Experiencing Displacement and Statelessness: Forced Migrants in Anse-à-Pitres, Haiti

In 2013, the Dominican state ruled to uphold a 2010 constitutional amendment that stripped thousands of Dominicans of Haitian origin of their citizenship and forced them to leave the country during summer 2015. About 2,200 of these people became displaced in Anse-à-Pitres, where most took up residence in temporary camps. I use the term forced migrants or displaced persons interchangeably to refer to these people.

Continue ReadingExperiencing Displacement and Statelessness: Forced Migrants in Anse-à-Pitres, Haiti

On the Front Lines: Service Providers Respond to the Haitian Refugee Crisis

Tijuana is a city of migrants, it is a city diverse in its people and also a welcoming place where different cultures interlace. Yet, no one was prepared for the arrival of Haitians to Baja California, it was unexpected and unforeseen. At the moment Tijuana faces the situation of the arrival of approximately 15,000 Haitians to the region, it immediately becomes a humanitarian crisis.

Continue ReadingOn the Front Lines: Service Providers Respond to the Haitian Refugee Crisis

The Other Earthquake: Janil Lwijis, Student Social Movements, and the Politics of Memory in Haiti

This dissertation develops a political ecology of suburban peasants to describe the lives of Haitian farmers residing in a neighborhood on the margins of Port-au-Prince. The category of suburban peasants has been well described for Chinese small-scale farmers but has yet to be applied elsewhere as an analytic category.

Continue ReadingThe Other Earthquake: Janil Lwijis, Student Social Movements, and the Politics of Memory in Haiti

Ou Ayisyen? The Making of a Haitian Diasporic Community in Chicago, 1933-2010

This dissertation investigates the formation of the Haitian diaspora in Chicago over the twentieth century. Through original oral history interviews with key community leaders, analysis of Chicago-based newspapers, and previously unexamined organizational records, this is the first comprehensive study to look at the Haitian diaspora in Chicago.

Continue ReadingOu Ayisyen? The Making of a Haitian Diasporic Community in Chicago, 1933-2010

Citizens Without a Nation: The Construction of Haitian Illegality and Deportability in The Dominican Republic

Migrant “illegality” has increasingly become a popular topic in political debates around the world, but illegal populations are not random or self-generating, they are created and patterned (DeGenova 2002:422). Through the recent enforcement of new and existing immigration laws, the Dominican State has begun to move large populations of Haitian immigrants and their descendants into irregular or “illegal” immigration status.

Continue ReadingCitizens Without a Nation: The Construction of Haitian Illegality and Deportability in The Dominican Republic