{"id":481,"date":"2020-05-14T00:45:02","date_gmt":"2020-05-14T00:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ethnicstudies.ucr.edu\/?p=481"},"modified":"2024-10-27T08:16:51","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T15:16:51","slug":"the-migrant-phantoms-of-the-pandemic-by-prof-adrian-felix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ethnicstudies.ucr.edu\/the-migrant-phantoms-of-the-pandemic-by-prof-adrian-felix\/","title":{"rendered":"The Migrant Phantoms of the Pandemic, by Prof. Adri\u00e1n F\u00e9lix"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prof. Adri\u00e1n F\u00e9lix published an op\/ed, “The Migrant Phantoms of the Pandemic<\/a>,” in\u00a0Latino Rebels.\u00a0<\/em>Excerpt below:<\/p>\n

The climbing death toll of COVID-19 has brought to light an often-overlooked end-of-life ritual among Mexican migrant communities in the U.S.:the repatriation of deceased compatriots from the U.S. to their ancestral homelands in M\u00e9xico. Among the many unforeseen tragic consequence of the outbreak, the pandemic is disrupting this long-standing postmortem return migration. Ironically, this immobilization of Mexican migrants in death is symbolic of how they have been excluded in life by the Donald Trump and Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador (AMLO) administrations on both sides of the border.<\/p>\n

As the contagion has careened through the planet \u2014painfully laying bare the racial disparities of public health\u2014 newspapers like the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0have paid homage to the migrant victims who have been deprived of a proper posthumous homecoming due to the disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlong with intense emotional anguish and a sudden economic void from the loss of crucial providers, their families must endure another blow,\u201d\u00a0writes<\/a>\u00a0the LA Times\u00a0about families in M\u00e9xico grieving their deceased loved ones in the U.S. \u201cThe crisis has made it almost impossible to ship bodies back to Mexico for burial.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a similar elegiac tone, the NY Times\u00a0writes<\/a>\u00a0of Mexican migrants who have succumbed to the pandemic in New York City: \u201cFor the area\u2019s Mexican immigrants \u2014a community already hit hard by the virus\u2014 the pandemic has brought another cruel change. Mexican families typically send bodies home, for flower-strewn Catholic burials, and to give relatives the chance to glimpse their loved ones again after long separations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the wake of COVID-19, the NY Times ominously states, \u201cthat sacred rite has come to a halt.\u201d<\/p>\n

In my 2019\u00a0book<\/a>\u00a0Specters of Belonging: The Political Life Cycle of Mexican Migrants<\/em>, I trace these posthumous repatriations across the M\u00e9xico-U.S. border and unearth their political significance for M\u00e9xico-U.S. migration. As political scientist Osman Balkan so hauntingly puts it in a different ethno-religious migratory context: \u201cDeath in the diaspora also raises existential questions about the meaning of home\u2026the act of burial serves as a means to assert belonging, attachment and\u2026loyalty to a particular group, nation, or place.\u201d The necropolitics of this practice reverberate across international boundaries, for, as Balkan asserts, \u201cExperiences with racism, discrimination, or xenophobia generate a feeling of perpetual foreignness, which follows individuals to the grave.\u201d<\/p>\n

Image<\/a> above: The San Isidro cemetery, that the city\u2019s authorities ordered temporarily closed to the public to keep crowds away as a measure to limit the spread of COVID-19 disease, is seen from the air in Mexico City, Sunday, May 10, 2020. (AP Photo\/Fernando Llano)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prof. Adri\u00e1n F\u00e9lix published an op\/ed, “The Migrant Phantoms of the Pandemic,” in\u00a0Latino Rebels.\u00a0Excerpt below: The climbing death toll of COVID-19 has brought to light an often-overlooked end-of-life ritual among Mexican migrant communities in the U.S.:the repatriation of deceased compatriots from the U.S. to their ancestral homelands in M\u00e9xico. Among the many unforeseen tragic consequence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":482,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[16,10],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-news","tag-covid-19","tag-faculty-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnicstudies.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnicstudies.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnicstudies.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnicstudies.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnicstudies.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ethnicstudies.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":969,"href":"https:\/\/ethnicstudies.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnicstudies.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnicstudies.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnicstudies.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnicstudies.ucr.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}