The Edge of a Nation: The US-Mexico Border
Research paper into the material realities of border enforcement, with a particular highlight on the US-Mexico border. For Political Anthropology. Explains how harsh geography and deliberate policing are used to ‘secure’ the southern border, with economic refugees often facing brutal conditions at the hand of border patrol and Mother Nature. It argues that this is not an unintended consequence of border policy, but a purposefully constructed cruelty. It is the weaponization of nature, action by inaction—or, in ICE’s terminology, Prevention through Deterrence.
Race and Rule: Politics, Sao Paolo, and the Polis
Another essay from Political Anthropology. It examines the colonial Necropolis as it exists in São Paolo, Brazil. To live in the Necropolis, as defined by Jaime Alves, is to exist outside of the ‘civil society’ of the colonial state. It is the realm of the black and brown, a liminal space carved out by centuries of institutions and structures constructed for the express purpose of exploitation and the maintenance of white supremacy. The essay examines these mechanism as they manifest in São Paolo, and provides examples of how the population survives and thrives despite this deliberate preclusion, through collective action and the establishment of community at the edges of colonial society.
Future Crisis: Asian Water Resource Summit
Background guide for 2021’s Dartmouth Model UN conference. It explains the requisite background and imagined history necessary for the future crisis committee. Required research into contemporary resource politics and tensions arising from scarcity.
Does Free Trade Promote International Peace?
Laureate paper from my senior year of high school. Submitted for a one-thousand dollar academic scholarship, after a year’s worth of rigorous research and revisions. Qualified for and received the scholarship.