They are Just Deportees: Podcast Series
Over the course of this podcast series Darializa Avila Chevalier and Nick Rodrigo will be interviewing scholars, journalists and activists researching, reporting on and resisting the structural violence of the US immigration enforcement system. The title of this podcast comes from the Woody Guthrie protest song “Plane Crash at Los Gatos”, which memorialized the deaths of 28 migrant farm workers who died on a deportation flight from the US back to Mexico on January 28, 1948. In this song, Guthrie laments the callous disregard the mainstream media had for reporting this tragedy, referring to the deceased as “just deportees”. Sadly, 80 years later this state sanctioned practice of forced removal continues, and the human effects of deportation is completely sanitized within mainstream media and academic discourse.
During this podcast the listener will be taken to the US borderlands where the violence of the states militarized bordering practices maintain a global stream of undocumented labor to a US economy riven by racial divisions and exploitation. From here we will go to the immigration court room, where the violence of the removal regime finds new forms of terror through the crushing mendacity of the institutions bureaucracy. En route to deportation, the migrant is often held in a detention center, built and sustained by the carceral logic steering US population control in the late 20th century. We will examine these factors and how detention of migrants fits into the crimmigration nexus which has emerged in the post civil rights era. The deportation regime does not only rely on a series of bureaucracies for detention and removal and bordering – it also sustains climate of fear, uncertainty, alienation and anxiety amongst the most vulnerable members of our society.
#6 DACA and the Student Struggle Against Deportation
Guest: Professor Shirley Leyro
What does belonging mean to undocumented students in CUNY? How does the threat of deportation impact the emotional well-being of those students dreaming for a better life through higher education? Professor Shirley Leyro discusses her “CUNY belonging” project and the responsibility of CUNY Professors to these young people.
#5: Domestic Violence and La Migra
Guest: Professor Yolanda Ortiz-Rodriguez & Professor Jayne Mooney
Professor Yolanda Ortiz-Rodriguez and Professor Jayne Mooney on the issues facing immigrant women who have survived domestic violence, and the way in which intersectionality and reflexive ethnographic techniques can build connections of solidarity through research.
#4: Criminal Deportation and the Structural Violence of Immigration Court
Guest: Professor Sarah Tosh
“Crimmigration” is a sociolegal concept that refers to the increasing amalgamation of the criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems. Professor Sarah Tosh discusses how this has resulted in a deportation pipeline in the US, streamlining immigrants into removals by way of spurious means.
#3: Detain and Deport
Guest: Professor Nancy Hiemstra
A carceral logic has gripped the US states approach to poverty and criminality since the neoliberal turn in the 1980s. Professor Nancy Hiemstra examines how this has extended to immigration enforcement in ways that reinforces racial and market fundamentalist logic in turn leading to an explosion of migrant detention centers.
#2: Empire of Borders
Guest: Todd Miller
Before a migrant reaches US soil they must contend with the hard US border. Award winning journalist Todd Miller discusses the expansion of the US border into the global south, and the expansion of the securitization and militarization of the US border since 9/11.
#1: The Genealogy of the Deportation Regime
Guest: Professor David Brotherton
What is the deportation regime? In our first episode, we will discuss with Professor David Brotherton the history of forced removal in the United States, and the reaction of academia to this phenomenon.
Episode One: The Genealogy of the Deportation Regime