What the Rest of the Country (and the World) Can Learn from Southern Arizona

MY ARIZONA LECTURE SERIES

When

3:30 p.m., Dec. 9, 2022
Picture

Friday, December 9, 3:30 pm AZ Time

University of Arizona – ENR2 Bldg., Room S107 - Map - Reception to Follow

Register here for the Zoom event

The Arizona / Sonora border region can be thought of as a microcosm where multiple global issues - including settler colonial dispossession, economic globalization, transnational migration, and the militarization of nation-state borders - come together and concentrate, shaping conditions of everyday life for communities on both sides of the line. At the same time, this region is also characterized by important living legacies of grassroots organizing, mutual aid and resistance to cultural and economic apartheid, the state-sanctioned violation of human rights, and a host of associated measures of violence and inequality.

Reflecting on more than 20 years as a student of the border region, and as a participant in many of these grassroots efforts, this talk will offer several critical observations regarding the intersections of community, power, space and knowledge that can be gleaned from this place, and from the people who call it home.  My intention in sharing these reflections is to offer some points of orientation that may be useful for navigating an increasingly turbulent period of history – and to suggest that there is much that the rest of the country, and the world, can learn from the people of southern Arizona. 

Dr. Geoff Boyce’s research attends to the geography of U.S. immigration and border policing, and its uneven dissemination of human vulnerability across scales.  Since 2016 Dr. Boyce has served as Academic Director of the Earlham College Border Studies Program, an off-campus liberal arts program based in Tucson that uses the U.S. / Mexico border region as a critical site for unpacking contemporary global realities.  In January 2023 Dr. Boyce will be joining the faculty of the School of Geography at University College Dublin as an Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow.

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