WAAT: Inhabiting Transit: Migrant Spatial Struggles from Global South America to the U.S.
Weekday Afternoon Anthropology Talks (WAAT)
April 14, 2025
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
BSB 2105
Calendar
Download iCal FileYou are invited to our last Weekday Afternoon Anthropology Talks (WAATs) of Spring 2025 Next MONDAY April 14th at 12pm-1pm with Dr. Soledad Álvarez Velasco from the Department of Anthropology and LALS:
Title: Inhabiting Transit: Migrant Spatial Struggles from Global South America to the U.S.
Where: Behavioral Sciences Building (BSB) Room 2105
When: April 14th at 12pm-1pm
About: Irregularized transit migration through the Americas has become a prominent and deeply political phenomenon. This talk addresses that reality and goes further to examine the contemporary condition of inhabiting transit—the experience of being forced to restart journeys and dwell in a permanent state of (im)mobility in search of a safe haven. Drawing on a combination of digital and multi-sited ethnography, historical research, and a migrant-centered approach, it reconstructs the journeys of 11 migrants from Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Haiti, Cuba, Colombia, and Venezuela, whom I met in Quito, Metetí, and Houston between 2016 and 2023. Their transnational trajectories from their countries of origin to Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil transformed into prolonged, repeated transit across South American cities and borders before heading to the U.S. The talk analyzes how these south-south movements are shaped by—and collide with—contemporary violence, uneven development, and racialized, exclusionary border regimes. Their flights and fights lie at the heart of their experience—and of this talk.
Lunch will be provided.
Date posted
Apr 8, 2025
Date updated
Apr 8, 2025