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Abolitionist Intimacies

Queer and Trans Migrants against the Deportation State

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Book

Pages: 256

Illustrations: 1 illustration

Published: May 2025

Author: Eithne Luibhéid

Subjects
Gender and Sexuality > Trans Studies, American Studies, Activism

In Abolitionist Intimacies, Eithne Luibhéid examines writings by and about queer- and trans-identified migrants and allies who contest pervasive US immigration practices and work toward a future without detention, deportation, and border controls. Luibhéid shows how these migrants and activists confront such controls by mobilizing intimacies—forging close connections in order to survive in the present. From forms of kinship beyond the heterosexual nuclear family to networks of solidarity, intimacies allow queer and trans migrants and allies to challenge the infrastructures that support the deportation state: proposed pathways to citizenship for undocumented migrants; marriage as a means for legalization; traffic interactions as a pipeline to deportation; and queer and trans migrant detention. In the process, activists and theorists have advanced new visions and configurations of possible intimacies that not only challenge deportation but also rework what immigration control and citizenship could mean. By focusing on these abolitionist efforts as well as the publicly available records on queer and trans deportees, Luibhéid highlights the new understandings that emerge when the experiences of queer and trans people are centered.

Praise

“Building on her record as a foremost scholar of immigration, Eithne Luibhéid offers powerful and innovative heuristics for thinking about how queer and trans migrants and their allies leverage their intimacies to resist deportation infrastructures and build abolitionist futures. Thoroughly researched, masterfully argued, and elegantly written, Abolitionist Intimacies will shift how you think about immigration regimes, but more importantly, it will change what you believe is possible for changing them.” - Karma R. Chavez, author of The Borders of AIDS: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance

“Abolitionist Intimacies offers us an extraordinarily timely analysis of immigration, citizenship, and deportation practices that center queer and trans migrants’ voices across academic scholarship, public advocacy, activism, and art. Eithne Luibhéid’s clear writing and her skill at laying out complicated histories and political frameworks make this book extremely accessible and useful to a wide range of readers. It is greatly needed right now.” - Toby Beauchamp, author of Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices

"For migrants, researchers, students, activists, allies and practitioners, [Abolitionist Intimacies] offers a compelling and humane account of the struggles and solidarities that shape queer and trans migrant life today."

- Jessica Walmsley, Ethnic and Racial Studies

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

Eithne Luibhéid is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona and author of Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant and Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border.

A Note on Terminology vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction. Against the Deportation State 1
1. Pathways: Coproducing Citizenship and Deportation 33
2. Love, Marriage, and Deportation 55
3. Driving While Undocumented: Circulating Fear and Fearlessness 79
4. Cities as Chokepoints and Resistance 101
Conclusion. “At the Edge of the Possible” 123
Notes 135
Bibliography 191
Index 225

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