Detention as Social Space: Waiting, Social Relations, and Mundane Resistance of Asylum Seekers in Detention

2020 ◽  
pp. 089692052097764
Author(s):  
René Kreichauf

Under the Trump administration and its “zero-tolerance” policy, the number of detained asylum seekers in the United States has been growing significantly. Yet we know little about their mobility, agency, and social relations at the micro level during the time they are subject to a detention regime. This is because research about detention has frequently developed independently of sustained engagement with the lived experience of those detained within the relevant institutions. Building on literature about the spatiality of social relations and studies that analyze detention “from below,” the current article conceptualizes detention as a social space in which social relations between detained asylum seekers are formed and negotiated. It draws on ethnographic material collected in detention prisons in the greater New York City area and pays particular attention to the seemingly mundane social facets of everyday life in detention. The article reveals the complexity, ambivalences, and forms of social relations that range from shared and unifying feelings of injustice, to the development of friendships and shared practices of resistance and disobedience that sometimes even go beyond the confines of detention. This perspective allows us to see detained people as agents in the exercise of power and in negotiation with structures of control, waiting, punishment, and exploitation that organize but do not complete their everyday lives in detention.

Author(s):  
Jorge Durand ◽  
Douglas S. Massey

Since 1987, the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) has compiled extensive data on the characteristics and behavior of documented and undocumented migrants to the United States, and made them publicly available to users to test theories of international migration and evaluate U.S. immigration and border policies. Findings based on these data have been plentiful, but have also routinely been ignored by political leaders, who instead continue to pursue policies with widely documented, counterproductive effects. In this article, we review prior studies based on MMP data to document these effects. We also use official statistics to document circumstances on the border today, and draw on articles in this volume to underscore the huge gap between U.S. policies and the realities of immigration. Despite that net positive undocumented Mexican migration to the United States ended more than a decade ago, the Trump administration continues to demand the construction of a border wall and persists in treating Central American arrivals as criminals rather than asylum seekers, thus transforming what is essentially a humanitarian problem into an immigration crisis.


2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yomee Lee

AbstractDespite their long history in the United States, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to Asian Americans and their lived experience in sports. The purpose of this study was to give voices to Asian American men by focusing on their experiences in sports. In particular, this study examined the experiences of East Asian and Southeast Asian American male college students who were often perceived as “foreign” and “pejoratively feminine” racialized minority yet participated in sports that were associated with dominant masculinity in the U.S. The setting of the study was as a predominately White institution located in Upstate New York where Asian Americans make up about one percent of the total student population. Qualitative research method was employed for the study. Six Asian American male students were recruited through snowball and purposeful sampling methods. In-depth interviews were conducted to reveal the rich stories of these Asian American men. The research showed that the stories of Asian American male college students were much nuanced and complicated. Specifically, this study revealed that Asian American men were constantly otherized as “forever foreigners” who did not have a legitimate citizenship in the United States. Also, Asian Americans faced unique ideas about their manhood that either highlighted emasculated and feminized masculinity or hyper-masculinity. In dealing with these situations, Asian American men employed unique cultural strategies to challenge and resist racial stereotypes through sports.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Gilman

What years of deterrence efforts and restrictions on asylum did not achieve to block the U.S. southern border to asylum seekers, the Trump Administration has now accomplished using the COVID-19 pandemic as justification. New measures exclude asylum seekers from U.S. territory, thereby effectively obliterating the U.S. asylum program, which had promised refugee protection in the form of asylum to eligible migrants who reach the United States. In some cases, the policies adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic harden impediments to asylum already in place or implement restrictions that had been proposed but could only now be adopted. In others, the policies could never have been imagined before the pandemic. Overall, the force of these measures in dismantling the asylum system cannot be overemphasized. Once adopted, using an emergency rationale based on the pandemic, these policies are likely to become extremely difficult to reverse. This is particularly true where the restrictions exclude asylum seekers from the physical space of the United States. This article will thus explore two modes of physical exclusion taking place at the U.S. southern border during the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) indefinitely trapping in Mexico those asylum seekers who are subject to the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols; and (2) immediate expulsions of asylum seekers arriving at the southern border pursuant to purported public health guidance issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laila Huber

This article explores the creation of new structures of participation and counter imaginaries within the city between the poles of arts and politics. On the basis of two case studies, one situated in the non-institutionalised artistic field and one in the non-institutionalised political field, I will explore narratives of a 'topography of the possible' in the city of Salzburg. Aiming to outline collage pieces of a topography of the possible and of counter-narrative in and of the city – the city is looked at in terms of collage, understood as overlapping layers of the three spatial dimensions materiality (physical space), sociability (social space) and the imaginary (symbolic space). These are understood as differing but interrelated spatial dimensions, each one unfolding forms of collective appropriation of a city. The focus lies on the creation of social relations and collective imaginaries on the micro-level of cultural and political self-organised initiatives, looked at under terms of narration and storytelling. My ethnographic project asks for the creative potentiality of a city and for the creative power of social relations and collective imaginaries.


