November 4, 2019
"Hunger Games: The politics of violence, victimhood and deservingness among Central American and Mexican (Im)Migrants” by Dr. Wendy Vogt
Professor Wendy Vogt's talk chronicled the dangerous journeys of Central American migrants in transit through Mexico. Drawing on fieldwork in shelters and other sites serving migrants traversing Mexico, Vogt examined their experiences of violence, as well as how their bodies, labor, and lives become implicated in global and local economies that profit from their mobility as racialized and gendered others. She also highlighted the forms of intimacy, solidarity, and activism that emerge along transit routes. Vogt's talk made clear that transit is not an afterthought, but a site worth studying for the instances of violence and precarity as well as social struggle and resistance that occur in it.