“Undocumented: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona”
Dr. Jason De León, The University of Michigan
7:30-8:30 p.m. Thursday, January 29, 2015
Lean Lecture Room, Wishart Hall
A reception will follow the lecture in the foyer outside Lean Lecture Room
Dr. De León will talk about the United States’ immigration enforcement strategy along the southern border in the mid-1990s, known as “Prevention through Deterrence.” This strategy increased security in unauthorized crossing areas surrounding urban ports of entry in an attempt to shift undocumented migration toward remote border regions, such as the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, where security is not as intense but crossing conditions are more difficult, according to De León.
Since 2009, De León has directed the Undocumented Migration Project, a long-term anthropological analysis of clandestine border crossings between Northern Mexico and Southern Arizona that uses a combination of ethnographic, archaeological, and forensic research to understand this violent social process. “In this presentation, I will outline my current project, which draws on theories of materiality, non-human actors, and taphonomy,” he said. “This will help to improve our understanding of how people prepare for crossings, the diverse ways that migrants experience the desert, and what migrant deaths and the post-mortem lives of their corpses can tell us about immigration enforcement and state-crafted violence.”
Lecture Sponsored by the Program in Archaeology, the Archaeology Student Colloquium, the Cultural Events Committee, the Archaeological Institute of America, and Lambda Alpha.