Jenna M. Loyd lecture: “Transnational Migration Deterrence and the Possibilities for #AbolishICE”

The specter of further border fortification together with horrifying images of overcrowded detention facilities and stranded asylum seekers have brought renewed attention to UW migration and asylum policy. This talk traces how rounds of racialized crisis going back to the 1970s have resulted in the construction of the world’s largest system of deterrence, detention, and deportation. It argues that any campaign to end the horrors of family separation and detention must address the transnational deterrence policies in which they are rooted.

Jenna M. Loyd is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Health Rights Are Civil Rights: Peace and Justice Activism in Los Angeles, 1963-1978 (2014, University of Minnesota Press), the co-editor of Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis (2012, University of Georgia Press), and the co-author of Boats, Borders, and Bases: Race, the Cold War, and the Rise of Migration Detention the United States (2018, University of California Press).

Organized by the UIC Race and U.S. Empire Working Group.