New Books Network Podcast

Mobilities and Methods November 19, 2023

Moving Words

Literature, Memory, and Migration in Berlin

Andrew Brandel

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

In the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Berlin has re-emerged as a global city in large part thanks to its reputation as a literary city – a …

Mobilities and Methods October 18, 2023

The Color of Asylum

The Racial Politics of Safe Haven in Brazil

Katherine Jensen

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

In 2013, as Syrians desperate to escape a brutal war fled the country, Brazil took the remarkable step of instituting an open-door policy for all Syrian refugees. Why did Brazil—in …

Mobilities and Methods October 10, 2023

The Right Kind of Suffering

Gender, Sexuality, and Arab Asylum Seekers in America

Rhoda Kanaaneh

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

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From the overloaded courts with their constantly changing dates and appointments to the need to prove oneself the “right" kind of asylum seeker, the asylum system in the United States …

Mobilities and Methods September 12, 2023

Unsettling

The El Paso Massacre, Resurgent White Nationalism, and the US-Mexico Border

Gilberto Rosas

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

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On August 3, 2019, a far-right extremist committed a deadly mass shooting at a major shopping center in El Paso, Texas, a city on the border of the United States …

Mobilities and Methods September 3, 2023

Filipino Time

Affective Worlds and Contracted Labor

Allan Punzalan Isaac

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

From spectacular deaths in a drag musical to competing futures in a call center, Filipino Time: Affective Worlds and Contracted Labor (Fordham UP, 2021) examines how contracted service labor performed …

Mobilities and Methods August 25, 2023

Space-Time Colonialism

Alaska's Indigenous and Asian Entanglements

Juliana Hu Pegues

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

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As the enduring "last frontier," Alaska proves an indispensable context for examining the form and function of American colonialism, particularly in the shift from western continental expansion to global empire …

Mobilities and Methods July 10, 2023

Pressing Onward

The Imperative Resilience of Latina Migrant Mothers

Jessica P. Cerdeña

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

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Pressing Onward: The Imperative Resilience of Latina Migrant Mothers (U California Press, 2023) centers the stories of mothers who migrated from Latin America, settled in New Haven, Connecticut, and overcame …

Mobilities and Methods July 5, 2023

Argonauts of West Africa

Unauthorized Migration and Kinship Dynamics in a Changing Europe

Apostolos Andrikopoulos

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

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In rapidly changing and highly precarious contexts, unauthorized African migrants turn to kinship in search of security, stability, and predictability. Through the exchange of identity documents between “siblings,” assistance in …

Mobilities and Methods June 10, 2023

Dying Abroad

The Political Afterlives of Migration in Europe

Osman Balkan

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

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On any given day, the remains of countless deceased migrants are shipped around the world to be buried in ancestral soils. Others are laid to rest in countries of settlement …

Mobilities and Methods May 10, 2023

The Fluvial Imagination

On Lesotho’s Water-Export Economy

Colin Hoag

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

Landlocked and surrounded by South Africa on all sides, the mountain kingdom of Lesotho became the world's first "water-exporting country" when it signed a 1986 treaty with its powerful neighbor …

Mobilities and Methods April 23, 2023

Passport Entanglements

Protection, Care, and Precarious Migrations

Nicole Constable

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

Passport Entanglements: Protection, Care, and Precarious Migrations (U California Press, 2022) examines the problems with documents issued to Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong and explores the larger role that passports …

Mobilities and Methods April 9, 2023

Crossing a Line

Laws, Violence, and Roadblocks to Palestinian Political Expression

Amahl Bishara

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

Palestinians living on different sides of the Green Line make up approximately one-fifth of Israeli citizens and about four-fifths of the population of the West Bank. In both groups, activists …

Mobilities and Methods December 10, 2022

Oaxaca in Motion

An Ethnography of Internal, Transnational, and Return Migration

Iván Sandoval-Cervantes

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

Migration is typically seen as a transnational phenomenon, but it happens within borders, too. Oaxaca in Motion: An Ethnography of Internal, Transnational, and Return Migration (U Texas Press, 2022), documents a …

Mobilities and Methods August 26, 2022

Cultural Labour

Conceptualizing the 'Folk Performance' in India

Brahma Prakash

Hosted by Lakshita Malik

Folk performances reflect the life-worlds of a vast section of subaltern communities in India. What is the philosophy that drives these performances, the vision that enables as well as enslaves …

Mobilities and Methods August 10, 2022

Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Social Media's Influence on Fashion, Ethics, and Property

Minh-Ha T. Pham

Hosted by Lakshita Malik

In 2016, social media users in Thailand called out the Paris-based luxury fashion house Balenciaga for copying the popular Thai “rainbow bag,” using Balenciaga’s hashtags to circulate memes revealing the …

Mobilities and Methods July 29, 2022

The Diasporic Condition

Ethnographic Explorations of the Lebanese in the World

Ghassan Hage

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

Bridging the gap between migration studies and the anthropological tradition, Ghassan Hage illustrates that transnationality and its attendant cultural consequences are not necessarily at odds with classic theory. In The …

Mobilities and Methods July 26, 2022

Radical Resilience

Athenian Topographies of Precarity and Possibility

Othon Alexandrakis

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

Radical Resilience: Athenian Topographies of Precarity and Possibility (Cornell UP, 2022) relates narratives of Athenians struggling to survive the impoverishment of relentless austerity measures, compounding emergencies, and human disasters of …

Mobilities and Methods July 15, 2022

Victims of Commemoration

The Architecture and Violence of Confronting the Past in Turkey

Eray Çayli

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

“Confronting the past” has become a byword for democratization. How societies and governments commemorate their violent pasts is often appraised as a litmus test of their democratization claims. Regardless of …

Mobilities and Methods July 6, 2022

The Opportunity Trap

High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failures of the Dependent Visa Program

Pallavi Banerjee

Hosted by Lakshita Malik

The Opportunity Trap: High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failures of the Dependent Visa Program (NYU Press, 2022) is the first book to look at the impact of the H- …

Mobilities and Methods June 8, 2022

Militarized Global Apartheid

Catherine Besteman

Hosted by Alize Arıcan

In Militarized Global Apartheid (Duke UP. 2020), Catherine Besteman offers a sweeping theorization of the ways in which countries from the global north are reproducing South Africa's apartheid system on a worldwide …