Steinbrucker Lecture Series: Dr. Parsons Dick Presents “Discriminatory Ontology of Migration in Asylum Processing at the U.S. – Mexico Border” 
Thursday, Feb. 17
4-6 p.m.
Commons Meeting Room (and streamed)
Zoom link: https://arcadia.zoom.us/j/95005439835 

Dr. Hilary Parsons Dick, associate professor of International Studies and Historical and Political Studies, will discuss how the “discriminatory ontology of migration” is produced through asylum processing at the US-Mexico border, which has become increasingly restrictive and inhumane in the last decade. Read more. 

“The discriminatory ontology of migration relies on and reproduces a racial(izing) hierarchy that construes some, but not all, mobile populations as less than human and, therefore, unworthy of protection,” said Dr. Parsons Dick. “Although the US-Mexico border is commonly associated with the movement of displaced peoples from Mexico and Central America, it is not only people from this region who seek asylum at this border. There are also thousands of people at the border who are fleeing from persecution in Haiti, Cuba, Eritrea, and Somalia–among other countries. Therefore, analysis of asylum processing at the US-Mexico border powerfully illuminates not only the racialization of mobility in the border zone between Mexico and the US, but between the Global North and Global South more broadly. I will conclude the talk with a discussion of the ways asylum advocacy can (and cannot) address the problems identified during the talk.”