Defining and Performing Help: Local Responses to Irregular Migration at the Northern Border

Elizabeth Onasch, State University of New York - Plattsburgh

By the end of 2020, almost 50,000 people had left the United States via an irregular border crossing at Roxham Road in Champlain, NY, to seek asylum in Canada. Most of the people making this crossing are from the Global South and almost all encounter two different groups of local actors: volunteer immigrant advocates and taxi drivers. The local immigrant advocacy groups on both sides of the border provide support for migrants, including verbal encouragement at the border and arranging housing, childcare, access to legal advice. The volunteers for these advocacy groups, many of whom are women, express adherence to an ethic of care and draw upon local and personal histories of advocacy during previous border crises. The taxi drivers who transport people to the border from nearby bus stations and airports engage with migrants through the prism of a profit-driven economic model, as they compete for this potentially lucrative business. Many of the drivers, the majority of whom are men, also express concern for their passengers’ plight and attempt to provide them with support. This paper explores how these different local actors’ understandings of the current pattern of irregular migration, their roles in this pattern, and their interactions with migrants are shaped by the intersections of their race, class, and gender identities.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 137. Classifying States, Gender, and the Creation of the Deserving and Undeserving