered
multifold and when we are ableto sort of come together in
these sort of communities inthese ways of understanding
migration who is impacted how weare impacted um and what needs
to be changed it sort ofdefinitely creates a a movement
(57:52):
for lack of a better way offraming for us to to have not
only greater conversations butto create definitely
international change that iscertainly needed at a time as
such as now thank you both somuch for joining me for this
episode of Strictly Facts.
I'm certainly fangirling alittle bit it's fun for me to to
do this because I'm usuallyfangirling over other people's
(58:14):
books but I was part of this oneso this was a nice change for
our listeners you know this wasa tremendous experience for me
and great for it to be comingout as I I am at the tail end of
my graduate journey so we'realmost there.
But for all of our listenerstuning in unbordering migration
studies in the Caribbean andLatin America is out now.
And so be sure to grab your copyI will include a link to it on
(58:38):
our show notes as always for youall to check out.
And I think we also might have apromo code that's going out too
so be sure to um use that tograb your copy and support the
work that we are putting out.
So thank you all for listening.
Thank you Dr.
Lewis and Dr.
Collins for joining me for thisepisode thank you so much Legend
(58:58):
for putting this togetherAlexandra appreciate it.
Of course until next timelooking in to StrictlyFacts
visit strictlyfactspodcast dotcom for more information from
each episode follow us atstrictly facts pod on Instagram
and Facebook and at strictlyfacts PD on Twitter
Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean
history and culture, hosted byme, Alexandra Miller.
Strictly Facts teaches thehistory, politics, and activism
of the Caribbean and connectsthese themes to contemporary
music and popular culture.
Hello, hello everyone, andwelcome back to another episode
(00:22):
of Strictly Facts, a guide toCaribbean History and Culture,
where we explore the historiesand movements that shape the
Caribbean and its globalconnections.
Today's episode turns ourattention to migration, one of
the defining experiences ofCaribbean life, but also one of
the most maybe misunderstoodwhen viewed through narrow
(00:45):
geographic and politicalframeworks.
Too often, migration in theAmericas is discussed through a
single lens that could becentered on the US border, south
to north movements, or north tosouth movements.
Caribbean and Latin Americanmobility has always been far
more complex, marked byintra-regional migration,
(01:06):
circular movement, east to westmovements, layered histories of
displacement shaped bycolonialism, labor demands,
environmental change, racialformation, and I could certainly
keep going.
In this episode, I'm joined bymy co-editors of a book that I
am very proud to have been partof and putting together.
(01:27):
We are so glad to have back onStrictly Facts Dr.
Lewis, who some of our earlierlisteners might remember having
joined us in the past, as wellas Dr.
Kristen Cullins to discuss ournew book on bordering migration
studies in the Caribbean andLatin America.
Dr.
Lewis is the research professorin the Department of Africana
Studies at Brown University,whose work focuses on political
(01:49):
science and history with anemphasis on Caribbean
regionalism, development,regional trade, agreements, and
international trade.
And Dr.
Collins is an assistantprofessor of international
studies at Center College, whoseresearch focuses on grassroots
resistance to state violencewith specific emphases on the
potential of community practicesthrough decolonial and
(02:12):
transnational feminisms.
Our volume brings togetherscholars and artists across
disciplines and regions torethink how we study migration
by decentering the United Statesand foregrounding the diverse
spaces, identities, andhistories that have long been
overlooked.
Together, we'll reflect on thecollaborative process of putting
(02:33):
this book together, why newscholarship on Caribbean and
Latin American migration is soimportant right now, and how
reimagining borders can help usbetter understand movement,
belonging, and identity acrossthe Americas.
So thank you both for joiningme.
Great to have you back, Dr.
Lewis, and great to have you,Dr.
Collins.
I'll first allow each of you tomaybe tell our listeners a
(02:55):
little bit more about yourselfand what brought you to this
work on Caribbean migrationstudies and Latin American
migration studies.
SPEAKER_02 (03:02):
Thank you, Alexandria.
Yeah, my interest in migrationstudies really comes out of my
interest with Caribbeandevelopment challenges.
And in that context, I looked atthe migration of skilled folk,
primarily nurses and teachers,to North America and Britain.
(03:27):
And I looked at it more from theperspective of development
challenges, brain drain, and theproposal at the time.
Encouraging the migration ofnurses in particular was
projected as a developmentstrategy because it brought
remittances.
And basically, you know, beingvery critical of that approach
to migration.
(03:48):
So that is the context in whichmy own interest in migration
developed.
But in terms of this specificproject, I would say that
originated in a MellonFoundation grant that we managed
to secure when I was director ofthe Center for Latin American
and Carbon Studies here atBrown.
And I worked in collaborationwith Professor Tony Books, who
(04:12):
was director of the Center forthe Study of Slavery and
Justice, which is now the RuudSimmons Center, and Professor
Brian Meeks, who was chair ofthe African Studies Department
at Brown.
And the purpose of this projectwas to shift, not just shift the
attention.
(04:32):
I mean, the migration at thattime had become highly
publicized as crisis.
You know, you had North Africanmigrants coming to the
Mediterranean, and you hadcaravans of people from Central
America crossing the US-Mexicoborder, and everywhere it was
(04:55):
projected as a crisis.
So we wanted to shift the focusfrom migration as a crisis to
thinking about migration outsideof those, you know, highly
politicized and publicizedspaces to look more at what was
happening within our region.
And Latin America and theCaribbean had actually grown in
(05:17):
significance as a place for themovement of people.
I mean, historically, the regionis founded on migration, right?
And that hasn't changed.
Migration is very much part of,you know, continued migration of
the regional experience.
In terms of looking at LatinAmerica and the Caribbean,
there's a lot of thingshappening.
