On Tuesday, March 28, 2023, I will be partaking in the invigorating discussion of the “The Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration (CERC Migration)”, in the Migration Working Group: Migrant agency, alongside top scholars in migration field.
In this workshop, I will be presenting some new research results and discussions from my PhD research on the phenomenology of migration through the lived experiences of deported Mexican men housed in male-exclusive temporary migrant shelters in Tijuana.
This time round, I will be discussing the subjugation of the bodies of deported men, as a condition of coloniality of Being, of the deportee. Through subaltern ideas and leaning heavy into epistemologies of the South, I look how deported Mexican men live the “bare life” as Agambem might suggest, “unjustly suffering” as Boaventura might say. With key examples of expressions of migrancy in Tijuana -a city forged through the imperial gaze of the United States- I further the argument that the phenomenology of deportation is best understood within and through its own “spectacle”. Building off Nicholas de Genova's concept of “migration spectacle”, I push for the framework of the “deportation spectacle” to better capture and represent the complexities of embodying the conditions brought forth by the bordering, and othering, processes of the Border and its biopolitical practices.
This working paper is part of a discussion I am presenting at the 2023 Annual Conference of the Latin American Studies Association, this coming May, in Vancouver.
Come register and join the event: