Bioprecarity:
Latinx Migrants, Captivity and Resistance
Our group approaches bioprecarity, the vulnerabilization of people as embodied selves, as a defining condition of undocumented Latinx life in the United States in the twenty-first century. Bioprecarity, “the vulnerabilization of people as embodied selves,”(Griffin and Leibetseder, 2020) links two concepts: biopower, the regulation of subjects via the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations, and precarity, an acute and persistent state of unpredictability, instability, insecurity, and risk. The questions animating our collaboration include, who among the undocumented gets to live, and who is left to die or not given the opportunity to live or survive? Under what conditions, material and otherwise, are those lives lived, taken away, or denied? And how do Latinx migrants, activists, and cultural workers respond to and work to challenge those conditions?
Research Goals
Sharpen our understanding of bioprecarity as a hallmark of undocumented, Latinx life and death in the twenty-first century.
By deploying sources and methods in the humanities and qualitative social sciences, and by approaching activism and creative expression as an intervention in social relations and in the making of history, we will emphasize the significance of everyday life and cultural work for change over time.
By comparing different regions, we will highlight myriad nodes in a network of Latinx activism and cultural production. And by comparing different Latinx groups during different periods, we will underscore the heterogeneity and dynamism of the Latinx migrant experience.
Principal Investigators
Catherine S. Ramírez, Professor and Chair, Department of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz
Jonathan Xavier Inda, Professor and Director, Latin American and Latino Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Chicago
Rebecca M. Schreiber, Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of American Studies at the University of New Mexico
Fellows
Aldo Barrita, Crossing Latinidades Research Fellow, 2022-2023, Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
María Gutiérrez Gómez, Crossing Latinidades Research Fellow, 2022-2023, Hispanic Studies, University of California, Riverside
Anibal Serrano, Crossing Latinidades Research Fellow, 2022-2023, Political Science, University of California, Irvine