(05:39):
Increasingly more movementwithin the region, but um
movement back from North Americato the region.
But also you had two really hugemovements of people.
First, Haitian migrants,particularly after the 2010
earthquake, and then as economiccollapse and political
(06:00):
instability and politicalcollapse became more dominant,
then you know, Haitian migrationbecame a focus.
And then that was surpassed bythe migration of Venezuelans as
the Venezuelan economy collapsedand parties collapsed under
pressure from the US government.
So that's where that came up.
There's a lot happening outsideof North America and Europe when
(06:24):
it comes to thinking aboutmigration.
SPEAKER_01 (06:27):
Thanks, Alexandria, for having us.
It's really fun to be backtogether.
This was kind of a long road asthese kinds of works always are,
but it was a really coolopportunity to work with the two
of you, especially because mywork isn't focused on the
Caribbean.
Mine is focused on CentralAmerica and really in particular
Guatemala and Central Americansin migration.
(06:49):
So it was fun for me to kind ofput myself a little bit outside
my own, not just likedisciplinary kind of comfort
zone, but also regional comfortzone to think critically about
how we can move the center ofconversations about migration
away from like especially kindof the US-Mexico border, border
(07:10):
crossing, and to think about thereally interesting histories and
futures of migration that isintra-regional when we think
about Latin America and theCaribbean.
So, like you said, um, my worklooks at kind of grassroots
responses to state violence andwhat people are doing to talk
back.
And so my involvement in theseminar, like Patsy said earlier
(07:34):
and in this project, was rootedin my work with art created by
immigrants who are held insideStewart Detention Center, which
is an ICE facility in southwestGeorgia.
So I'm really excited to have myown chapter in the book that
focuses on some of that work andthe exhibit I was able to curate
with the support of the Sawyerseminar during my time as a
(07:55):
research associate at Brown.
And I've continued to be able towork on that project and uh work
on it with my students here inKentucky.
So it's been a really cool wayto jumpstart this work and to
now come back and celebrate kindof its origin in this really
cool collaboration with scholarswho focus on regions all over
the hemisphere.
SPEAKER_00 (08:15):
Definitely.
Thank you both so much.
Just to sort of give ourlisteners a little bit more
context, because as Kristensaid, this has definitely been a
long time coming.
Um, so after Dr.
Lewis was able to secure theMelon Sawyer seminar grant, um,
Kristen and I joined as part ofthis collaborative effort in
2021 to 2022, if I'm notmistaken, which seems wild that
(08:38):
it was so long ago, but alsodoesn't feel that long ago.
Dr.
Collins joined Brown as ourpostdoc.
Um, and I was the graduateassistant and was able to
support our efforts from sort ofa student perspective.
The whole year culminated interms of some of the work that
we did.
(08:59):
As Kristen mentioned, um, we hadthis exhibit that she put
together given her work um withStudent Detention Center, as
well as um two conferences thatwe put on.
And this is really where thecrux of you know some of our
work from this book comestogether.
So people from, you know, allover the world, we had two
(09:20):
conferences.
One was fully remote online,because as our listeners can
imagine, this was COVID times.
And then we also had one thatwas dually enabled both um
virtually, and some of thosejoined us in person.
Um, and I think, you know, fromme as a grad student at the
time, and I think stillnavigating what my interests
(09:41):
are, of course, as our listenersare sure, I'm obviously
interested in Caribbean history.
Um, but I think being able to bepart of this project um and
overall the Sawyer seminar on awhole helped me to really push
my considerations, I think, uhin terms of what my my interests
are in Caribbean history.
Migration, as Dr.
(10:02):
Lewis mentioned, is of course abig part of who we are as a
people, my own family's historyum in general.
But I think being able to seehow when we put together various
things like migration witheconomies, um, with women's
history, and you know, the listcan go on and on.
We all come together in terms ofdifferent points of view, in
(10:24):
terms of what we study.
I think this conversation isreally important and this book
is really important because aswe can perhaps allude to and
talk a little bit more about,there are some gaps.
I think certainly, as we also umalluded to in terms of studying
migration.
Um, I think, as we all said, thebig one has been there's sort of
(10:46):
this focus on US and Mexico interms of migration studies.
And there could be a lot ofreasons for that.
Um, we might not necessarilyhave time to get into all of
those.
But what do you all maybe see assome of these gaps and how do we
intend to maybe make a changeor, you know, create some leeway
(11:07):
in terms of conversations inmigration studies with the um
premise of unbordering migrationstudies, our book?
SPEAKER_01 (11:14):
So like the the idea of addressing the
disproportionate amount ofattention on like certain issues
related to migration, like yousaid, Alexandria, the border and
the US-Mexico dynamics, likethat was kind of like an impulse
for us, I think.
And like Patsy said earlier,we're like concerned with
especially like media attentionon the idea of crisis over
(11:38):
defining the ways that peoplewere moving across the
hemisphere.
And so the concept ofunbordering that comes out of
like a series of conversationsabout like how do we give this
book a name, which I think isthe hardest part of doing any
project is titling it.
Um, how do you boil it down intoone concept?
But I'm really kind of proud ofhaving come to the idea of
(11:58):
unbordering because it is alittle bit artful, but it also I
think emphasizes that we'retrying to offer frameworks for
thinking differently aboutreally like any global issues,
but in particular migration,because we've kind of prompted
the authors to think about theirwork through the lens of how it
like opens up a new pathway thattakes us away from uh like
(12:22):
centering, I think, the globalnorth in particular and
centering the ways that we thinkabout humans and human mobility
from the global north.
For example, I'm thinking aboutum Lucy Leni Yamkis's essay, and
the her chapter is about uhmobilities between Buenos Aires
and like the kind of rural areasof Argentina and Paraguay.
