Joelle Julien

While the U.S., other Caribbean islands, France, and Canada have been the primary destinations of Haitian migrants over the last half-century, since the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, dominant Haitian migration patterns have shifted towards Latin America. Since 2016, travelling across South and/or Central America to the U.S./Mexico border has become a dominant route for Haitian people attempting to settle in the U.S. In 2021, due to U.S. border restrictions, including Title 42 and the “Remain in Mexico” program, the Mexican government enforced policies that required migrants to remain in Tapachula, at the southern border, to deter migrants from the U.S./Mexico border. Based on ethnographic research in Tapachula and Tijuana in 2021 and 2022, this project examines Haitian migration experiences by linking two modes of analysis and framing anti-Haitian immigration policies within a transnational context. The first is macro-level analysis of how state actors harness racial projects to immigration policies. The second is micro-level analysis of Haitian migrant refusal of neoliberal migration policies and the ethnographic refusal of a Haitian-American researcher. Together, these analytical frameworks reveal how ethnography in times of “crisis” can produce knowledge that challenges disciplinary assumptions and adds to theories of transnational anti-Haitian formations.