The weaponization of the intimate-mobility entanglement as border policy: notes on the political economy of survival in the Dominican borderlands

Keywords: Border, Caribbean, Social Reproduction, Gender, Race
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Based on ongoing fieldwork visits sustained over eight years in the Dominican Republic and the Dominican-Haitian borderlands, this presentation articulates a feminist political economy of bordering that accounts for the effects of border violence in the sustainability of life. Centering the experiences of
Haitian and Dominican Haitian domestic workers in the DR, I propose the concept of
intimate-mobility entanglement. The concept sheds light on how crises of social reproduction produce displacement, and, at the same time, intimate and social reproductive labour facilitate mobilities as forms of escape. Human mobilities, intimate labour and social reproduction are co-constitutive of political economies of survival, where the triggers and experiences of displacement are gendered, racialized and mediated by the sustainability of life. This co-constitution is manifest in the intimate labours shouldered by women to navigate displacement and flee gendered and economic violence. Historically in the DR, border violence has shaped the intimate-mobility entanglement in concrete ways that are manifest in border controls, extortion, sexualized violence and deportations (Llavaneras Blanco 2022b). This presentation will focus on the 2021-2022 period, when the Dominican government implemented significant changes in its bordering policy by building a border wall, while also targeting pregnant Haitian women by limiting their access to antenatal care and carrying out deportations in maternity wards. By shedding light on bordering practices that overtly and less overtly seek to inhibit social reproduction, the presentation seeks to explore conflict between borders and life and its weaponization as a government policy in the space of the Afrocaribbean.