(12:44):
And so in her essay, like we'rethinking about movement from the
rural to the urban, and a lot ofthat movement is actually sort
of like southward.
Um, and then she's thinkingabout the ways that people kind
of like bring their memoriesinto the construction of their
new homes in really difficultplaces.
So her chapter, I think, isreally emblematic of the ways
that we try to think differentlyabout what a border encloses,
(13:08):
what a border means.
And we are trying to urge theauthors that we are in community
with and now the readers of theanthology to, I would say, think
about what migrants andimmigrants construct, whether
that's in a social context,whether it's thinking about the
environment like uh Lucilla didin her chapter, or um, whether
(13:30):
it's more focused on like us thesocial world or the legal world.
The different chapters aretouching on these different
areas of human life through thelens of migration and what
migrants produce, what migrantstheorize outside of the context
of just how are they getting tothe US and how are they leaving
the U.S.
SPEAKER_02 (13:48):
Absolutely.
You know, in the title of thebook, Caribbean and Latin
America and migration, we wantedto have more conversations, you
know, that included theCaribbean with part of that
broader discussion aboutmigration, because um, the
regions tend to be treatedseparately as if there is no
(14:10):
interconnectedness.
And there are lots of points ofconnections which we were uh
deliberately trying to bringout.
And even if all the articlesdon't have that, you know, kind
of trans Caribbean, LatinAmerican, Central American
migration, quality trade, byputting these different case
studies almost together, youknow, it gives you a more
(14:33):
complex sense of what ishappening in that broader
region.
And Kristin commented ondifferent ways of thinking of
migration and the experiencesthat migrants have.
But I'm thinking about one ofour chapters by Natalie Dietrich
Jones that speaks aboutVenezuelans in Curaçao and you
(14:57):
know the complexity of having akind of relationship short of
full independence, which bringsup the question of who is
responsible for borders, whetherit's the dependent territory or
the kingdom, but also speakingto longer movements of migration
(15:21):
between Venezuelans and Curaçaoand the communities that exist
there that tend to get theselonger histories, which also
came up in Shilen Gomez'sarticle, chapter on Trinidad and
Trinidad's contemporary reactionto Venezuelan migrants, that
(15:42):
suggests that there are longerhistories of migrations that can
get lost in this contemporaryfocus that is highly
politicized.
So I think that we really thinkthat there's a lot more to
looking at migration throughhistorical lenses, looking at
migration in terms of race, likewho gets to move, like Mimi
(16:06):
Shell's wonderful article, whichlooks at the question of
mobility and immobility and umhow Haitians experience
migration and closure.
So I think there's a lot.
Those are just a few examples ofsome of the different kinds of
ways.
Um Monica De Hart has a reallyinteresting article of Chinese
(16:29):
migration in Central America andwhat happens when geopolitics
comes into play and countriesshape their formal diplomatic
relations from Taiwan to China.
And we see that that actuallyhas an effect on the different
Chinese associations and howthey move forward.
(16:50):
So a story that's notnecessarily seen as part of a
migration dynamic.
So I just think that this isjust a small suggestion of what
is possible when we think aboutmigration beyond these points of
crisis and illegality andlegality that you know dominates
the media now.
SPEAKER_00 (17:12):
You guys both provided um a bit of a snapshot
on a few of our chapters, butespecially for me as a student,
being able to be in sort of inthe room in these conversations,
right?
Sort of the the majority of thenarrative is always the
quote-unquote developed world ordeveloping world rather moving
to the quote unquote developedworld.
(17:32):
And that's usually the storyabout migration and oftentimes
the influx of um whatever needsare then put on the developed
world for having taken in, or ofcourse gets very complicated in
terms of the politics aroundmigration.
But I think what for me wasreally a standalone from this
(17:54):
collection, our ability to putthis together, is that it not
only decentered, of course,these quote-unquote more
dominant countries or colonial,neocolonial developed countries,
uh, but also I think reallyhumanized migration in ways that
I don't think is often at thecenter, right?
(18:16):
Stories, especially today, aretalking about taxes and, you
know, how this inhibits, youknow, the structures of certain
countries and what are theygoing to do without also
realizing that migrants arepeople, right?
And I feel like that might be asimple statement to make, but
it's really not when we actuallyunderstand the complexities of
(18:38):
what we we've been able to puttogether in this work.
And I think that sort of bringsme to my next question because a
lot of our contributorsapproached this topic of
migration studies from variousperspectives, right?
We've got works that arecertainly historical, we've got
works that are artistic, we haveworks that are kind of um
(19:00):
economic even, but alsoliterature focused.
There's a broad range, I think,beyond just the scope of um, you
know, people focusing ondifferent countries or different
regions.
And so, how do you feel like,you know, we sort of attempted
to balance to create balancefrom these diverse voices while
still maintaining um a cohesiveintellectual framework for the
(19:22):
value?
SPEAKER_02 (19:24):
I I think um the lesson there is that you can
just well, you can, but I thinkthere's a lot of richness in
listening to different ways inwhich people think about
migration, differentdisciplinary perspectives,
right?
I mean, the idea that you canuse literature as Esteban
Lustenov's really, reallyfascinating chapter, looking at
(19:49):
um return migration of MS-13members, and looking at that
through literary lens, lookingat that question through lens of
film, and coming up with somereal insights about what
motivates people.
Um, you have that alongsideAlyssa Trott's article that
(20:11):
looks at something completelydifferent, right?
How governments, despite theidea that they are removing
border restrictions, areactually policing how women move
across borders, which you knowgives you uh I think a richer
perspective.
And for me, it really opened meup to thinking about migration
(20:34):
differently.
