When
Where
2020 Southern Arizona Geographer Association's Lecture
Refreshments at 3 pm
Talk starts at 3:30 pm
Since the year 2000, an unknown number of people have either died or disappeared in U.S. border states as they attempt to reach safety. Although official counts place the number of dead around 8,000, Dr. Reineke argues that it is very likely that more people have been disappeared than have been found deceased, due to the vast system of erasure operating at the borderlands and beyond. At each stage in the disappearance process, the initial social invisibility, poverty, and racial marginalization experienced by migrating people before they undertake a migration journey comes to make them doubly disappeared. She argues that this disappearing machine is too thorough and well-functioning to be entirely accidental, but instead operates as a part of a broader social process of dehumanization, dispossession, and erasure that has outcomes that serve political and social interests.