CRG Visiting Scholars Showcase

Through an Intersectional Indigenous Queer lens, Marijke Bassani discusses the invisibility, and hypervisibility, of Indigenous LGBTQI+ Sistergirl and Brotherboy Australians within the community and legal system (Domestic/International). Marijke will be sharing some of the key themes that emerged during her fieldwork in remote Indigenous communities located within the Cape York Peninsula of Australia. These themes include: An Indigenous resistance to subscribe to existing LGBTQI+ labels and definitions; A preference for decolonial and Indigenised terminology and; The use of gender pronouns including misgendering within Indigenous Cape York cultural contexts. Marijke’s discussion will highlight the importance of cultivating space for Indigenous peoples to both self-determine, and assert sovereignty over, their own genders, sexualities and bodies—rather than just their lands. Join Marijke in calling for both #Bodiesback and #LandBack!

Temporary Legality and Local Border Regimes in the Welfare State of Sweden
In this talk, Sofi Jansson-Keshavarz will briefly present their Ph.D. project which explores the implications of the shift to temporary protection status in Swedish asylum legislation since 2015. This shift has given shape to a form of temporary legality where it is no longer sufficient to examine only national immigration law to understand the implications of temporary protection. As temporary legality is formalized by the state but shaped and administered locally by municipalities, Sofi traces how temporary legality devolves regulations of more permanent asylum protection locally through a number of ‘integration’ requirements. These requirements in practice take on new forms of bordering that function through a multitude of welfare actors, economic and social contexts, and racialized ideas of refugeeness that vary locally. 

Race, Borders, and Birthright Citizenship
Rachel Rosenbloom’s work traces the history of efforts to restrict the scope of constitutional birthright citizenship since the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. This project provides a new perspective on contemporary calls to limit the reach of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, situating them within a longer history of restrictionist efforts that emerged from anti-Asian movements in California and other western states in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Contextualizing birthright citizenship restrictionism within the shifting dynamics of racialized and gendered borders, it also considers the relationship of these debates to the legal developments that have shaped Black and Indigenous citizenship in this period.