Kristen's photo essay, right,and the personal ambitions and
pain and you know desires thatthat that brings out and Tanya's
you know documenting Copplerosas signs, symbols of hope and
support as people transitionacross, you know, hostile
(20:58):
terrain to move to new places.
I think that bringing togetherthat is just so rich.
And how we organize the volume,we looked at the range of
incredible papers over twoconferences.
Of course, we are constrained bythe size.
(21:19):
There are lots of you knowreally brilliant authors we
couldn't invite because you knowwe had limitations on how much
we can actually put in a volume.
We tried, I think, initially, atleast my feel was to get us
wider geographical spread andrange of issues.
(21:42):
Um, I think that was whatinitially drove my eye, but then
discovering, and of course, wewould have discovered this
through the conference itself,the different ways and different
theoretical approaches and ordisciplinary approaches that
people took.
And, you know, keeping an eyethat these were also included,
(22:04):
there were a couple of papersthat we would have liked that
ended up not, you know, makingit into the volume.
But um that just happens withevery volume.
SPEAKER_01 (22:15):
I just want to recognize that I think the way
that this book was able to cometogether, it really reflects
Patsy's vision for the Sawyerseminar as a whole.
And I like want to take a minuteto just like celebrate what it
takes for um a scholar todisplace their own expertise and
(22:36):
um show such generosity ininviting uh new people to think
alongside her.
And um, I think Patsy for me hasbecome like a really important
like mentor in my professionalcareer because of that.
Like you can hear just in ourthe way that we're talking about
the book and our own work, howdifferent our perspectives are.
Um, and Patsy hired me to workon this project um out of a lot
(23:01):
of applicants and sure becauseit was a great job.
It sounded like a lot of fun.
And at first, I think we we sortof like struggled to find our
common ground because we don'thave a ton of common ground in
terms of our disciplinary focus,our regional focus.
But I think that what we bothfound, and maybe what Patsy was
able to see when she was puttingall of this work together, was
(23:23):
that we have a shared vision ofwanting to think critically but
differently broadly, but reallyseriously and specifically at
the same time, um, about how wecan kind of like come together
around these serious issues thatare shaping our world and to and
to do something that mattersfrom academic spaces.
(23:43):
And for me, Patsy has become amodel of humility and of
generosity in creating a spacewhere we can't control it
because we don't talk aboutthose places or those issues or
those disciplines or thosemethods.
And this book is, I thinkexpresses what's possible when
scholars are willing to kind ofstep aside and be a part of a
(24:05):
conversation that doesn't centerthem.
And I that's a really importantmessage, I think, for any field
of study, but especiallymigration studies right now,
when all we hear every day isabout how like terrible and
violent things are.
Um, what we need is like fresh,open, generous, and humble
perspectives to think throughhow things can change for us in
(24:27):
the world.
SPEAKER_02 (24:28):
I just want to say that we always knew that we
wanted to have artisticexpression, right?
And the whole project, the wholeSawyer seminar, um, we we
brought film, we talked aboutfilm and literature, but Kristin
really brought some veryconcrete connections to the
(24:50):
arts, right?
And also an insistence that thishas to be part.
I mean, we were open, so itwasn't like it was a lot, but
Kristen brought um uh awell-known Guatemalan feminist
performer, Rebecca Lane, to theproject, and she was in person.
(25:10):
The first event we had in personafter a year of you know meeting
online, she also mobilized umgroups in Mexico and other parts
of Latin America to do a Zoomperformance when we couldn't
unmeet.
And so it became very importantto be able to express some of
(25:34):
that in the book.
And the book opened to the poemby Danger Ake, right?
Which again, we have to tell hewas one of the people who
performed on Zoom, and we werereally grateful that Kristin
followed up um with his agent sothat we can get um that
(25:56):
important quotation from one ofhis songs, the open our book.
SPEAKER_01 (26:01):
And I think like Alexandria's role in the seminar
too had a lot to do with thatbecause I'm not like a music
person.
I think I like I study music andI care about music politically.
Um but I think that likeAlexandria's like focus on
culture and the importance ofculture was like a huge part of
keeping us centered on I thinklike some of the joyful aspects
(26:23):
of what that means and not justsome of the like politically
important aspects of what thatmeans.
It was really a coolcollaboration between the three
of us, and I'm glad to have hadthis at the beginning of my
career because it it really hasreminded me of like what this is
even for.
SPEAKER_00 (26:39):
I agree, and I think the scope of what we were able
to put together conference-wisemaybe doesn't fully translate.
Um, because as Dr.
Lewis mentioned, you can'tcapture everything in in the
book.
But um, we also had JirleneJoseph, who is the founder of
the Haitian Bridge Alliance, um,who was also part of our
conferences.
SPEAKER_01 (27:00):
We kind of captured her representation as part of
the conference in theintroduction to the book.
And we worked really hard tofigure out how we could bring
her into like onto the pagesbecause her presentation, her
way of talking about Haitiansinside these migration systems
is so powerful.
Um, and she's a real superstarwhen it comes to doing this work
(27:21):
day in and day out.
SPEAKER_00 (27:22):
Certainly, I think, you know, for me, being able to
put these events and theneventually the collection
together brought to me this ideathat, you know, and it I think
is maybe something that I'vetried to capture both in
strictly facts, but also justbroadly in my career as a
scholar, um, that, you know, thework that we're doing should not
(27:43):
really live in a bubble, right?
The fact that, as we've beendiscussing, right, bring
together scholars, artists,creatives, um, nonprofits,
student groups, because therewere certainly student
organizations on campus who werepart of um of the work that we
were doing, bring all of thesepeople together, I think, not
only for the sake of, you know,historicizing and documenting um
(28:08):
what we're calling migrationstudies, of course, for the for
the book, but also moregenerally to really humanize the
study, um, that it's not just,again, I feel like a kind of
broken record at this point, butI think it was a major takeaway
for me, right?
