UC Davis

This project addresses aesthetic practices that speak of the affective dimension of Ecuadorian undocumented migration to the US by drawing from a diverse archive of community-based cultural materials created by Ecuadorian migrants, Ecuadorian Americans in Ecuador and the US during the 20th and 21st century. These aesthetic practices are grassroots cultural forms that include an archive of video-letters, digital stories, testimonial narratives, and everyday forms of oral accounts. This project contends that the affective register by which migrants live and make sense of their mobilities challenges hegemonic modes of migrant recognition and migration governance that are mediated through affect. Thus, these materials work as counter-representational forms that circulate transnationally, unsettling emotional figures of mobility such as the “fearful border crosser”, “the shameful deportee” and “the optimistic and resilient undocumented immigrant”.