Laughing about It

Emotional and Affective Spaces of Humour in the Geopolitics of Migration

Bibliographic Data

ID3948649
AuthorsJared P Van Ramshorst (Syracuse University, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume24
Issue4
Pages896-915
Publication date2019-08-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2017.1410795
OpenAlexW2771348125
LanguageEN
Citations received20
References cited48

Every day, migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras risk their lives attempting to reach the US. Accordingly, accounts of migration from Central America are often framed by tragedy and violence, as migrants increasingly confront new security and border control practices in Mexico and the US, in addition to other forms of brutality on their journeys. Though accurate, these descriptions grounded in tragedy obscure other everyday experiences of migrants in transit, which, as I show here, are punctuated not only by brutality and violence but also by play and laughter. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in migrant shelters across Mexico and the US, I argue that humour represents a crucial, yet neglected, detail in the geopolitics of international migration. I develop the shared and collective aspects of joking and laughter in migrants’ journeys by detailing how Central American migrants deploy humour as a shared mechanism to cope with their vulnerability while generating spaces of collective solidarity, as they join together in making light of their illegality and immobility in transit. Ultimately, I assert, attention to humour in the study of the geopolitics of migration reveals the complexity of migrants’ experiences along their journeys, experiences that transcend overly simplistic accounts of brutality and violence to better understand migrants’ everyday lives in transit

Criminology · Ethnography · Geopolitics · Laughter · Media studies · Police brutality · Political science · Politics · Precarity · Social science · Sociology · Solidarity · Anthropology · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · Humor Studies and Applications · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Psychology · Social Psychology

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