That these violences are veryimportant, very critical to the
lives that people lead.
(28:29):
Um, and if we continue to talkabout things in frameworks of
numbers and, you know, theworries of the state and all
these sort of capitalist ways offraming things, we negate these
very lived and real experiencesthat are certainly part of and
very much integral to not only,you know, people's intentions or
(28:51):
reasons for moving, but youknow, why we have this thing
called migration studies on awhole.
SPEAKER_02 (28:57):
Kristen and Alexandre, you guys just maybe
realize that we have one majoromission from the book.
Now that we're going back tothinking about why didn't we
have an article on food?
Because we had this wonderfulpodcast that Kristin did with
five migrant restaurant in RhodeIsland.
(29:18):
And, you know, what food meantto them.
Community was a very importantaspect of that.
And we even had at the launch ofthe exhibition, we had food
brought by these differentrestaurants.
And food is such a crucial partof the migration story, right?
(29:40):
It's so central.
And just thinking it would havebeen so easy, but maybe with the
space would have been alimitation to have just brought
those interviews.
SPEAKER_00 (29:50):
Well, maybe we just save it for book two, Dr.
Lewis.
You know, there's always thatpossibility.
SPEAKER_01 (29:56):
Yeah, yeah, we kind of this is just a start, so that
all the people Well, I think wealso we did find a great way to
capture the work that we did onthat podcast.
Um, Kennedy Jones, who was agrad student at the time in the
Center for the Study of Slaveryand Justice, she worked with a
(30:16):
photographer and a team tocreate like an in-person
experience that accompanied whatnow exists as a audio series
online.
So folks are welcome to checkthat out.
I actually use it um every timeI teach my Latin America class,
a kind of like intro to theregion.
I choose a couple of thosepodcasts for the end of class.
(30:36):
And so my students get to keeplistening to them.
They're really cool stories,especially now that everybody's
talking about Puerto Rico andPuerto Ricans.
You can listen to um the storyof um Milena Palan and Little
Sister, which like skyrocketedafter um I talked to her for
that interview.
They are living online and umreally, really cool work that
(30:58):
Kennedy Jones did to make thispodcast series um last and
become a little bit morematerial.
SPEAKER_02 (31:05):
Yeah, I also use that podcast in my undergraduate
class on migration.
And um I also use it witharticles on food, and you know,
one of which is looking at theways in which foods then become
gentrified.
If we want to say food canbecome gentrified or modernized,
(31:29):
you know, and we have some richdiscussion about, you know, why
is it that Mexican food needs tobe improved, you know, to be so
there's some interestingconversations that one can have
around food when thinking aboutmigration.
There's something else we did.
We also had exhibitions, JasmineGolvan's brilliant exhibition of
(31:54):
her art at Trinidadian artists,and her movement is from
Jamaica, she's Jamaica.
She studied and lived and workedin New York, then she went back
to Jamaica and then eventuallywent to Trinidad and is based in
Trinidad and has the mostincredible.
Started off as a jeweler andthen ended up, you know, with
(32:18):
most culture.
I mean, really elaborate andexquisite, really exquisite
work.
There's just so much when wethink about migration we can
think about that goes beyondcriminalizing people, othering
people.
I think that that is what drovethe project, and I think we've
(32:38):
managed to capture some of thatin the book.
SPEAKER_00 (32:41):
Definitely.
I did want us to hit on what Ialso find were a few key themes
or major kind of um throughlines across some of the
chapters.
And for me, that would be likerace or the racialization of
migrants, belonging, um, anddiaspora, which I think we all
(33:03):
kind of throw diaspora as a wordnow, and it it's true, you know,
like there is, I would say,like, you know, Dr.
Lewis, you and I are certainlypart of the overarching
Caribbean diaspora living inRhode Island, for instance,
right?
But um, I think the way that wewere able to sort of maybe
complicate or tease outdifferent definitions of those
(33:24):
frameworks when it comes tomigration.
Um, how do you all think we wereable to sort of complicate those
terms in general?
SPEAKER_02 (33:33):
Alexandria, thanks for raising that question
because there are two reallyinteresting um chapters in the
book that, you know, handle thattheme.
And both of them are focused ondiasporas in the US.
And that's Donnet Francis'shegemonic whiteness and looking
(33:54):
at how white Cubans in Miamihave defined whiteness, what it
means to be white, which isdifferent from the kind of um
the American norm of what itmeans to be white.
And tells you a lot thatmigrants, especially if they are
in large numbers and are verywell placed in a particular
(34:18):
milieu, are able to change.
You know, this is not commentingon, you know, what is not
included, right?
In that definition of whitenessand and what it is pushing back
against.
Um, but it's just the poor of adiaspora to change very strong
(34:40):
existing norms.
Then you have um Lopez Oro, wholooks at Gary Funa in New York
and raises the question of whathappens when you migrate and
you're no longer visible as partof the place you come from,
which is Central America.
So when you're in the diaspora,Central Americans don't think of
(35:03):
Gary Funa as being part ofCentral Americans when they
think about Latin America.
And then they're not visible asblack to African Americans.
And how do you navigate thatkind of liminal positionality
from migration?
And again, give you some of thedifferent ways in which migrants
(35:24):
either find a way to redefine,you know, the places they end up
at or struggle to find anidentity, right?
Both a connection to the placethey left as well as to the new
place that they've come to.
Yeah, I think those are tworeally interesting ways of
(35:44):
thinking about race that, youknow, are kind of different from
how we think about race ordifferent examples of how race
operate.
