The recent reconfiguration of international cooperation agreements derived from the suspension of US aid programs, coincided with the launch of a series of drastic anti-immigrant measures by the US government. The latter have relied on an overabundance of narratives and images involving raids, camps, shackles and deportation flights, especially as the campaign promises of mass deportations and migrant eradication start to show cracks.

This presentation reflects on the discourse on the US-Mexico Border narrative under Trump, articulated by policy makers, politicians and academics alike, what it hides, and the dangers of reproducing it uncritically. Relying on ethnographic vignettes, the presentation calls to "smuggle the border" (as a space of possibility and hope) back into the policy, enforcement and academic space, as new configurations of power related to international cooperation and humanitarian assistance began to emerge.

Speaker
Gabriella Sanchez is a research fellow at Georgetown University's Collaborative on Global Children's Issues. A former criminal investigator, Gabriella has examined the criminalization of the facilitation of irregular migration, and the impact the narratives surrounding migrant smuggling as organized crime have had on border enforcement and externalization practices worldwide. Informed by her community-based, ethnographic work in the Americas, North Africa and Europe, Sanchez’s approach to migrant smuggling as a radical form of care constitutes a critical departure from mainstream academic and policy engagements on migration control. She lives on the US-Mexico border.

Chair
Bina D'Costa is a Professor in the Department of International Relations at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, and Chair of the United Nations Special Procedures Mandate WGEPAD.

The lecture is part of a series of activities that sits at the intersection of Humanitarian emergencies, protection, and displacement projects led by Professor Bina D’Costa and including an ARC Future Fellowship (FT210100759) and Migration and Trafficking workstream of the Centre of Excellence on the Elimination of Violence Against Women CEVAW (CE230100004). This lecture is also proudly supported by the Myanmar Research Centre (MRC) at ANU.

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Image caption: A western view at the US-Mexico border in San Diego.

Contact the host of Smuggling the Border in: rethinking the borderspace in a new cooperation landscape