Ulla D. Berg (Associate Professor, Latino & Caribbean Studies and Anthropology) and Gloria D'Alessio (Anthropology PhD student) recently presented their research at the World Anthropological Union (WAU) Congress, a major biannual gathering bringing together scholars from across the globe. Ulla, together with Ana Ramos-Zayas, co-organized the panel “Migrant Sheltering and Unsheltering in the Americas,” which examined the practices, politics, and ethics of sheltering and its role in migration processes and control policies throughout the Americas. The panel featured participants from Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, and the United States, fostering a hemispheric dialogue on migration and humanitarian governance.
Ulla’s paper, co-authored with Ana Ramos-Zayas, was titled “Shelters and Their Afterlives: Mobility and Inequality in NYC.” The presentation explored the evolution of New York City’s shelter system amid the so-called “migrant crisis” between 2022 and 2024. It analyzed how the city’s rapid expansion of emergency shelters and public-private contracts shaped new forms of inequality and governance, while tracing the social dynamics within specific shelters such as the Roosevelt Hotel and Randall’s Island facilities. The paper concluded by reflecting on the “afterlives” of these spaces as expressions of U.S. neo-imperial and colonial power in Latin America.
Gloria’s presentation, “Non-Sheltering as Governance: Migrant Shelters and the Politics of Absence in the Darién,” examined how the presence and absence of migrant shelters influence experiences of mobility, control, and care in the borderlands between Colombia and Panama. Based on ethnographic fieldwork across several communities on both sides of the Darién, her analysis showed how shelters—whether missing or makeshift—operate as political sites where humanitarianism, governance, and local economies intersect, revealing the complex infrastructures that shape movement and immobilization along one of the hemisphere’s most perilous migration routes.
