“They Kill Us Here Too” is an ethnographic study of the migration experiences of Central American families in Mexico and the United States, focusing on the discursive and material practices used to manage and govern displacement. Through these case studies, Paula will illustrate how state power and relationships of global inequality are mapped into asylum relief. Comparing the nature of humanitarian power between the Global North and the Global South, this project uses the asylum adjudication process and immigrant detention practices to critically examine the role of state power within humanitarianism.

Advisor: David Lindstrom (Sociology)