Dr. Melissa Autumn White
University of British Columbia, Okanagan

Documenting the Undocumented : Toward a Queer(er) Politics of No Borders *

Queer and migrant politics have often been pitted as at odds with each other, given the ascendency of whiteness in mainstream lesbian and gay politics and the concomitant presumption of homophobia amongst racialized 'immigrant others.' In recent years, however, there has been a surge in the visibility of convergent queer and migrant justice organizing in Canada and the United States. With a focus on the Toronto-based 'Let Alvaro Stay' campaign of 2011 and the still emerging nation-wide Undocuqueer project in the US, this talk explores the transformative potential of struggles that simultaneously take up issues around sexuality, gender, immigration, border security, detention and deportation. Because such multivalent organizing carries the capacity to illuminate connections between the intensifying carceral geographies of global apartheid, the vulnerabilities produced through immigration regimes, and the ongoing criminalization of queer- and trans*-ness as a legacy of colonial rule, I argue that it is crucial to reflect on the methodological nationalisms that are often – consciously or unwittingly – reproduced in such activism. To what extent can acts of 'documenting the undocumented' destabilize the order of racialized, gendered and sexual intelligibilities that have been central to the establishment of territorialized systems of governance?

Melissa Autum White enseigne en études sur les femmes et le genre à l'Université de la Colombie-Britannique à Okanagan. Elle a publié dans Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies; Radical History Review; WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly; and Sexualities; as well as the edited collections Transnationalism, Activism, Art; Feminist (Im)Mobilities in Fortress(ing) North America: Rights, Identities and Citizenships in Transnational Context; and Making Things International I: Circulation.

* Cette conférence est présentée en anglais