SPEAKER_01 (35:53):
Yeah, and those two chapters, they sit alongside the
four other chapters in the firstpart of the book.
We divided the book into twoparts.
In that first part, we also havethe chapters that focus on
intra-regional migrations andalso Monica de Hart's chapter
about um Chinese migration inCentral America.
I think that that set of sixchapters helps us to really
(36:15):
focus on like racializingmovements, racial formations
that are happening because ofmigration all over the world.
I think that we're used tothinking, and as um Donette
Francis' chapter tells us, likewe're used to thinking about
racial formations happening inthe global north, in the Anglo
North.
And she displaces that bythinking about the those places
(36:35):
as, especially Miami as a placeof triangulation.
I think that that framework alsolets us look at these other
places of triangulationthroughout the hemisphere and
how they're producing these waysof seeing bodies.
So, like in Cecilia RochaCarbuch's chapter, she's talking
about migrant workers,especially from Peru and Chile.
(36:55):
And while she's not using a lotof racial language in her
chapter, I think that when wesit it next to Donna Francis'
idea of triangulation, like wecan really think about what's
happening in these other pointsof convergence throughout the
hemisphere and how people wholike look different, who are
eating differently, who areworking differently, who are
(37:16):
thinking about themselvesdifferently, are producing these
new theories of categorizationfor better or for worse uh
throughout the hemisphere.
And I think it's that's a reallyimportant um contribution of the
book and something we reallyworked hard at doing is what
happens when we think of theseframeworks next to each other,
not just in terms of likeputting these regions in
(37:36):
conversation with each other,but using theories
interchangeably throughout thechapters to think really
critically about what migrantsproduce.
SPEAKER_00 (37:44):
It certainly gets to our point on belonging, right?
And how that functionsdifferently depending on where
you are.
So for instance, in DonetFrancis' chapter, the
conversation of belonging isvastly different from, say, Dr.
Paul Lopez Oro's because of theway that, as both of you
uplifted for us, um, race andthis triangulation of movement
(38:07):
work differently in each locale.
And so I think we're able tosort of tease out a different or
maybe deeper understanding of,you know, I think too often the
conversation of migrationbecomes you were not from here,
right?
You don't quote unquote belonghere.
Um, and these are the the sortof justifications of why the
(38:33):
people who were quote unquotethere originally feel this way
or that way, right?
We've been able to sort ofchange the scope of that um
based off, you know, puttingtogether these works to say that
in certain places people havecreated, um, like Miami, right,
an environment where that sortof instance of belonging looks
(38:53):
drastically different um fromwhat the quote unquote norm is.
I think there are there are justa lot of ways and I think maybe
entanglements that we were ableto bring together throughout
this book.
Um, and that's why for me it wasreally a joy.
And I think, you know, as we'vebeen talking and reflecting on
it, um, you know, having putthis together 2021 to 2022, even
(39:16):
now it I won't say some of thethings feel old, but it's it's
interesting to see how thingshave changed, you know, in the
last what three to four years umsince being able to have these
conversations.
And so I'll maybe turn that alsoto you.
I think it's obviously a joy tosee everything come together
this way through our text, buthow do you feel, you know, since
(39:39):
having these conversations threeyears ago, some of the things
that we talked about then andsome were of the very critical
discussions um that were goingon at the time have maybe
shifted or even deepened since Ithink we had that anxiety when
we were working on the book andjust like how long these
processes take, that maybe thatthese conversations like
(40:00):
wouldn't hold up in a few years.
SPEAKER_01 (40:02):
I think our point is still the same emphases on
immigrants as criminal, as goingfrom less developed to more
developed places, as crisis, asall of these things.
I don't think that that hasshifted significantly.
And so our major point with thiswork remains that we have to
(40:23):
think differently.
We have to think creatively, andlike especially through new
collaboration, new synthesis,um, and like new perspectives.
So I think like in that sense,unfortunately, this is like more
relevant than ever.
I think, especially because ifwe're thinking about the way
that media is representingmigration right now, it's it's
really kind of abysmal.
(40:44):
And I think even in the bestcases, we're only focusing on
violence.
And what this work was asking isasking, is that we just focus on
literally anything else.
Through the same process of theseminar, I produced another
article that isn't in this book,but that is about exactly that.
If we only ever look at theviolence of migration, like
(41:06):
we'll never see anything elseabout it.
And I think anybody who is froman immigrant community who lives
any kind of migrant life willtell you that there's so much
more to their life thanviolence, like so much more to
their community than suffering.
And um I don't think thatanything about that conversation
has been exhausted yet.
SPEAKER_02 (41:26):
I also think we shouldn't overestimate the time
that, you know, and whether thisis salient, because in 2023,
which is really when the projectended, is when we invited
authors to contribute, right?
And they have not just giventheir conference presentations,
(41:52):
people have done differentthings and had to make their
chapters current.
But even as we went along in theeditorial process and coming to
what's right at the end, weasked again if people had any
updates.
So, in terms of the specificcases that we present, I don't
(42:13):
think that those are dated orthere's anything dated there.
But I think, Alexandra, whatyou're saying more is that the
conversation around migrationhas intensified and has moved
even more in the direction ofcrisis, you know.
And now, again, you see whatwe're doing?
We're centering North America.
(42:34):
We are centering North Americabecause it sucks up all the air.
And one of the things that wedidn't pick up, but which is in
Lostano's um chapter, the wholeissue of return migration, I
think that that will become hugeas the US keeps expelling
(42:54):
people, and not just toterritories of origin, but to
places to which they have noconnection, especially to the
tiniest of places in theCaribbean and Latin America, to
the English-speaking Caribbean,places with under 100,000
people, right?
