Nancy Hiemstra

Latino immigrants and the renegotiation of place and belonging in small town America

This article compares the politics of place and belonging within two non-metropolitan communities—Woodburn, Oregon, and Leadville, Colorado—that have witnessed a significant increase in Latino immigration during the last fifteen to twenty years. Today both communities are approximately 50 per cent Latino, a demographic change that has reworked understandings of place identity and social belonging in each. Through a comparison of the two towns we seek to chart the unique regional political economic dynamics driving these changes, examine their spatial imprint, and interrogate how local context shapes the extent to which new arrivals are able to make effective claims to a sense of place and belonging despite hierarchies of race, class and ‘illegality.’ Assessing the differences between these two immigrant destinations provides insights into how sociospatial relations are crucial to analyzing immigrant–receiving society interaction, and contributes to scholarship on the uneven geography of immigrant incorporation in the contemporary USA.

Mediating messiness: expanding ideas of flexibility, reflexivity, and embodiment in fieldwork

This article aims to help researchers think about some big-picture challenges that occur in the early stages of fieldwork. In particular, we address the transition from a clear, concise research proposal to the often complicated, messy initiation of a project. Drawing on autobiographical accounts of our own PhD research projects, we focus on dilemmas that may arise for researchers guided by feminist epistemology and methodology. First, we discuss parameters regarding acceptable changes to original research plans and questions. Noting that the carefully planned proposal may dramatically change as fieldwork begins, we draw on feminist literatures to expand and concretize the notion of flexibility in the research process. Second, we puzzle out the relationship between theory, epistemology, and method as the researcher delves into her fieldwork. As logistical challenges may take priority, theoretical and epistemological concerns may temporarily wane. Third, we consider the many ways in which the researchers personal and field life bleed into each other to shape the conduct of research. We emphasize the importance of considering – prior to research as well as during – what the concepts of reflexivity and embodiment mean in fieldwork, especially for the researcher in terms of personal needs and logistical realities. Finally, while we suggest that there are certain unique pressures that shape the early stages of the field research period for PhD students, we conclude the article by focusing on ways in which lessons learned during our own experiences might be broadly useful for any researchers in the beginning stages of fieldwork.

Chaos and Crisis: Dissecting the Spatiotemporal Logics of Contemporary Migrations and State Practices

Discussions of chaos and crisis feature prominently in contemporary literature on the nation-state, globalization, security, and neoliberalism. In scholarship, policy, and public discourse on global migration, references to chaos and crisis abound and yet have not received sustained critical inquiry. In this article, we examine why these alarmist terms emerge so frequently, scrutinizing in particular what is relayed about the contemporary “state” of migration and its new geographical expressions. We take the recurrent discourse of chaos and crisis as our starting point, with the goal of delving more deeply into the logics driving their mobilization. We analyze when and where these discourses become prominent and trace key moments when migrants become securitized (the border crossing, the detention center, the deportation). This examination of the spatiotemporal logics of chaos and crisis advances understandings of the often contradictory efforts by nation-states to facilitate mobility and containment. We argue that states mobilize constructions of chaos and crisis to create exceptional moments in which sovereign reach and geopolitical influence are expanded. By analyzing the use of these discourses as tools, the article provides insight to the relationship between migration and state power.

Periscoping as a Feminist Methodological Approach for Researching the Seemingly Hidden

This article proposes the metaphor of the periscope to guide an innovative approach to researching topics obstructed from view or out of range of more traditional approaches. Periscoping, it suggests, combines a feminist focus on the everyday with the recognition that no space, even those intentionally obscured, can be fully contained. Drawing on research on U.S. immigration enforcement policies, the article explores how feminist geographers can think creatively about how to arrange the “prisms” and “mirrors” at their disposal to obtain an image of what was previously thought to be unknowable. It then explores potential problems inherent to a periscopic strategy alongside tools it offers to researchers.

Introduction to Focus Section: Feminist Research and Knowledge Production in Geography

Over the past two decades, feminist geographers have contributed in critical ways to thinking on the conduct, complications, and consequences of feminist research. The robust existing body of work is testament to the foundational import of these contributions, but the articles in this Focus Section suggest that there are still important things to argue, talk about, and reflect on with regard to the epistemological aspects of doing feminist geography. These six articles bring together real-life examples of complex issues that feminist researchers in geography face today, with the overarching aim of sparking discussions about the relationship between feminist research and knowledge production. Specifically, the articles expand key concepts facilitating reflexive processes and offer new tools for feminist researchers. This Introduction reviews the existing literature pertaining to both of these goals, and summarizes and situates the articles that follow.

