Interview: Barbara Sostaita on Immigration Urgencies – Epistemic Unruliness 19

Always Already Podcast, a critical theory podcast

In this first installment of Epistemic Unruliness recorded from within the Trump Age, James interviews Barbara Sostaita, a Feministing.com columnist, community organizer, and doctoral student in Religious Studies at The University of North Carolina where she researches Latinx migrant faith practices and communities. Their conversation focuses upon immigration policy and the recent urgencies created by the Trump Administration. They cover the gambit from ICE raids and detentions to potential roving National Guard posses and the unique dangers posed by uncertainty regarding DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) provisions for college students. They conclude with a discussion on the tradition of sanctuary and its latest resurgence through the New Sanctuary Movements. Barbara and James offer tips for how new activists can join those who have already been doing this work to engage these urgencies in cogent and useful ways without centering themselves in the process.

But that’s not all! After the interview, this episode also includes an audio response to last month’s episode on Martin Konings’ The Emotional Logic of Capitalism from Nicholas Kiersey, Associate Professor of Political Science at Ohio University, host of the OccupyIRTheory blog, one of the hosts of the Fully Automated podcast, and the person who suggested Konings to us. Thanks to Nicholas for engaging with the episode!

Support us on Patreon to help us upgrade our recording equipment. Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. RSS feed here. Thanks to Leah Dion for the intro music, to Bad Infinity for music throughout the episode, and to B for the outro music. Get the mp3 of the episode here.

https://alwaysalreadypodcast.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/eu19.mp3

Links:

• Barbara’s Feministing profile
• Barbara’s Twitter
• Barbara’s op-ed in The Daily Tar Heel publishing UNC President’s internal memo
• UNC President Margaret Spelling’s response/op-ed to President Trump in The Washington Post
• Sanctuary Movement information
• National Immigration Law Center