Sanctuary encounters: a phenomenological account of civil society's unwitting entanglement in border work

The Corry Colloquium Speaker Series of the Department of Political Studies presents:

Martha Balaguera - University of Toronto Mississauga 

"Sanctuary encounters: a phenomenological account of civil society's unwitting entanglement in border work" 

Thursday, January 16, 2025 

2:30-4:00 PM

Robert Sutherland Hall | Room 202

Light refreshments served

Biography: 

Martha Balaguera’s scholarship focuses on collective political struggles in violent contexts, with an emphasis on transborder activism in the Americas from a feminist perspective. Her first book project (in progress) offers an ethnographic account of migrant encounters with humanitarianism and civil society across what she calls the “integral frontier,” spanning Central America, Mexico and the United States. In it, she theorizes how ordinary people, especially women, LGBTQ+ people, subaltern subjects, and grassroots communities respond with everyday practices of sanctuary and political organizing to forced displacement, confinement and intensified border enforcement. Currently, Martha also has research projects on legal accompaniment at the US-Mexico border, Latin American feminist protest, and trauma-informed methodologies for conducting research with LGBTQ+ migrants.