Communitites

WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? – CORPORATE DISCOURSE AND FRACKING ABOVE THE MARCELLUS SHALE

By Zachary Grobe

This paper analyzes the ways in which the natural gas industry deploys particular historical narratives and figurations of place in order to foster strong links between working-class identities and the labor of resource extraction—an effort in service of expanding the fracking of the Marcellus Shale. A key figure within this discourse is that of the neighbor, a social position exploited by fracking companies to position themselves within communities of interest, and also one taken up by activists in the name of collective interests and solidarity. This paper explores how the figure of the neighbor functions within these discourses and might serve as a site of emergence for new ways of relating to history, place, and community.

BORDER CROSSERS AND CONTESTED OPEN SPACES IN PARIS

By Micael Ennis-McMillan

An increasing number of asylum seekers in Europe have settled in temporary camps in Paris and other urban areas. This ethnographic photo essay explores how border crossers in Paris create camps in open yet contested spaces, including parks, boulevards, and canal walkways. How does the process of creating and destroying camps challenge the meaning of open space in urban Europe?

Intersectionality and U.S. Immigration Policy: Keeping out Defectives

By Beth Jörgensen

My presentation will give a brief overview of U.S. immigration policies that put up barriers to stop the flow of aspiring immigrants who have stigmatized disability identities as defined by country of origin, ethnicity and/or the ever-changing category of physical or psychosocial “disability.” The language used in the policies of the past and of the present, which contains many contradictions across time, constructs certain bodies and minds as disabled and reflects a view of the putatively disabled as a burden and a waste of public funds, in defiance of the value and the fluid nature of human diversity.

Infrastructures

WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? – CORPORATE DISCOURSE AND FRACKING ABOVE THE MARCELLUS SHALE

By Zachary Grobe

This paper analyzes the ways in which the natural gas industry deploys particular historical narratives and figurations of place in order to foster strong links between working-class identities and the labor of resource extraction—an effort in service of expanding the fracking of the Marcellus Shale. A key figure within this discourse is that of the neighbor, a social position exploited by fracking companies to position themselves within communities of interest, and also one taken up by activists in the name of collective interests and solidarity. This paper explores how the figure of the neighbor functions within these discourses and might serve as a site of emergence for new ways of relating to history, place, and community.

IMMIGRATION POLICY AND DISABLED PEOPLE

By Beth Jörgensen

My presentation will give a brief overview of the policies in many seemingly “progressive” countries that put up barriers to stop the flow of aspiring immigrants who have stigmatized disability identities. The language used in these policies reflects a view of the disabled as a burden and implicitly a waste of public funds, in defiance of the value and the fluid nature of human diversity.

Refoulement as Biopolitical Praxis: Subalternity, Ethnography, and Ethics at the Mexico-Guatemala Border

By John Kennedy

In this presentation, I will examine the ways in subalternity as “a project of Marxism” (John Beverley) elides with the situational ethics and epistemic practices of an engagement with refugees, refoulers, deportees, migrants, and people in general who cannot be neatly summarized by these political ontologies because, as I argue, they construe their own nominal limits in the world. In this way, I will call into question the ways in which North American borders supply a recursive biopolitics of migrant belonging (ethnicity, nationality, gender) by utilizing (sensory) ethnography I conducted at the Mexico-Guatemala “border” to deconstruct the liminality in which asylum seekers from the Northern Triangle are now placed into a double-bind where migration and refoulement become interchangeable in the end.

THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF A SOLAR BORDER WALL EXPLORED THROUGH A SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT LENS

By Natalia Romanzo

Environmentalism alone is not enough. We must look at the solar border wall in a manner that encompasses both human and ecological systems. Exploring border problems through a sustainable development lens allows us to do this. 

Materialities

Art as Advocacy: Protecting the U.S.-Mexico Border Environment in Amanda Keller-Konya’s “Specimens”

By Georgina Whittingham

“The U. S.-Mexican border is an open wound where the third world grates against the first and bleeds” (Gloria Anzaldua. Borderland/La Frontera). In this essay, I focus on Anzaldua’s often-quoted description of border culture to analyze the materials and images artists such as Amanda Keller Konya, Roger Peet, J. Leigh García, and cartoonist Feggo (Felipe Galindo) to name a few, use to underscore, and hopefully contribute to healing, the violent environmental toll and the deep hurt that Mexican-Americans carry as a result of the United States’ long-standing approach to border control.

