New Article on Haitian Domestic Workers in the Dominican Republic, June 2020

The intimate-mobility entanglement: Subaltern trajectories in the Haitian-Dominican borderlands. Masaya Llavaneras Blanco, Wilfrid Laurier University  Balsillie School of International Affairs.

Published on June 17 https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654420930727

This article argues that intimate and human (im)mobilities are interrelated and that this relationship is key to how borders function and how they are experienced. It proposes the concept of intimate-mobility entanglement to describe this relationship of interdependence. Based on primary research in the Dominican Republic, the piece illustrates how intimate labor functions as both a determinant of and a strategy for human (im)mobility. This can be observed in domestic work, childrearing, intimate violence, and border crossing. It focuses on the spatial trajectory of Marie, a Haitian woman who works as a domestic worker in a Dominican border city after having lived and worked in various cities in the Dominican Republic for 20 years. That trajectory reveals how the so-called intimate-mobility entanglement is integral to the Dominican border regime.

Through individual interviews, participant observation, and mapping of Marias journeys in Haitian and Dominican territory, the article explores spatial trajectories and sheds light on the dual relationship between intimate-mobility entanglement and the border regime. Drawing on the tradition of feminist and subaltern geographies, as well as the literature on mobilities, the text presents a contextualized analysis of the politics of subaltern mobilities and explains how intimacy and intimate labors are critical aspects of how borders function.