Intended Audience
The Amɘrica Dialogue
The Future is a Bridge: Carceral Archipelagos and Haitian (Im)mobilities in Contemporary Migrations across the Americas
The terror and violence U.S. border patrol units enforced upon Haitians who made it a bridge in Del Río, Texas, put into sharp relief that something must change about U.S. immigration policy. And the need for such change is urgent, given how extensive and entrenched U.S. carceral regimes have become Haitians in the Americas since the 2000s. This presentation elevates Haitian voices to historicize and theorize enclosure, detention, and deportation. Through creative writing, ethnographic narrative, and social scientific analysis, the presentation describes Haitians’ journeys across the Americas, their refusals, their methods of survivance, and how they cope with ongoing efforts to deny their right to movement.
April J. Mayes is a professor of history at Pomona College and currently serves as Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. She is the author of the book, The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race, and Dominican National Identity, winner of the Isis Duarte Prize of the Haiti-Dominican Republic Section of the Latin American Studies Association; with Dr. Kiran Jayaram, co-editor of Transnational Hispaniola: New Directions in Haitian and Dominican Studies; and, co-editor, along with Ginetta Candelario (Smith College) and Elizabeth Manley (Xavier University), of the two-volume collection, Cien años de feminismos dominicanos, 1861-1961 (Archivo General de la Nación, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic). For the past five years, she has volunteered with the Haitian Bridge Alliance and is researching contemporary Haitian migration to mainland Latin America.