Genealogy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 102
Author(s):  
Eric O. Silva ◽  
Matthew B. Flynn

Although the United States has long been criticized for its treatment of migrants, the family separations that resulted from the Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy drew particularly intense approbation and much media coverage in June 2018. One way to understand the conflict over this policy is to view it as a stigma contest where the status of a number of identities (migrant, immigration advocate, captor, policy apologist) are subject to a liminal stigma. Recent scholarship has documented how internet commenters disparage certain identities as they defend others. Through a qualitative content analysis of 172 opinion articles published in U.S. newspapers between 2009 and 2020, this article examines the ways that ideational stigmatization of immigrant detainees, captors, and nativists has and has not varied by time and arena of the public sphere. We find that many of the condemnations and denials found online are also prominent in editorials and op-eds. (e.g., detention as cruel, detainees as noncriminals, captors as racist, detainees as nonvictims,). The commentary section of U.S. newspapers, however, tended to defend the detainees and condemn their captors and nativist citizens. These findings provide a fuller record of how immigration detention and family separation were constructed during the Trump administration and a deeper understanding for the fervor of U.S. nativists.


2020 ◽  
Vol 690 (1) ◽  
pp. 192-199
Author(s):  
Yael Schacher

Drawing on the author’s work with refugees and asylum seekers in the United States, this article examines policies and practices related to family separation among immigrants in the 1920s and now. I use data collected from historical archives and firsthand interviews with refugees and asylum seekers and describe how restrictions on the admission of relatives leaves immigrants and refugees in the United States feeling unsettled and divided. I compare the situation in the 1920s to more recent years, when the federal government has pursued policies to restrict admission and impede integration.


10.3823/2380 ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bianka Pereira Evangelista ◽  
Elicarlos Marques Nunes ◽  
Ana Paula Suassuna Veras Barreto ◽  
Andréia Rayanne Queroz de Sousa ◽  
Francisca Lima dos Santos ◽  
...  

Objetive: The study is an experience report, with the objective of reporting differences in the humanization present in nursing care between a Brazilian city and two cities of the United States of America, highlighting the potentialities and fragility of care provided in both cities frequented by students of Patos Integrated College - FIP. Method: The study was based on the exchange linked to the Bounce project, funded by the US government, which took place between May 21 and June 20, 2015, and was attended by 8 (eight) FIP scholars from Paraíba, Brazil. Through the study it was possible to perform a comparative analysis between the Brazilian hospital reality, seen in the FIP curriculum internship field, through the Deputy Janduhy Carneiro Regional Hospital, located in the municipality of Patos - Paraíba, Brazil, and the North American, evidenced by the visit to the hospitals of Hudson and New Paltz. Results: It was observed that the difference in care is in the humanization present in the Brazilian nursing care process. It is noteworthy the great work done by these professionals, who are not only concerned with technical-scientific efficiency, but with humanized assistance, based on ethical, moral, affection and for mutual respect precepts. Comparing the assistance provided in the two realities, we observed in our country a predominantly humanistic, rather than mechanical, assistance. Therefore, it is concluded that it is fundamental to seek tools that improve our Health System, consequently, providing benefits both for professionals, as well as for the users assisted. Conclusion: In this way, it can be said that humanization does not depend only on technological resources to be shared. Keywords: Nursing care. Humanization. Hospital.


2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Pirkko Koski

In Paper Anchor (Paperiankkuri) at the Small Stage of the Finnish National Theatre in 2011 a group of actors, dancers, asylum seekers and eventually also stage technicians (re-)enacted the asylum seekers’ stories: how they had fled their home countries, feared for their lives and faced problems in their country of destination, Finland. It brought the spotlight on asylum seekers, who occupy a marginal position in society and made them visible on many levels: they were present in the stories that were told on stage, in the encounter between performers and spectators and in an art institution that has great national significance. The periphery and the centre, in this case the asylum seekers and the native Finns, met in shifting circumstances and also in a way that is characteristic of the theatre: the performers and spectators were simultaneously physically present, whereas the public debate on refugee issues usually takes place in written texts. In Paper Anchor, the asylum seekers also assumed the role of a witness, whereas in official processes they are obligated to defend themselves and search for evidence. The impact of Paper Anchor was largely based on the aesthetic form of the performance. Although the dominant power structures between the centre and the periphery remained untouched, theatre testified to its ability to affect the spectator through the presence of individual subjects and consequently their subject positions. The debate was shifted to differences within a culture instead of between cultures, as Rosi Braidotti writes: “It is the syntax of social relations, as well as their symbolic representation, that is in upheaval.” (Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects. Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, Columbia University Press, New York 2011, p.8.)


