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This panel explores the intersections of race, affect, and power in the study of labor migration in the United States. Using a range of interdisciplinary approaches, participants tackle this issue drawing on their own research on racial myths, constructions of masculinity and gender, the political economy of agriculture, immigration policies, debates about homesickness, and feelings of belonging to show how each worked toward the racialization of labor migrants.

Presentations

Structuring National Belonging: Immigrant Psychosis, Psychiatry, and Remaking National Belonging by Deborah Cohen, Associate Professor of History, University of Missouri-St. Louis. Author of Braceros: Migrant Citizens and Transnational Subjects in the Post-War United States and Mexico (University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
Padres Incumplidos: Post-War Puerto Rican Masculinity, International Labor Migration, and the Comparative Construction of Latino Identities in Rural Michigan by Eileen Findlay, Associate Professor of History, American University. Author of “We Are Left Without a Father Here”: Masculinity, Domesticity, and Post-War Migration in Puerto Rico (Duke University Press, 2014).
Mexican and Puerto Rican Labor Migrants, Citizenship, and Affective Bonds by Lilia Fernández, Associate Professor of History, Ohio State University. Author of Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
Pa’lla Fuera: Race, Estrangement, and Discipline in the Formation of Puerto Rican Migrant Farm Labor by Ismael García Colón, Associate Professor of Anthropology, College of Staten Island, and Fellow at the Advanced Research Collaborative, CUNY Graduate Center.
“We Are Here Because You Were There”: Race, Labor, and War in the Natural State by Emily Mitchell-Eaton, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Geography, Syracuse University.
Discussant: Don Mitchell, Distinguished Professor of Geography, Syracuse University. Author of They Saved the Crops: Labor, Landscape, and the Struggle over Industrial Farming in Bracero-Era (University of Georgia Press, 2012).

Download a PDF flyer for the event: Race, Affect, and Belonging in Labor Migration: The Cases of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Marshallese Migrants