Notes on red liberty
The cover art of New Narratives on the Peopling of America
Everyone is from this earth, everyone is Indigenous, everyone is illegal. ...
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New York’s Existential Crisis over Migration
How can the process that created the city also be responsible for destroying it?
More than anywhere else, in New York, the migrant crisis—essentially a migration governance crisis—is an existential one: it interrogates not only the capacity of the city to welcome newcomers but also the city’s broader prospects. ...
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It’s Not a Migrant Crisis—It’s a Political Crisis
The creation of a global category of the unfree
Amidst acknowledging the immediate suffering of migrants and asylum seekers, this critique challenges the narrative surrounding the so-called "migrant crisis." It argues that diverting attention from systemic issues perpetuates dehumanization and supports policies hindering migrants' rights. Emphasizing the need for equitable immigration policies, it advocates for building diverse, inclusive societies....
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Testing the Waters in Gotham
A look at how residents throughout the city’s history have chosen what to drink
The three forms of water distribution form a fluid archive of community formation, civic pride, and the many different possible ways New Yorkers can choose the water they drink....
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The Little Prince Haunts New York
Following Antoine de Saint-Exupéry from the Ritz to the East River
When I moved to New York, I set out to discover how my new adopted home had influenced that sense of tristesse in The Little Prince, which Saint-Exupéry wrote during his 1941–1943 stay in the city....
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Our Next Guantánamo
Immigrants might become the next target for state-sponsored terrors
We create Guantánamos in those fevered moments when imagined needs enflame ancient hatreds and modern fears, telling ourselves they will keep us safe and forgetting that they never have before. ...
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Held Hostage to One’s Values
On the responsibility to refugees at the Belarusian-Polish border
The Polish-Belarusian border crossing has been, since mid-2021, one of the world’s many border zones where people get sick and die under the watchful eye of the state....
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The Violence of American Border Policies Continues
Both political parties say they care about families—so why would the Biden administration return to a family separation regime?
And yet, in the absence of new legislation that makes it easier to cross the border legally for work, the Biden administration has defaulted to a hard line on immigration that continues to separate families and promote border security. ...
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Why the U.S. Needs Migrants
Migrant workers have an important role in the economy
Contrary to what the Republicans would have us believe, foreign-born workers, nearly half of whom are Spanish speaking, participate in the workforce at a higher rate than their native-born counterparts: 65 percent compared to 61 percent of the native-born. ...
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The Dilemma of a Fragmented Self
Mass migrations, language, and the future of identity
How can language create such a convoluted way of experiencing the everyday world? We can explore this phenomenon with two linked concepts: the speech act and the discourse community. ...
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Documenting the City of Refugees
An interview with Susan Hartman on her new book about Utica’s transformation by refugees
I wanted to put in perspective what these refugees had gone through, what the countries they left had gone through, what the refugee camp experience was like. So, there is this part where I talk about when they were each on the run: it is very traumatic material and this ...
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A City on Fire
Arson and neglect in 1970s Utica, New York
Some residents still remember the bumper sticker: “Last one out of Utica, please turn out the lights.” Absentee landlords bought houses at auction—then hired people to burn them so they could collect the insurance money. And some owners torched their own homes. “Arson rates just skyrocketed,” Chief Ingersoll said. In ...
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