Laura A Leisinger

Haitian migrants in the United States are embedded in complex local and transnational networks of belonging, family, and socioeconomic ties, and simultaneously experience ongoing economic exploitation and anti-Haitian stigma that negatively affects wellbeing. As the November 2017 removal of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 60,000 Haitians is fought in court, Haitian TPS-recipients continue to face anxieties about the future because of their precarious legal status. While there is rich anthropological migration literature studying the impact of state policies on migrants and their wellbeing, there is emerging debate that much of this scholarship treats the state as static or bounded. My study explores the ways state migration policy is exercised and experienced as migrants engage it on the ground. It focuses on the consequences of state policy on wellbeing, but also how people recover from debilitating state policy. Using a feminist precarity lens, this project will use 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork with Haitian TPS-recipients and their communities in South Florida to examine how Haitian TPS holders interpret, challenge, and respond to the removal of their protected legal status. In what ways do (trans)local social and economic ties affect Haitian TPS-holders’ wellbeing and decision-making in this period of uncertainty?