We send a shout out to Professor Dr. Mary Watkins who is giving a plenary talk tonight at Stony Brook University. Dr. Watkins will present “Limit Acts at the Border between Citizens and Immigrants: Beginning with Shame,” at the Radical Philosophy Association conference. Her paper is part of a panel entitled “Separation Walls, Monumental Public Art, Counter-Spaces of Resistance” chaired by Eduardo Mendieta Abstract: The forced migrant without documents is scapegoated by the authors of austerity and repression. High unemployment and economic precarity are blamed on his presence, deflecting the responsibility from neoliberal governments and unregulated lenders and speculators. In the wake of xenophobic racism, how can the citizen cross over the borders intended to divide him from the immigrant? Viewing the U.S. wall at the border with Mexico as in part symbolic of the interpersonal and intrapsychic borders that divide citizens from forced migrants within the U.S., we will address their dismantling. Countering historical amnesia and Juan Crow laws with restorative shame, the path is opened to co-creating communities that support the human rights and rightful dignity of immigrant neighbors. Efforts to create and sustain sanctuary cities, police resistance to being deputized as ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents, the provision of drivers’ licenses and identification cards to migrants, migrant worker centers, migrant access to education, enfranchisement of migrants to allow political participation, living wage initiatives, language intercambios, immersion education initiatives for non-migrants that educate them about the challenges migrants live daily, paths to citizenship, resistance to the proliferation of immigrant detention and deportation, and reconciliation between migrant and citizen communities are limit acts that spawn counterspaces for citizens and immigrant neighbors.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 20:35:00 +0000