(43:15):
And one of the things uh wefound, I think, in writing this,
as much as we descend to the US,we couldn't exclude the US
completely.
Because the US is so veryimplicated in migration, the
story of migration in theregion, which is why, you know,
we did manage to shift it fromthe border.
(43:36):
But I think that increasingly itwould be difficult to have any
conversation about Latin Americaand the Caribbean without
thinking of how the US,especially in the last few
years, has upended migrationsystems across the region, has
(43:56):
upended people's lives, howreturn migration would more than
likely affect the places that ummigrants who have no connections
to a country have been forciblysent to.
So I think that there's a lotmore and you know unfortunately
(44:17):
again we would have to becareful not to be totally
swamped with all the negativestories but to to look for
stories of possibility and hopebut also acknowledging um how
the ground on which migrationyou know is occurring has
(44:40):
shifted in such a dramatic andyou know it's it's not
unprecedented.
Let's never say this is on whatis happening or is
unprecedented, right?
But definitely for our times wecan see a lot of the
contradictions and the harms ofthese policies.
SPEAKER_00 (44:56):
Wanna shift gears a little bit as Kristen said
earlier in terms of me being theculture girl or a culture I'll
say culture scholar in the ininstead um because I think
things just happen and I thinkin a way that are kismet and
just make sense.
But the the irony is certainlyum present to me that the book
(45:18):
is coming out like basically amonth after Bad Bunny's
performance at the Super Bowl umand how I haven't done a whole
episode on it.
That's also maybe something onthe horizon to do.
But um you know for me to to sitand watch it and also of course
see the myriad of conversationsthat have transpired in its
(45:41):
aftermath about culture, aboutPuerto Rico, about the unity and
togetherness that was alsodisplayed at the Super Bowl as
he shouted out countries acrossLatin America and the Caribbean
to show that you know we aretogether in more ways that we're
different, right?
And so I always ask this of ourlisteners, but what are some of
(46:03):
the ways that I think, you know,and we've certainly talked about
in terms of food in terms of theartists that have been a part of
our conference and eventuallythe book but what are some of
the ways that you think you knowculturally we have displayed
these instances of migration ofbelonging of community
(46:23):
togetherness that don't alwaysget taken up in sort of the the
story about migration studies?
SPEAKER_02 (46:29):
Alexandra can I just comment on Bad Bunny Sure one of
the things that has reallyinterested me and it speaks to
the problem of having theCaribbean being seen as part of
this region and the whole focuson Latin America Latin America
(46:50):
that totally um elides theCaribbean's presence right is
that to his credit Bad Bunnymentioned some Caribbean English
speaking Caribbean countrieswhen he was going up from the
South all the way up to thenorth he mentioned Guyana he
mentioned Antigua he mentionedJamaica and all of the
(47:13):
commentators I've heard and Ican't say that I listen to a
wide range of media right butboth in terms of people
commenting on Bad Bunny in apositive way as well as Latin
American people here and I don'twant to mischaracterize people
who are commenting and beingvery positive about his mention
(47:36):
in Latin America totally missthe point about the Caribbean.
They jump over the Caribbean butof course Cuba is the Caribbean
as far as a lot of people areconcerned right maybe Haiti but
hardly ever the English speakingCaribbean.
So they jump they talk aboutSouth Central and North America
and they totally and and I thinkthat's one of the problems that
(48:00):
I mean Caribbean scholars havebeen we we kind of anglicize the
Caribbean so when we speak aboutthe Caribbean we think of
Caracom with Haiti and Suriname,right?
When Latin Americans think aboutthe Caribbean they think about
Cuba and the Dominican publicand the rest of the English
speaking Caribbean is not reallyconsidered because Latin seems
(48:21):
to be the thing.
And I think that that's one ofthe things that our book really
was trying to get around toreally try to be inclusive.
This is our region.
We have so many problems incommon and we're also very
different.
So it's not to homogenize usthere is no beauty in that but
(48:44):
just to recognize that sometimesyou know we have common
challenges and we might havedifferent experiences within
that common challengerexperience.
And I think we need more of thatwe need more bad bunny to have a
more open view of what this thishemisphere is and where we can
(49:05):
find solidarity.
SPEAKER_01 (49:07):
And I think maybe bridging your question and Bad
Bunny and Patsy's insights umlike I said the work that I do
around immigration is based inAtlanta and one really really
cool thing about working um inany movement in Atlanta is the
the influence of civil rightsstruggle like historically and
(49:27):
contemporarily and um one thingthat has always been a part of
the work that we're doing whichcould very easily focus on um
like Spanish speaking immigrantsbecause that is kind of the the
skills that most of us that areinvolved with this work are
bringing to the like the tablethat we can speak Spanish.
And so that's that's kind ofskewing what we're able to do.
(49:49):
But we've always been inconversation with groups who are
thinking about um the way thatblackness and anti-blackness
influence marginalization forimmigrants.
And so through being involved inthese movements like uh for
years I've been able to see theconvergence of different sort of
like interest-oriented groupscoming together to talk about
(50:10):
the ways that um immigrationenforcement affects people
across races.
And so that has been a way forum like protest spaces for
fundraising spaces to be verymixed between what we normally
think about as like LatinAmerican and Caribbean
separately.
And like as in most protestspaces there's dance and art and
(50:34):
all these things.
And I think we're gonna start tosee more of that and I think in
even like a global way when youknow the administration starts
to target certain groups thoseof us who have been organizing
around other groups you knowwe're gonna show up and so that
only makes our spaces ofresistance richer.
SPEAKER_02 (50:52):
For me it is food.
I would say food Trinidad hasthis wonderful dish called
pastels which is reallyVenezuelan origin.
And of course it's meat but Ihave an aunt in law who makes a
vegan who made a vegan versionthat was just out of this world.
