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abigailandrews.bsky.social
Sociologist @USPUCSD. Study gender, migration, state violence, agency. Direct http://mmfrp.org. Books: Undocumented Politics(2018) & Banished Men(2023). #AcademicMama
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I am heartbroken at Michael Burawoy's death. Michael was a brilliant sociologist, a mentor to me and so many, and above all a beacon of integrity in a messed up world. He was brave and generous and showed us how to stand up for the good. He was silly and zany and full of love. A light in the dark.

From the amazing Professor Carolina Valdivida (UC Irvine): How Faculty and Staff can Support Undocumented and DACAmented Students: mydocumentedlife.org/2025/01/29/h...

You don't realize how much ambient grief you carry until something triggers that grief.

Elated to share that the dream team @stephcanizales.bsky.social, @drmirianma.bsky.social, Silvia Rodriguez Vega and I are getting ~$1.6 million from UCOP MRPI for our project Reimagining Refuge: California for Just Migrant Futures. Stay tuned for seed grants to CA scholars, artists, and activists!

I just did a long thread about “confronting fascism” or something but deleted it. Here’s what’s important: 3-part virtual series on deportation defense. Anyone can sign up, you don’t have to be a lawyer. Mijente is on ig and x @conmijente. More info and RSVP here: bit.ly/skillupcrewup

What if the majority of people denied asylum in the United States are: a) Telling the truth, b) In real danger of persecution, and yet c) Still denied asylum on legal technicalities? That's the bombshell finding of a landmark new study. bclawreview.bc.edu/articles/317...

So today I did a thing -- I launched a newsletter on Substack. I've been working on this since the day after the election, when I sat down and thought about what I could best offer in this moment as an immigration reporter. I hope you'll check it out. open.substack.com/pub/beyondth...

Mass deportation is not inherently more practical, feasible, or realistic than open borders, but the collective imagination in this country can picture one much more easily than the other. There is a politics to what we see as im/possible.

For those just joining: I wrote a book on deportation. It's free: www.ucpress.edu/books/banish... It shows how devastating 47's plans of detention and deportation will be for the human beings targeted, ripping parents from children. I'll start sharing local-level action steps this week. #FLaMigra

Mijente is hosting a Deportation Defense Series: Skill Up + Crew Up, a 3-part virtual series on deportation defense on December 10th, 13th, and 16th. us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

This evil is returning. Call your local elected officials and ask what they're going to do to stop it.

The path to avoiding the worst of climate change runs through state senates and city councils, public utilities commissions and planning bodies, co-op boards and HOAs and PTAs and neighborhood associations. Remember the physics definition of power: it’s work over time.

“people will wake up on Jan. 21 not knowing exactly what comes next for them-and the more accurate” the info “about the scope & scale of deportation efforts, the better able immigrants & their communities will be to prepare for what might be coming and try to find ways to throw sand in the gears”

Versions have long been here. There are still kids enduring the results of the child separation policies today. The U.S. had nearly 1.8 million people imprisoned at the end of '23. Don't even get me started on the criminalization of homelessness (many of whom are Queer youth.)

So proud of my wife @daralind.bsky.social . Her latest for NYT explains what mass deportation probably will look like so people know how to prepare for/defend against it www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/o...

Sadly, this is very true. It’s actually one of the reasons that local law-enforcement doesn’t always have a good relationship with ICE, as the agency has been known to deport people in the middle of criminal proceedings. That annoys local prosecutors.

There are some low lift ways to ease into action if you are interested. 1. Join Detention Watch to learn about how people have and are building rapid response networks: bsky.app/profile/stac...

We have been interviewing immigration advocates about what it means to them to change the U.S. immigration system. Our first report is now online. We are collecting feedback from scholars and immigration advocates alike to incorporate into future work. Comments welcome! osf.io/preprints/so...

- Stripping 1.5+ million people of temporary status - End of refugee resettlement - Cutting legal immigration and adding new visa bans - Overall slowdown of legal immigration - End to asylum through Kafkaesque rules - Brutality against asylum seekers - Increased arrests, detention, and removals.

3. Figure out your city police & county policies/practices around turning immigrants over to ICE. Push for as minimal police-ICE transfer as possible (at traffic stops, upon booking, etc) POLICE are the path to the vast majority of deportations. ICE only has ~6K agents and can't do much on its own.

Also, if anyone mentions that mass deportations are popular, remind them that people think it means “kick out the bad people only.” When you tell voters what mass deportations entails — breaking up families, internment, rounding up people here for years — it suddenly becomes a very unpopular idea.

The largest ICE worksite raid in history, at a meatpacking plant in Mississippi in 2018, led to 680 arrests. It took dozens of agents, months of planning, thousands of man-hours, and likely cost several million bucks. Keep that in mind when the Trump admin starts touting splashy numbers next year.

ICE detention centers are prison camps designed to reduce immigrants to the sub-human. They use an array of torture techniques written nowhere into their mandate including physical violence, verbal abuse, psychological warfare, and deprivation of food, sleep, and sanitation. 1/

I would add to this RAICES Texas. www.raicestexas.org

1. Give $ to people ready to sue the administration & do deportation defense. I suggest alotrolado.org (w/whom I've worked closely in SD/TJ), ImmDef.org, ACLU. 2. Donate to local orgs providing know your rights and emergency funds to immigrant families. Please share more org suggestions below!

One of the key tasks for anyone with a platform right now is to try and get people to understand what mass deportation, the Trumpists’ number one priority, would mean in practice: An extremely chaotic, violent, brutally disruptive attempt to purge and redraw the boundaries of the ethno-state.

For those just joining: I wrote a book on deportation. It's free: www.ucpress.edu/books/banish... It shows how devastating 47's plans of detention and deportation will be for the human beings targeted, ripping parents from children. I'll start sharing local-level action steps this week. #FLaMigra

It was great to talk with @abigailandrews.bsky.social and colleagues about the research process behind Banished Men, the open access book sharing the lives of deportees to Mexico. Stories of incarceration and dehumanization, plus resistance. Listen: socannex.commons.gc.cuny.edu/podcast/6854/

Thrilled to share that, effective July 1st, I have been promoted to Full Professor in the UCSD Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and I'll be stepping in as director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies!

Pacific Soc Association folks: join us this Sat 2:15pm for a Book salon on #BanishedMenBook, which I co-researched w/ 31 UCSD students. Organized by @its_Serrano (the best!) and including the amazing @Mirian_M_Aranda of UCI and @glopezoroz of @AllianceforBMOC! Can't wait!

My 2018 book challenged the modernization view of migration & gender. It showed how institutions, eg police+state, shape gender relations. Won @ASASexandGender book award for it. This recent #AJS piece cherry-picks quotes to make it look like the approach I critique is actually my argument. 🙄

Seeking advice: I'd like to try using AI to do a first round of qualitative coding. This would be for use on about 150-200 qualitative interviews, two-thirds of them **in Spanish.** What do you recommend for apps, as well as for tutorials?

Banished Men: How Migrants Endure the Violence of Deportation, by me and 31 students, is out and FREE to all, open source @ucpress luminosoa.org/site/books/m... What becomes of the people the US locks up and casts off as criminal? We trace what it FEELS like to live thru carceral deportation.