Im/migration in the Trump Era

Photo by Jonathan McIntosh, licensed under CC BY.

One year into the Trump presidency, when our core values of multiculturalism, cross-cultural understanding, international diversity, and racial inclusion are under threat, many anthropologists are reflecting deeply upon our roles as teachers, researchers, and engaged scholars. For those of us working with immigrant and refugee communities in our research and teaching, we have been called to the front lines to support students, research participants, interlocutors, colleagues, friends, and family members who face real fears of prohibited entry and forced removal from the United States. The current political climate, which includes actual and pending legislation and administrative policies barring Muslims, banning refugees, building walls, terminating family-based immigration policy, ending Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status programs, and recruiting local law enforcement to carry out federal immigration policy, heightens the stakes of our work. This Hot Spots series seeks to generate a discussion between scholars and activists working in the United States about the potentials and challenges of practicing engaged anthropology with (im)migrants in the current political era.

Posts in This Series

Introduction: Im/migration in the Trump Era

Introduction: Im/migration in the Trump Era

In the midst of the Trump presidency, when our core values of multiculturalism, cross-cultural understanding, international diversity, and racial inclusion are ... More

The Red Underside of Blue States

The Red Underside of Blue States

As the current administration’s immigration policies have unleashed what some have called a “reign of terror on immigrants,” the bold actions of cities and stat... More

“ICE was Like an Urban Legend Here in Maryland”

“ICE was Like an Urban Legend Here in Maryland”

“ICE was almost like an urban legend here. They existed, but I’d never seen them, so they didn’t really exist in my mind. I knew the danger, it just had never b... More

UndocuHoosiers: Resist and Persist in the Era of Trump

UndocuHoosiers: Resist and Persist in the Era of Trump

In 2011 Indiana’s General Assembly passed Senate Bill (SB) 590, a comprehensive anti-immigration bill modeled on Arizona’s infamous SB 1070. While some of the m... More

Creating Critical Campus Allies for Undocumented Students

Creating Critical Campus Allies for Undocumented Students

Research in collaboration with immigrant communities can mean finding ways to support not only research participants but also students and staff at the universi... More

Creating Sanctuary: Practices of Acompañamiento

Creating Sanctuary: Practices of Acompañamiento

⇢ Con traducción al español Following the 2016 elections, universities sought to calm the anxieties of immigrant students. At the University of North Texas (UNT... More

Acompañamiento / Accompaniment

Acompañamiento / Accompaniment

⇢ Con traducción al español It is a warm Saturday afternoon, and fifteen people sit in a circle of mismatched chairs in a wood-floored Denver living room. Occas... More

Sanctuary: Reflections on a Social Movement

Sanctuary: Reflections on a Social Movement

Sanctuary has been revitalized as a social movement seeking to protect undocumented immigrants. Recent historical roots of Sanctuary in the United States lie in... More

Postelection Revanchist Anti-Immigration Policy

Postelection Revanchist Anti-Immigration Policy

Contestations around the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) and the Sanctuary movement draw attention to two views of noncitizen members of s... More

“Stand Tall in the Face of Hatred”: An Interview with a Youth Activist in the Immigrant Rights Movement

“Stand Tall in the Face of Hatred”: An Interview with a Youth Activist in the Immigrant Rights Movement

⇢ Con traducción al español This interview is excerpted from a July 2017 conversation with my former student, Ana Diaz (a pseudonym), a recent college graduate,... More

Care in Contexts of Child Detention

Care in Contexts of Child Detention

⇢ Con traducción al español There are certain transformational encounters in research that challenge us to reflect on our own positionality as ethnographers, ad... More

When Border Patrol Rolls Up to Campus

When Border Patrol Rolls Up to Campus

⇢ Con traducción al español Donald Trump called immigrants rapists. He wanted to build a wall along all two thousand miles of the southern border and have Mexic... More

Resources for Migrant Returnees in Mexico

Resources for Migrant Returnees in Mexico

I first interviewed Luis for a research project in the summer of 2008. We sat on folding chairs and talked for three hours in my Blue Island, Illinois backyard,... More

Criminal Alien Deportations, Education, and U.S.–Mexico Borderland Imaginaries

Criminal Alien Deportations, Education, and U.S.–Mexico Borderland Imaginaries

⇢ Con traducción al español The U.S. government’s restrictionist immigration policies, both before the election of Donald Trump and currently, affect access to ... More