Workshop: “Emotional landscapes of migration, violences and resistance in the Americas”

Date

Tuesday 2 June 2026 - Wednesday 3 June 2026

Address

Kamerlingh Onnes Building
Steenschuur 25
2311 ES Leiden

Room

B0.25

Migration is never only a movement across borders. It is an embodied and emotional experience shaped by hope, uncertainty, violence, survival, solidarity, and resistance. Across the Americas, irregularised and marginalised communities navigate increasingly hostile border regimes while also creating spaces of care, collective struggle, and hope. This interdisciplinary workshop brings together scholars to explore the emotional dimensions of migration, resistance, and violence. Through critical dialogue, the event examines how migration is embodied, narrated, and remembered, and how trauma, affect, and solidarity shape resistance and alternative futures.

At a time of intensified securitisation and deepening inequalities, the workshop aims to foster reflection and exchange on migration not only as a socio-political condition, but also as a profoundly human experience.

This event is organised by the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance & Society and the Programa Universitario en Migraciones at Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla, in collaboration with Border Criminologies’ Border Policing and Emotions Thematic Group.

To participate in the workshop, please register HERE

 

PROGRAMME

Day 1: June 2, 2026. 13:00-17:00

Moderator: Amalia Campos-Delgado | Leiden University, The Netherlands

13:15 - 15:00 Panel Discussion 1: Affective politics of migration

• Between Empathy and Institutional Norms: Emotional Labour in Migration Bureaucracies in Chile 
  Carolina Pinto Baleisan | Universidad Viña del Mar, Chile
   
• What Law Cannot Hear: Emotional Knowledge and Climate Displacement in Honduras
  Laura Disley | Queen Mary University of London, UK
   
• Hope and Hostility: Regularization Aspirations and Growing Discrimination among Latin American Migrants in Spain
  Elena Ayala Galí | Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla, Mexico

15:15 – 17:00: Panel Discussion 2: Care and hope on the move

• Sustaining Life on the Move: Autonomous Reproductive Infrastructures in Venezuelan Migration
  Tania Bonilla Mena | FLACSO-Ecuador, Ecuador
   
• Care, Guilt, and Surveillance Across Borders: Emotional Dimensions of Digital Motherhood among Honduran Migrant Women in Spain
  Yaatsil Guevara González | Heidelberg University, Germany
   
• Migración a Brasil: Entre la esperanza, la resistencia y la resiliencia. Experiencia de los estudiantes haitianos en la Amazonia Brasileña
  Milius Guerrier & Hélio Luiz Fonseca Moreira | Universidade Federal do Pará, Brazil

Day 2: June 3, 2026.  10:00-13:00

10:00 - 12:00: Panel Discussion 3: Violences at the margins of migration

Moderator: Guillermo Yrizar Barbosa | Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla, Mexico

• Migrant trajectories at the margins: Informality, socio-environmental crisis, and everyday placemaking in Laguna Verde, Chile
  Pilar Ortiz | Universidad de Playa Ancha, Chile
   
• The politics of uncertainty and forced migrant families’ resistances in Mexico
  Susanne Willers |FU Berlin, Germany
   
• Investigar bajo presión: ética, acceso y conocimiento en contextos migratorios violentos
  Cristina Gomez Johnson | Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico
   
• Violencia multifacética contra migrantes haitianos en los departamentos franceses de América. Caso de 15 migrantes en Guadalupe, Martinica y Guayana Francesa.
  ​​​​​​​James Fleurilus| Université d'Etat d'Haïti