Beyond Walls and Cages: A Dialogue with Jenna Loyd

The rapid expansion of immigrant detention and the criminalization of migration are drawing greater attention to the convergences between US migration and penal policies. Jenna Loyd is currently on a road trip through the US South and Southwest to explore how immigrant detention and deportation build on mass incarceration in the region. Tuesday, September 22, Jenna will talk with us about her approach to detention and imprisonment, report back on the first three weeks of her road trip, and discuss ideas for economic alternatives to prison development.

Jenna Loyd is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics. She is a scholar-activist whose work centers on the political geographies of violence and health. She approaches questions of racism, body politics, and the urban environment through theorizing how structural and state violence are embedded and represented in the landscape. Her first book manuscript,Freedom's Body, traces health activism of the Black freedom, women's and antiwar movements in Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s. Walls Cages Cities Homes is a feminist, antiracist project that examines: 1) how US regimes of mass incarceration and immigration create racially differentiated political economies, and 2) how antiviolence and immigrant justice movements are working to create economies for living. She is co-editing a collection, Beyond Walls and Cages, that will analyze the connections between militarization, mass incarceration, and migration policies to enable bridges between antiviolence and immigrant justice movements.