In the first Republican presidential debate before the 2024 election, the only significant disagreement between the candidates on the subject of illegal immigration was the vehemence with which they denounced it. While attendees largely equated these migrations with drug trafficking, the tenor of much of the scene was summed up by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis promising to “use force and leave them dead in cold blood.” “.
The truth of the matter – and the real solutions to these problems – do not lie in alarmist and inflammatory rhetoric, says Jason De León, professor of anthropology and Chicana/o and Central American studies at UCLA since 2019 and director of Undocumented migration project since 2009.
To get his research-based perspective on this issue, we spoke with De León, who is also celebrating a Bruin closure moment. Starting next November and marking his 50th birthday, he will become the new director of the Cotsen Institute of Archeology at UCLA, a place where he once worked as an undergraduate work-study student .
“His appointment is historic for multiple reasons, including that he is a Los Angeles native, will be the first Chicano/Latinx person to lead this important institute, and that his groundbreaking research will further center public mission and “Cotsen’s impact on the world,” he added. said Abel Valenzuela, interim dean of the social sciences division. “I am delighted with Jason’s appointment and look forward to supporting his leadership.” This is a big deal for me, for the Social Sciences Division, and for the future of archeology at UCLA and beyond.
To help kick off Hispanic Heritage Month, we asked De León about his work as well as his upcoming book, which will be published in March.
Immigration will be addressed and debated by all presidential candidates and policy experts throughout this campaign cycle and beyond. What should everyone know about this issue?
We need to get to a point where we no longer see this problem as one to be solved with border walls or barbed wire. No amount of border security will ever stop people who are desperate to seek refuge or protect their families.
We need to talk about what is happening in these countries where neighborhoods are becoming unlivable. We need to talk about the role the United States plays in all of this, whether it’s destabilizing countries politically or keeping them economically underdeveloped, because it benefits us. Furthermore, countries in the South bear the brunt of climate change, but they are not the ones responsible for it – for example, Honduras is not an industrial powerhouse that fuels climate change, but every year, people have to flee this country because of the superpowers. hurricanes.
Rather than waste money on border protection, we need to think about how we can improve conditions in these other places. It’s difficult, though, because people often think, “It’s Mexico’s problem or Honduras’ problem.” But these are global issues, and as Americans we are often deeply involved in the problems of these countries.
We also need to think about the important role that immigrant labor plays in our national economy. Once people are here, no one checks the papers of the agricultural fields, because we want to keep the prices of our products low. Our politicians must take into account this work on which we rely so much and recognize the fiscal and cultural contributions of these immigrants. The problem to be solved does not lie on our geopolitical border.
What do you think about the phenomenon of border states like Texas migrating north by bus?
It is truly unfortunate that some states are using these poor and desperate people as political pawns in a spectacle that does nothing to solve the most important problems. We need to ask these politicians to stop grandstanding and come up with real solutions and nuanced discussions about the roots of the problems. I don’t think the problem is that 100 people are seeking asylum in Texas; I see the problem in the conditions that force these people to leave their country of origin. It takes empathy to put yourself in their shoes to understand why they are coming and to be able to have deeper, more productive conversations.
What should readers know about the Project’s most recent work on undocumented migration?
We’ve focused a lot on families of missing migrants, working with people who are searching for loved ones, trying to understand how people disappear and the difficult path to reuniting them. OUR exhibition work has also grown: we have probably produced almost 100 installations on the death and disappearance of migrants around the world since 2019.
How have things changed since you started working on the project 14 years ago?
THE people crossing borders these days have really diversified. When I started the project, I was working primarily with young Mexican men. Now you see people from Haiti passing through Tijuana; you can have people from Venezuela passing through the Darién Gap. It’s not just about adults; these are family groups and unaccompanied minors. Migration flows have become larger and more international – we are now living in a global migration crisis where we see this happening all over the world: in the Mediterranean, in Turkey, in Greece, in North Africa. It has always been about poverty and political instability, but now it is also about climate change. We cannot discuss migration without talking about the impacts of climate change.
Tell us about your next book, “Soldiers and Kings,” which will be released in March 2024.
It is based on about seven years of ethnographic fieldwork that began in 2015, when I was at the University of Michigan. I followed the lives of young men from Honduras who were paid to smuggle migrants from southern Mexico to the U.S. border. People have a lot of misconceptions about smuggling; they confuse it with traffic. The book attempts to understand how the system works by examining how young people get drawn into this difficult and dangerous world. Smuggling is incredibly precarious, low-paid and directly linked to things like transnational criminal organizations, which has led to an increase in the number of gang members becoming smugglers. I try to show people that the world of illegal migration is really complicated and gray. The black and white idea of “good migrant, bad smuggler” does not hold water when considering the whole process.
People need to understand that smuggling is a direct product of border control capitalism. When we tighten borders while employing undocumented people, it creates this need to cross those borders, which fuels the smuggling industry.
What is the first step that everyone in the UCLA community could take to resolve this issue?
Dive deeper than what you might read in popular media. Often I hear what sound like the same stories over and over on the news – and if I feel that way, living and breathing this work, I can understand how other people might just want to turn to the next page. But to go beyond that, I encourage everyone to seek out other types of stories that aren’t superficial narratives that make for good soundbites. Why are thousands of people dying in the Mediterranean, Arizona’s Sonoran Desert and South Texas? What is the story of this? What are we doing to deal with it? These are really important questions that we all need to keep asking.