Research Program Description

My research program is invested in examining “regimes of (in)visibility” and the ways in which various types of dynamic movements and global migrations are characterized and represented as well as dampened and interrupted. I'm interested in looking media culture, as well as representational strategies employed by refugee advocacy groups and anti-refugee protestors, impact refugees and their ongoing quest for legal status. I'm interested in understanding what constitutes a “fake refugee” and how concepts of deservingness shape and mold the ways in which immigration law on the ground is implemented and carried out.

• How are refugees portrayed across different mediums such as the internet, newspapers, and billboards and how do these representations reinforce various types of inequality in the law?
• How do local actions shape and influence written national laws?
• Who gets overlooked and who is prominently placed forward?
• How/ through what processes does structural violence become normalized or not in the decision-making process by immigration officers and in decisions over how to represent certain asylum seekers in certain ways?
• How do mobility and disability come to the forefront in the face of border crossings and arbitrary shutdowns?

I will seek to uncover questions concerning visual representations of refugees and migrants and the ways in which it shapes the dynamic workings of movement and the law as it influences and gets influenced by refugees, advocacy organizations, and anti-refugee protestors.