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Smugglers, migrants, and demons
Author(s) -
KAHN JEFFREY S.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/amet.12831
Subject(s) - irregular migration , sociocultural evolution , bureaucracy , maritime boundary , securitization , space (punctuation) , geography , economic geography , political science , sociology , anthropology , law , business , politics , computer science , international law , financial system , operating system
Haitian sea migration and US maritime policing have emerged in tandem since the 1980s. During this time, many Haitians have begun to assume that migration voyages succeed only because of ritual exchanges—in particular, transactions between migrants and sea‐traversing, other‐than‐human beings. These ritual payments, along with other activities of border crossing and control, have placed ships, routes, and offshore detention centers in an interconnected constellation that spans the northern Caribbean. These cosmographically deep spatial configurations exceed concepts like “region” or “sociocultural area.” Cosmographic depth, while not unique to these spaces, is made visible in the array of entities, forces, and moral sensibilities that compose them. Seeing cosmographically highlights this depth, which is often rendered inconsequential by dominant bureaucratic registers of border securitization. [ oceans , migration , space , ritual economies , cosmology , Guantánamo Bay , Haiti , Caribbean ]