COMMColloquium

Legally-Persecuted Migrants’ Suffering & Endurance: Advocacy Communication & Memorable Messages

Monica Cornejo, Assistant Professor, Cornell University

3 pm in 102 Mann

Reception to follow in the Hub

The United States has the largest and most diverse immigration detention system in the world (Saadi et al., 2020; US.ICE. 2024). In these detention centers (akin to concentration camps), individuals face poor living conditions, inhumane treatment by staff, barriers to medical care, and serious health issues (see Diaz et al., 2023; Hernández, 2023). Anchoring interpersonal communication, Cornejo draws on 50 interviews, collected primarily in 2024, with Latine and Caribbean migrants formerly incarcerated in immigration camps (14 women) to describe emergent salient qualitative themes. Primarily, this talk examines critical themes in memorable interactions (e.g., dehumanization, communication, attempts to garner empathy) between detained people and the officials overseeing their detention, including immigration and customs officers, ICE agents, and detention staff.

Monica Cornejo (PhD, 2022, UC Santa Barbara) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell University. Broadly, Dr. Cornejo’s research aims to understand how legally persecuted migrants employ different strategies to negotiate humanization in the U.S. and, in turn, how these strategies relate to their psychosocial and physical health. Specially, Dr. Cornejo pursues three research goals: 1) Examine interpersonal communication processes among legally persecuted individuals, socially labeled as “migrants” to “illegals” or “aliens”, terms prompted and (re)negotiated by post-settler colonial logics within a racialized ecosystem; 2) Explore how anti-migrant messages relate to the health and well-being of migrants; and 3) Pinpoint how migrants utilize communication identity management and advocacy strategies to challenge the inequities, barriers, and multidimensional punishment they encounter.