Sanctuary for None: Border Violence Against Migrants and Nature in the Sonoran Desert
Sanctuary for None: Border Violence Against Migrants and Nature in the Sonoran Desert
Please join us for a talk by Professor A. Naomi Paik of the University of Illinois, Chicago. This talk is part of the Bebe Koch Petrou Lecture Series.
Abstract:
This talk examines migration through protected areas of the Sonoran Desert from the 1990s to the present. During this time of accelerating globalization and transnational migration, US border policy has pushed migrants to cross the southern border through the desert, often through protected areas (PAs) like the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge. In response conservationists and nationalists have cast migrants as “ecological others” who harm the natural landscape, and US state agencies have weaponized environmental protections to further criminalize migrants, as well as humanitarian volunteers working to prevent migrant injury and death. And yet, while pitted against each other, the violence migrants and nature endure share the same root causes—US imperial policies that drive people to move long distance and US border regimes that then channel those migrants, and the anti-migrant enforcement that attempts to exclude them, into the desert. This shared source of harm means that the violence against migrants and the environment intertwine. By analyzing the layered histories of militarism, migration, border regimes, and conservation in the Sonoran Desert, this talk works to bring migrant and environmental justice together under the framework of abolitionist sanctuary that would provide refuge to all lives.
About the Speaker:
A. Naomi Paik is the author of Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the 21st Century (UC Press, 2020) and Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II (UNC Press, 2016; winner, Best Book in History, AAAS 2018; runner-up, John Hope Franklin prize for best book in American Studies, ASA, 2017), as well as articles in a range of academic and public-facing venues. She has co-edited four special issues of the Radical History Review—“Militarism and Capitalism (Winter 2019), “Radical Histories of Sanctuary” (Fall 2019), “Policing, Justice, and the Radical Imagination” (Spring 2020), and “Alternatives to the Anthropocene” with Ashley Dawson (Winter 2023). With Cat Ramirez, she coedits the “Borderlands” section of Public Books, and with Sam Vong, she coedits “The Politics of Sanctuary” blog of the Smithsonian Institution. She is an associate professor of Criminology, Law, and Justice and Global Asian Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
Please join us for a talk by Professor A. Naomi Paik of the University of Illinois, Chicago. This talk is part of the Bebe Koch Petrou Lecture Series.
Abstract:
This talk examines migration through protected areas of the Sonoran Desert from the 1990s to the present. During this time of accelerating globalization and transnational migration, US border policy has pushed migrants to cross the southern border through the desert, often through protected areas (PAs) like the Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge. In response conservationists and nationalists have cast migrants as “ecological others” who harm the natural landscape, and US state agencies have weaponized environmental protections to further criminalize migrants, as well as humanitarian volunteers working to prevent migrant injury and death. And yet, while pitted against each other, the violence migrants and nature endure share the same root causes—US imperial policies that drive people to move long distance and US border regimes that then channel those migrants, and the anti-migrant enforcement that attempts to exclude them, into the desert. This shared source of harm means that the violence against migrants and the environment intertwine. By analyzing the layered histories of militarism, migration, border regimes, and conservation in the Sonoran Desert, this talk works to bring migrant and environmental justice together under the framework of abolitionist sanctuary that would provide refuge to all lives.
About the Speaker:
A. Naomi Paik is the author of Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the 21st Century (UC Press, 2020) and Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II (UNC Press, 2016; winner, Best Book in History, AAAS 2018; runner-up, John Hope Franklin prize for best book in American Studies, ASA, 2017), as well as articles in a range of academic and public-facing venues. She has co-edited four special issues of the Radical History Review—“Militarism and Capitalism (Winter 2019), “Radical Histories of Sanctuary” (Fall 2019), “Policing, Justice, and the Radical Imagination” (Spring 2020), and “Alternatives to the Anthropocene” with Ashley Dawson (Winter 2023). With Cat Ramirez, she coedits the “Borderlands” section of Public Books, and with Sam Vong, she coedits “The Politics of Sanctuary” blog of the Smithsonian Institution. She is an associate professor of Criminology, Law, and Justice and Global Asian Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
Tawes Hall false