Francis T. Hutchins, Ph.D. 

Interrogating the Border: Student Engagement in Immigration Issues

I received a pedagogy stipend in 2019 to support an anthropology class I have developed on immigration issues. The stipend allowed me to travel to Arizona and Mexico to visit agencies and organizations, such as Humane Borders and the Office of the Pima County Medical Examiner, that would agree to meet students during a Spring Break trip to the border. I spent nearly two weeks traveling in Nogales AZ, Nogales, Mexico, and Tucson in Summer 2019, and traveled there with students during Spring Break 2020. My presentation discusses the initial information-gathering trip, and the subsequent course and travel with students. We visited shelters, the medical examiner’s office, federal court, volunteered to do water drops in the desert, and accompanied an artist in a “cross planting” at the site where an immigrant body was found.