IMMIGRATION POLICY AND DISABLED PEOPLE

By Beth Jörgensen

My presentation will give a brief overview of the policies in many seemingly “progressive” countries that put up barriers to stop the flow of aspiring immigrants who have stigmatized disability identities. The language used in these policies reflects a view of the disabled as a burden and implicitly a waste of public funds, in defiance of the value and the fluid nature of human diversity.

BORDER CROSSERS AND CONTESTED OPEN SPACES IN PARIS

By Micael Ennis-McMillan

An increasing number of asylum seekers in Europe have settled in temporary camps in Paris and other urban areas. This ethnographic photo essay explores how border crossers in Paris create camps in open yet contested spaces, including parks, boulevards, and canal walkways. How does the process of creating and destroying camps challenge the meaning of open space in urban Europe?

THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF A SOLAR BORDER WALL EXPLORED THROUGH A SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT LENS

By Natalia Romanzo

Environmentalism alone is not enough. We must look at the solar border wall in a manner that encompasses both human and ecological systems. Exploring border problems through a sustainable development lens allows us to do this. 

Security/Insecurity

WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? – CORPORATE DISCOURSE AND FRACKING ABOVE THE MARCELLUS SHALE

By Zachary Grobe

This paper analyzes the ways in which the natural gas industry deploys particular historical narratives and figurations of place in order to foster strong links between working-class identities and the labor of resource extraction—an effort in service of expanding the fracking of the Marcellus Shale. A key figure within this discourse is that of the neighbor, a social position exploited by fracking companies to position themselves within communities of interest, and also one taken up by activists in the name of collective interests and solidarity. This paper explores how the figure of the neighbor functions within these discourses and might serve as a site of emergence for new ways of relating to history, place, and community.

IMMIGRATION POLICY AND DISABLED PEOPLE

By Beth Jörgensen

My presentation will give a brief overview of the policies in many seemingly “progressive” countries that put up barriers to stop the flow of aspiring immigrants who have stigmatized disability identities. The language used in these policies reflects a view of the disabled as a burden and implicitly a waste of public funds, in defiance of the value and the fluid nature of human diversity.

BORDER CROSSERS AND CONTESTED OPEN SPACES IN PARIS

By Micael Ennis-McMillan

An increasing number of asylum seekers in Europe have settled in temporary camps in Paris and other urban areas. This ethnographic photo essay explores how border crossers in Paris create camps in open yet contested spaces, including parks, boulevards, and canal walkways. How does the process of creating and destroying camps challenge the meaning of open space in urban Europe?

THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF A SOLAR BORDER WALL EXPLORED THROUGH A SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT LENS

By Natalia Romanzo

Environmentalism alone is not enough. We must look at the solar border wall in a manner that encompasses both human and ecological systems. Exploring border problems through a sustainable development lens allows us to do this. 

Waste

WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? – CORPORATE DISCOURSE AND FRACKING ABOVE THE MARCELLUS SHALE

By Zachary Grobe

This paper analyzes the ways in which the natural gas industry deploys particular historical narratives and figurations of place in order to foster strong links between working-class identities and the labor of resource extraction—an effort in service of expanding the fracking of the Marcellus Shale. A key figure within this discourse is that of the neighbor, a social position exploited by fracking companies to position themselves within communities of interest, and also one taken up by activists in the name of collective interests and solidarity. This paper explores how the figure of the neighbor functions within these discourses and might serve as a site of emergence for new ways of relating to history, place, and community.

IMMIGRATION POLICY AND DISABLED PEOPLE

By Beth Jörgensen

My presentation will give a brief overview of the policies in many seemingly “progressive” countries that put up barriers to stop the flow of aspiring immigrants who have stigmatized disability identities. The language used in these policies reflects a view of the disabled as a burden and implicitly a waste of public funds, in defiance of the value and the fluid nature of human diversity.

BORDER CROSSERS AND CONTESTED OPEN SPACES IN PARIS

By Micael Ennis-McMillan

An increasing number of asylum seekers in Europe have settled in temporary camps in Paris and other urban areas. This ethnographic photo essay explores how border crossers in Paris create camps in open yet contested spaces, including parks, boulevards, and canal walkways. How does the process of creating and destroying camps challenge the meaning of open space in urban Europe?

THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF A SOLAR BORDER WALL EXPLORED THROUGH A SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT LENS

By Natalia Romanzo

Environmentalism alone is not enough. We must look at the solar border wall in a manner that encompasses both human and ecological systems. Exploring border problems through a sustainable development lens allows us to do this.