BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
PRODID:iCalendar-Ruby
BEGIN:VEVENT
CATEGORIES:
DESCRIPTION:“We’re not going to be afraid of Immigration.” Juana spoke thos
 e words to her undocumented niece Sonia while they agonized over Sonia’s up
 coming court hearing. Sonia had missed a previous hearing and might have a 
 deportation order awaiting her. It was February 2025. But Juana advised aga
 inst fear. She told her niece\, We’ll go to court together.\n\nThis paper r
 eaches for a theory of the state in order to think through the dilemmas fac
 ed by Central American immigrants in the rural and small-town Hudson Valley
 . To start\, I focus on people who are at high risk of deportation and deci
 de to go to court anyway. As Juana says\, they are deciding not to be afrai
 d. Why refuse to fear? \n\nTo search for an answer\, I turn to 2021\, when 
 New York State created the Excluded Worker Fund\, a COVID unemployment bene
 fit designed specifically for undocumented New Yorkers. The shift from 2021
  to 2025 – from state benevolence to mass deportation – can seem like a dra
 matic transformation in regimes. Immigrants\, however\, may be detecting an
  underlying continuity. In both periods\, state intervention is managing th
 e rural labor market by rewarding workers who have strong links to their em
 ployers. First trust and then loyalty (rather than enterprise) emerge as ke
 y dispositions. Through their refusal to fear\, immigrants may demonstrate 
 loyalty in the midst of danger. This paper turns an ethnographic eye to the
  practices and attitudes that rural New Yorkers develop in the current mome
 nt. By charting five tumultuous years in a single valley\, we aim to unders
 tand what\, during a time of change\, ends up remaining the same. \n\n \n\n
 Gregory Duff Morton is an economic anthropologist and social worker. He wan
 ts to know how people send value across borders in the Americas. He has eng
 aged with welfare programs in Latin America\, with Brazilian migrants who m
 ove back to the countryside\, with Dominican seniors undergoing surgery in 
 New York City\, and\, most recently\, with Central Americans and the activi
 sts they meet in upstate New York. Morton has a special interest in the MST
 \, Brazil’s landless movement\, which brings small farmers together to occu
 py plantations. By thinking internationally about human services\, he hopes
 \, we can equip ourselves to confront the inequalities so characteristic of
  public life in the Americas.
DTEND:20260210T182000Z
DTSTAMP:20260422T175226Z
DTSTART:20260210T172000Z
GEO:42.447296;-76.482254
LOCATION:Uris Hall\, G08
SEQUENCE:0
SUMMARY:Refusing to Fear: Benevolence and Deportation Among Central America
 ns in Rural New York
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_51816887934366
URL:https://events.cornell.edu/event/refusing-to-fear
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR