Migrations Program
Trump Team Eyes Using State And Local Police For Immigration Enforcement
Stephen Yale-Loehr, Migrations
President-elect Donald Trump's immigration advisers are discussing plans to enlist local law enforcement to help the federal government deport undocumented immigrants, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Additional Information
How Sanctuary Cities Are Preparing For Trump's Mass Deportation Plans
Stephen Yale-Loehr, Migrations
Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration law, explains that sanctuary laws can slow down, but not stop, mass deportations.
Additional Information
U.S. Farm Groups Want Trump to Spare Their Workers from Deportation
Mary Jo Dudley, Migrations
Mary Jo Dudley, director of the Cornell Farmworker Program, discusses the impact that fear of enforcement against farms has on farmworkers.
Additional Information
Axios Explains: Roadblocks to Trump's Mass Deportations
Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer, Migrations
Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer, clinical professor of law, says it is unlikely that a coordinated effort across all federal and local agencies for mass deportations would be possible.
Additional Information
Trump’s Mass Deportation Plan ‘Raises Serious Constitutional Questions’
Marielena Hincapié, Migrations
Marielena Hincapié, distinguished immigration scholar, examines Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan.
Additional Information
What Houston Can Teach Cities about Immigrant Rights
Cornell Chronicle Interviews Shannon Gleeson
“Houston highlights how immigrant rights can be advanced in a place resistant to change,” writes Gleeson (Migrations) in a new coauthored book.
Additional Information
What Next? Activists on How to Move Past the Grief of Defeat.
Marielena Hincapié, Migrations
Marielena Hincapié, distinguished immigration scholar, explains the importance of taking space to grieve.
Additional Information
Fears New York Buildings’ Deadly Toll on Migratory Birds Could Be on the Rise
Andrew Farnsworth, Migrations
Andrew Farnsworth, visiting scientist at the Lab of Ornithology, says “We know that the estimate in New York City – close to 250,000 birds dying in collisions every year – is definitely an underestimate, no question.”
Additional Information
Faculty Gather to Celebrate Distinguished Cornell Career
Symposium Honors Stephen Yale-Loehr
A Nov. 8 symposium honored the immigration law scholar. Yale-Loehr's research and service shaped the Migrations initiative, now an Einaudi program.
Additional Information
Challenging Ideas of Crisis at International Borders
Eleanor Paynter in World in Focus
Eleanor Paynter, Migrations postdoctoral fellow from 2019–22, has published a book on the so-called “migration crisis,” with a focus on migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Italy.
In Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present, Paynter gathers the accounts of survivors of Mediterranean crossings and compares migrants' journeys to public debates, government policies, and a range of media. She finds that narrative framings of “crisis” and “emergency” do not align with the lived experiences of people on the move.
A majority of people, Paynter finds, moved around from country to country to seek new and better opportunities. They did not move directly to Italy from their home countries. “These accounts challenge the idea we have that migration is a movement from point A to point B. Very few journeys fit that linear narrative,” she says.
“One key point my research confirms is that the way we often hear about migration in dominant discourse doesn't match the way people crossing borders describe their experiences.”
Yet a pervasive narrative in Italy paints migration to the country as an emergency, reflecting the idea that arrival in a new country is sudden and unforeseen. People do experience extreme risk during their journeys on the Mediterranean Sea, but “crisis is not an inherent quality of migration or of borders,” she says.
“It often gets treated that way—to very differing ends—by people across the political spectrum and in different roles. But emergency is not an inherent fact. It's produced and reproduced in narratives, policies, images, interactions (often in contradictory ways), and all of that has material consequences.”
This is especially true in the case of migration from Africa to Europe, the major focus of the book. “The idea that migration is a crisis reproduces older colonial ideas about Africa as an unknowable space of chaos and crisis,” Paynter says.
“The testimonials I discuss in my book explicitly challenge the idea that the movements and presence of Africans in Europe constitute a crisis,” Paynter explains. “Migrant and racial justice are intertwined, and working towards a just future requires imagining beyond these narrow emergency framings of migration.”
Eleanor Paynter was a postdoctoral fellow for Cornell's first Global Grand Challenge, now the Migrations Program, from 2019–22. She is currently an assistant professor of Italian, migration, and global media studies at the University of Oregon. Read more about her contributions to Migrations.
Featured in World in Focus Briefs