Undocumented Thai American artist and activist Bo Thai is wary of undocumented resilience narratives. The sequence of maddeningly arbitrary events that has kept him from accessing legal immigration status in the US has made him critical of the idea that undocumented people should live lives of endurance – that is, a life in which the present is perpetually deferred to a promised moment of future relief in the form of papers. In this talk, Elizabeth Rubio will discuss how ten years of collaborative work with Bo has culminated in co-authorship of a graphic novel that employs speculative fiction to explore how undocumented status and immigrant justice activism structure relationships to time. In addition to demonstrating how ethnographic and artistic co-theorization has led her and Bo to develop an understanding of undocumented activist temporality that challenges dominant depictions of undocumented movement life, Dr. Rubio will discuss the challenges and possibilities of ethnographic storytelling through visual mediums and activist-academic collaboration.

Elizabeth Rubio is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of California, Riverside. She builds on her work as a community organizer and cultural anthropologist to conduct ethnographic research that responds to emergent questions in Asian American and leftist social justice spaces. Elizabeth is currently completing her book manuscript entitled Dreams Beyond Borders: Undocumented Temporality and Asian American Immigrant Justice Activism. Based on seven years of ethnographic research with undocumented Asian American organizers in Southern California, Washington D.C., and Chicago, Dreams Beyond Borders examines the fraught politics of multiracial coalition-building in immigrant justice spaces and the complexities of enacting immigrant justice through an abolitionist lens. You can find Elizabeth’s work published in Truthout, Journal for the Anthropology of North America, Amerasia, Frontiers: A Women’s Studies Journal, the LA Review of Books, and other mediums.