Provocative Views: Human mobility

On March 9, the book Provocative Views: Building Knowledge for Equality (volume 6) was launched. Edited by INTEC's Center for Gender Studies and supported by UNHCR, the book contains 10 essays on human mobility, thus offering a gender perspective on the challenges and inequalities in new migration contexts, as well as on human trafficking, nationality, and refuge in the Dominican Republic.

Allison Petrozziello

The first essay in the book is authored by Allison Petrozziello, an associate researcher at OBMICA. Titled Problematizing Haitian Women as "Birthers" and Other Border Control Strategies, Petrozziello offers a critical reading of media and political discourse on pregnant Haitian women and its real-life effects on all women, based on the press dossier and the documentary report "Undignified Deportations" produced by OBMICA.

It also incorporates findings from a qualitative study carried out with OBMICA and CEDESO in the Enriquillo subregion with 50 families of Haitian descent who have attempted to make use of health and civil registration services. The essay seeks to dismantle the nationalist logic that problematizes Haitian women's reproduction and justifies migration control in maternity hospitals, in order to uncover the power relations that produce and normalize exclusion and violence.

It advances the argument that the militarization of maternity wards is a way of exercising power over the bodies that reproduce the nation with a double purpose: on the one hand, the State assumes control over the bodies of "pure-blood" Dominican women by prohibiting them from aborting even to save their own lives and by reserving the few public-health resources the State invests so that they are the ones giving birth to reproduce the Dominican nation. On the other hand, the State seeks to push outside the reproductive bodies marked by race and ethnicity as "Others," in order to rid itself of that "threat to the nation that reproduces the Haitian problem" within national borders.

The chapter concludes with a call for solidarity among women who wish to defend their bodily sovereignty:

"Border-control practices carried out in the name of the nation increase state control over our bodies, undermine human security and dignity, and weaken our people and our democracy. If patriarchy teaches women to fight each other over scarce resources, then it is urgent to reshape our understanding of the problem beyond the borders imposed on us, so as to claim our fundamental right to health."

The publication of Provocative Views was made possible thanks to the work carried out by the Sergio Vieira de Mello Chair (CSVM) in the country, an initiative created by UNHCR to promote education, research, and academic outreach aimed at the population under its mandate. In addition to disseminating university teaching on topics related to international protection, the Chair also promotes academic training within this field.

The printed book is for sale at INTEC, and there is a reference copy in the OBMICA library. Write to the protected email address to request the document in PDF format.