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 443-488
Author(s):  
Tomasz Pudłocki

Artykuł przedstawia część pierwszą korespondencji Eileen i Floriana Znanieckich, znajdującej się w Archiwum Fundacji Kościuszkowskiej w Nowym Jorku. Pokazuje ona wiele nieznanych wątków z życia Znanieckich, a zwłaszcza Floriana – jednego z najsłynniejszych polskich socjologów, profesora Uniwersytetu Poznańskiego, który wiele lat pracował w Stanach Zjednoczonych Ameryki. Prezentowana edycja obejmuje listy ze Stefanem Piotrem Mierzwą, który w języku angielskim używał nazwiska Stephen Peter Mizwa, oraz z Edith Brahmall Cullis-Williams. Mierzwa był założycielem Fundacji Kościuszkowskiej, długoletnim dyrektorem wykonawczym fundacji, a w końcu jej prezesem. Dzięki swojej działalności na rzecz kulturalnego i naukowego zbliżenia Polski i Ameryki stał się jedną z najbardziej rozpoznawalnych postaci w życiu Polonii amerykańskiej w XX w. Cullis-Williams była założycielką i prezeską Polskiego Instytutu Sztuk Pięknych i Literatury w Nowym Jorku i znaną w środowisku amerykańskim polonofilką. W zasobach archiwalnych Fundacji Kościuszkowskiej przetrwały kopie listów Mierzwy pisanych do Znanieckich. Kopie listów Cullis-Williams nie zachowały się w tej kolekcji, ale choćby te, wysłane do niej przez Eileen, prezentowane w niniejszej edycji, doskonale uzupełniają obraz amerykańskich relacji i powiązań towarzyskich małżeństwa Znanieckich, jakie wyłania się z innych źródeł. Chronologicznie listy obejmują okres 1923–1940 i pokazują początki współpracy Znanieckiego z Fundacją Kościuszkowską, wnoszą trochę nowego światła do obecności Znanieckiego w Nowym Jorku w latach 1931–1933 oraz do pierwszych miesięcy pobytu poznańskiego socjologa w Stanach Zjednoczonych Ameryki w 1940 r. Polish-American traces of cooperation. The correspondence of Eileen and Florian Znaniecki in the archival collections of the Kościuszko Foundation in New York, part 1 The article presents the first part of the correspondence of Eileen and Florian Znaniecki, which is located in the Archives of the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York. It shows many unknown threads from the life of Znaniecki family, especially Florian – one of the most outstanding Polish sociologist, a professor at the University of Poznań, who worked for many years in the United States of America. The presented edition includes letters with Stefan Piotr Mierzwa, who used the name Stephen Peter Mizwa in English, and Edith Brahmall Cullis-Williams. Mierzwa was the founder of the Kościuszko Foundation, a long-term executive director of the foundation, and finally its president. Thanks to his activities for the cultural and scientific rapprochement between Poland and America, he became, if not one of the most important figures in the life of American Polonia in the twentieth century, so certainly among the New York State Poles. Cullis-Williams was the founder and president of the Polish Institute of Arts and Literature in New York City and a well known American polonophile in the American environment. The archives of the Kościuszko Foundation have survived copies of Mierza’s letters written to Znaniecki. Copies of Cullis-Williams letters have not been preserved in this collection, but even those sent to her by Eileen, presented in this edition, perfectly complement the picture of American relationships and social relations of the Znaniecki marriage emerging from other sources. Chronologically, the letters cover the period 1923–1940 and show the beginnings of Znaniecki's cooperation with the Kosciuszko Foundation. What is more, the collection brings a little new light to Znaniecki’s presence in New York in 1931–1933 and the first months of the Poznań sociologist’s stay in the United States of America in 1940.


Subject A new Mexican TV channel is to be launched in the United States. Significance On January 17, telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim announced plans to launch a television channel in the United States aimed exclusively at the Mexicans living there. Named ‘Nuestra Vision’ (Our Vision), the channel aims to carve out a niche in a crowded market and could have a significant socio-political impact. Impacts Given the dominance of Univision and Telemundo, Nuestra Vision will be deemed a success if it achieves third place in the Hispanic market. A hostile US government and a charged 2018 Mexican election may give Nuestra Vision an early ratings boost. Having clashed with Trump in the past over New York Times coverage, Slim may face obstacles from the Trump administration.


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