Beyond privatization: bureaucratization and the spatialities of immigration detention expansion

ABSTRACT Beyond privatization: bureaucratization and the spatialities of immigration detention expansion. Territory, Politics, Governance. Immigration detention has become central to models of immigration enforcement in the United States and globally. This paper elaborates a conceptual framework to facilitate critical understanding of detention’s proliferation that goes beyond the role of privatization as well as beyond public–private sector relationships. It draws on a study of immigration detention in Essex County, New Jersey, with a focus on the contractual arrangements delineating detention between public and private entities and actors. Our conceptual framework posits processes of bureaucratization as central to the growth in immigration detention. We understand bureaucratization as a spatialized process of obfuscation that both builds multidimensional webs of interdependence between public and private actors and flattens these relationships into one-dimensional rational economic decisions and exchanges. Through this framework, we see contractual agreements that are remarkable for fostering overlapping, snowballing relationships in the operation of facilities, while they simultaneously conceal powerful influences behind detention’s expansion, mask human rights abuses of detained migrants, and filter out moral concerns from decision-making regarding detention.

Geographical perspectives on detention: spatial control and its contestation: Academics, Activists and Policy-makers

This chapter explores research about detention conducted by geographers and other scholars using geographical methods. Geographers conceptualize detention as a form of spatial control, and we suggest that this approach offers tools to scholars and activists aiming to contest detention. The discussion of existing scholarship is organized around three themes: im/mobilities, scaled analyses, and borders/bordering. We offer empirical examples of geographic work on the spatial control of non-citizens, as well as contestation of these mechanisms. We contend that geographic perspectives on detention embody and exemplify a critical orientation with the power to disrupt the spread of detention across and within a widening array of places and social groups.

Images of Illegalized Immigration: Towards a Critical Iconography of Politics. By Christine Bischoff, Francesca Falk and Sylvia Kafehsy (eds). New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2010. CLXXVIII, 178.

Taken collectively, the twelve chapters of Images of Illegalized Immigration: Toward a Critical Iconography of Politics exhort readers to consider the importance of visual representation in shaping popular understandings of international migration. As contributor W.J.T. Mitchell argues, images are “imitations of life” that are “very much like living things themselves” in their power and effect (p. 13). Throughout the volume, what constitutes an “image” is interpreted broadly, which, in turn, encourages the reader to open up his/her own conceptualization of the work that images can do. The book also includes creative, productive suggestions for countering processes through which immigrants are simultaneously “illegalized” and made invisible. With its critical focus on images of migration, this book will be of interest to scholars of international migration, identity, media, cultural studies, policy, and esthetics, as well as to artists, journalists, policymakers, and activists. It could also be a useful teaching tool for students of any of the above; all chapters are appropriate for graduate students and many for undergraduates. While some pieces are theory-laden and others nearly theory-free, all drew on concrete examples. Contributors are an interdisciplinary mix of academics, artists, and activists. Although most of the examples are from Europe (with an emphasis on Switzerland in particular), readers anywhere will recognize elements of migrant illegalization similar to those taking place around them. Most chapters are short, to the point, and digestible. While a few times, I longed for additional development of an example or theoretical point, I generally found the brevity refreshing. To facilitate discussion of specific contributions, I place the chapters into three main categories (a personal categorization, not one done by the editors). Four chapters center on the power of news media coverage to fundamentally shape public perceptions of immigration, showing that negative portrayals of immigrants really do transcend both international borders and time. Jan-Henrik Friedrichs traces the evolution of “regimes of representation” in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s in which Turkish migrants were constructed through metaphors of invasion, disease, hygiene, and flood. Christine Bischoff argues that Swiss media stories of young Balkan men who race illegally at high speeds played an important role in anti-immigrant policy formation in Switzerland. She emphasizes the performative work done by ethnic stereotyping and suggests that negative representations of immigrants can be used to reaffirm national identity itself. Francesca Falk evaluates images of crammed boats and of people in masks assisting rescued refugees, noting the implicit associations with threat and fear of infection. Falk also points to how such imagery makes migrant detention camps, as well as the links between immigration and the colonial past, invisible. Pamela C. Scorzin scrutinizes the origins of metaphorical images and clich es associated with immigration through a focus on Switzerland’s popular slogan “The boat is full.” She highlights the paradox inherent to corresponding images: Immigrants are “made highly visible” as stereotypes while simultaneously “made invisible as individuals and human beings” (102). A second set of chapters dissects the portrayal of immigrants in film, stressing that every visual representation, no matter