(51:12):
Also when I was growing up wehad people in my community who
used to play the quattro whichis actually um and to play
parang which is music right andI grew up with that on Christmas
mornings because we also hadVenezuelan migrants to um
(51:33):
Grenada but parang is very mucha musical form that you know is
so typical of Trinidad andChristmas right a parang playing
and you know so those are justtwo examples that come up you
know when when you ask thequestion about what kind of
(51:55):
influences I would say I wouldsee from Latin American
migration to the Caribbean.
SPEAKER_00 (52:01):
That's what I think about I thought about it I went
the novel route this time whichI usually go music but I went
novels this time and I thoughtof I mean if if we were to sit
here and name novels onCaribbean Latin American
migration we'd be here all daybut I think for me some of the
ones that really stuck out wereAndrea Levy's Small Island, um
(52:23):
Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy, um TheLonely Londoners by Sam Selvett,
I think, you know the list goeson and on and I will be sure to
add all of those to our strictlyfact syllabus for our listeners
tuning in.
But I think as we've alldemonstrated right there are so
many different avenues when itcomes to culture that migration
(52:45):
underscores and really upliftsand helps shape who these
communities are that they arewritten about, that they are
points of activism, that theyare just who we become when we
evolve and come in contact witheach other as Dr.
Lewis demonstrated through food.
And so there are so many waysthat I hope you know our
conversation helps to alsodemonstrate that for our
(53:07):
listeners who may not evenrealize how integral these
things come to the fore just interms of our own lives.
SPEAKER_02 (53:16):
Alexandra reggaeton that too reggaeton which started
in Panama with the with Jamaicanmigrants and their offsprings
who listen to Jamaican radio andbring it back with their own um
influences and then export itback out and adopt it by Puerto
(53:37):
Rico.
So people think it's PuertoRican right but then we all get
enjoy it.
So in a sense it's it's thatwhole movement that we're seeing
you know from the Caribbean toCentral America from Central
America to Puerto Rico fromPuerto Rico to the US to every
you know that I think is is is alovely story about migration.
SPEAKER_00 (53:59):
Having you know known both of you all and gotten
to work with you all I know oneof our definite interest and
passions I think in putting thisbook together was that it'd be
really accessible to a mass ofpeople right regardless of their
work their background theirunderstanding of migration um
(54:20):
and that it's you knowaccessible to not just scholars
and students right butpolicymakers, community members.
SPEAKER_02 (54:26):
That was definitely an intention in the way that we
crafted this and so you knowwith that intention in mind and
you know who this book hopefullyspeaks to what do you hope that
the variety of people walk awayfrom this book with there are so
many amazing stories there somany ways to understand people
(54:48):
and their experiences that youwill not get in the usual
conversations that most of ushave.
And it's an insight intodifferent lives different ways
in which people think ofthemselves different challenges
they have or different you knowways of of expressing themselves
(55:09):
that that I'm hoping and thatopens up us to understanding or
at least being more open tounderstand difference and to
appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01 (55:18):
Absolutely that and I think that there's also a lot
of potential for people to atthe same time that they might
see themselves in one of thestories that they read because
maybe it connects to somethingthey study or something that
they've lived or somebody thatthey know I think that if they
go on to read a second essay,they're going to learn something
new.
And that's how I felt when I wasworking on putting this volume
(55:41):
together is that as much as Ifelt like I really was part of
certain conversations that werestarting, I've spent almost no
time thinking about the DutchCaribbean as somebody who
focuses on Central Americanmigration.
So I had that experience as Iworked on it and I think that's
what I really hope, especiallyfor students who are maybe
(56:03):
reading this work as part of aclass or people who are um like
really immersed in one area ofof migration studies that this
will just like give a littlewindow, a sort of welcome into
thinking a little bit morebroadly about their own work,
their own interests and theirown lives I think for me it was
a few things.
SPEAKER_00 (56:22):
I think the the general being that despite the
differences put against us,right, or the ways that there
are certainly you knowdifferences intra-regionally
interregionally amongst us thereare so many similarities and
that's something that we drawout through this this text
together that you know beingable to understand migration
(56:45):
studies from this perspectivehelps us to create a broader
narrative where there arecertainly so many more
commonalities.
(57:10):
I think some of those were interms of of course the artistic
celebration um we kind of alsomade a a very pertinent
description of how gender playsa role in migration as well and
you don't have to do this froman academic standpoint of course
(57:30):
right but the work that needs tobe done is multi-tiered
multifold and when we are ableto sort of come together in
these sort of communities inthese ways of understanding
migration who is impacted how weare impacted um and what needs
to be changed it sort ofdefinitely creates a a movement
(57:52):
for lack of a better way offraming for us to to have not
only greater conversations butto create definitely
international change that iscertainly needed at a time as
such as now thank you both somuch for joining me for this
episode of Strictly Facts.
I'm certainly fangirling alittle bit it's fun for me to to
do this because I'm usuallyfangirling over other people's
(58:14):
books but I was part of this oneso this was a nice change for
our listeners you know this wasa tremendous experience for me
and great for it to be comingout as I I am at the tail end of
my graduate journey so we'realmost there.
But for all of our listenerstuning in unbordering migration
studies in the Caribbean andLatin America is out now.
And so be sure to grab your copyI will include a link to it on
(58:38):
our show notes as always for youall to check out.
And I think we also might have apromo code that's going out too
so be sure to um use that tograb your copy and support the
work that we are putting out.
So thank you all for listening.
Thank you Dr.
Lewis and Dr.
Collins for joining me for thisepisode thank you so much Legend
(58:58):
for putting this togetherAlexandra appreciate it.
Of course until next timelooking in to StrictlyFacts
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