The Binational Politics of Return Migrant Activism: An Interview with Caroline Tracey

Matrix Podcast

This episode of the Matrix Podcast features an interview with Caroline Tracey, who holds a PhD from the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, and whose research uses ethnographic, archival, and literary methods to study the American Southwest, Mexico, and the US-Mexico border. Tracey's dissertation, "Binational Politics from Intimate Scales: Motherist, Feminist, Queer and Trans Activism by Deportees and Return Migrants in Mexico City," responds to existing scholarship that has focused on deportation as a male phenomenon, and argues that women and trans deportees and returnees carry out fundamental community-building and activism on the ground in Mexico that has improved emplacement over the long term for all return migrants.

As a journalist, Tracey's work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, and other outlets, and in Spanish she is a frequent contributor to Mexico's Nexos. She is currently the Climate Justice reporting fellow at the High Country News and an editor-at-large at Zócalo Public Square.

The interview was conducted by Julia Sizek, Matrix Content Curator and a Postdoctoral Scholar at Social Science Matrix.

A transcript of the interview is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/the-binational-politics-of-return-migrant-activism-interview-with-caroline-tracey/