E-Forum: Religion, Migration, and Worldmaking in the Borderlands

With key contributions from many collaborators, this forum is the fruit of a years-long Henry Luce Foundation-funded project on “Religion and Environmentally-Induced Displacement in Latin America and the Caribbean” undertaken by American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS). This set of essays explores intersections of religion with the experience of migration, humanitarian aid for migrants, and the increasingly securitized borderland spaces through which migrants move. A first of its kind, this forum explores the multiple ways that religious actors, beliefs, practices, and, in some cases, contending religious perspectives, inform, shape, and respond to the circumstances of migrants in transit, as they traverse changing landscapes and negotiate border spaces made more lethal by climate change. These essays expand appreciation for the diversity of religious engagement in the evolving context of the U.S.-Mexican borderlands, but also the sorts of work religion accomplishes there, including for personal and collective wellbeing amid dislocation, as a basis for moral and humanitarian support for migrants, but also as dimensions of belief and practice complexly supporting or diverging from the increased securitization of the border itself. 

Introduction

Religion, Migration, and Worldmaking in the Borderlands by Robert Albro, Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, American University and Luciana Gandini, Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Contributions

I. Setting the Scene: Tijuana, Migration, Religion

From Transit City to a Border Entrapment. Notes For Thinking About Tijuana as a Space of Attraction and Containment of Population Mobilities by Juan Antonio Del Monte Madrigal, Departamento de Estudios Culturales, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

Abordajes Teórico-Metodológicos para el Estudio de la Relación Entre Migración y Religión. (Documento Preliminar) por Liliana Rivera Sánchez, El Colegio de México y Olga Odgers Ortiz, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

II. New Forms of Sanctuary and Humanitarian Accompaniment

Beyond Sanctuary and Shelter: Towards “buen vivir” and “buen migrar” by Alexandra Délano Alonso, The New School.

Breaking Paradigms in Defense of Human Rights: Faith-Based Organizations as Crucial Actors in the Protection of Detained Migrants in Mexico by Alethia Fernández de la Reguera, Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas,
Universidad Autónoma Nacional de México.

III. Religion, Spaces of Detention, and Securitized Mobility

The Affectual Potentials of Religious Care Spaces in Immigration Detention by Gregory Cuéllar, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Spiritual Citizenship: Re-Casting Citizenship, Religion, and Spirituality in a Neoliberal-Carceral Landscape by Melissa Guzman, Latina/o Studies Department, San Francisco State University.

IV. Religion, Borders, and Worldmaking

“Gatekeepers on Guard”: Consuming and Claiming Wilderness in the US Mexico Border Security Cosmologies by Megan Ward, University of Washington.

Border Religion and the Force of Belief: Dispatches from Migrant Detention by Rebecca C. Bartel, San Diego State University.

Migration and Changes in Religious Practices: Videorecording Baptisms by Ernesto Castañeda, Director, Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, American University.

Toward the Bridge: Migration, Devotional Labor, and Infrastructure at Mexico’s Northern Border by Elaine A. Peña, Dramatic Arts and American Culture Studies, Washington University in St. Louis.