Of Cannibals and Nobles: Jokes, Care and The Racialization Discourses and Practices in Mexico’s Detention Centers for Unaccompanied Children
Abstract Code: 12094
Topics: Political Geography
, Caregiving Geographies
, Immigration/Transnationalism
Keywords: Border, Racialization, Racial Humour, Care, Bureaucracy
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Authors:
Jorge Choy-Gómez, The University of Texas at Austin
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Abstract
In 1995, the Mexican government created detention centers specially designed for unaccompanied children. Administered by the National System for the Integral Development of the Family (DIF), a public body responsible for coordinating the national system of public and private social assistance for vulnerable populations, these euphemistically called ”shelters” have detained more than 400,000 migrant children since its creation. Despite the critical importance of the physical and discursive operations of these detention centers, there is an under-examination on what are the everyday state practices in those facilities and, equally important, who are the direct executors of immigration policy on the ground. This paper focuses on public officials who work in these detention centers to examine in-depth who these public agents are, and how they materialize immigration policies on an everyday basis. I specifically analyze how the tensions between jokes that reinforce racial stereotypes in often censored or silenced places (Sue and Golash-Boza 2013) and the conflicted care (Crane and Lawson 2020) which perform humanitarian work situated within highly unequal power relations, reinforce and reproduce processes of racialization, engendering hierarchies of vulnerability. This presentation draws on fieldwork from one city along the Mexico-Guatemala border (Tapachula) and one city on the Mexico-US border (Ciudad Juarez).
Of Cannibals and Nobles: Jokes, Care and The Racialization Discourses and Practices in Mexico’s Detention Centers for Unaccompanied Children
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
Description
Submitted By: Jorge Choy-Gómez, The University of Texas At Austin
j.choy@utexas.edu
Abstract Code: 12094
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