Securing the Return: How Enhanced US Border Enforcement Fuels Cycles of Debt Migration

Expanded border enforcement has made unauthorised migration to the US more risky, costly, and prone to failure. Research on the material consequences of border enforcement for migrant‐sending households in Central America reveals that the economic hardships enforcement exacts on migrants at times diminishes enforcement's desired deterrent power. Heightened risks have driven up the cost of migration and pushed many to fund their trips through loans. Consequently, migrant detention, deportation, or death can result in poverty and privation for indebted households and the seizure of loan collateral, typically homes and land, in turn prompting crises in household reproduction. With a US wage the most viable means to ameliorate economic hardships, enforcement outcomes push some to return migration. Our findings suggest that US border enforcement efforts at times perpetuate the very unauthorised migration they seek to impede, while also helping to reproduce the border itself by deepening the marginalisation that drives migration decisions.     

Reflections on Collaborative Archaeology and Large-Scale Online Research Infrastructures

ABSTRACT

The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) is an archive working at a national level in the UK, ensuring that archaeologists have access to high quality and dependable digital resources, including openly licensed legacy data for reuse. The ADS acts as a metadata aggregator for archaeological data held by larger heritage agencies and smaller regional organizations and participates in international aggregation infrastructure projects such as ARIADNE, which allows users to access archaeological resources held in many countries from a single interface. Large-scale infrastructures can facilitate the building of long-term, complex relationships and active collaborations, not just technical solutions. This paper reflects on the roles of stewardship and equity within ARIADNE and the ADS, two large-scale online research infrastructures, and how these types of infrastructures may help to create a more collaborative archaeology, including lessons learned, challenges and opportunities, and thoughts for the future.     

New Delhi’s All-India War Memorial (India Gate): Death,Monumentality and the Lasting Legacy of Empire in India

This paper traces the colonial and postcolonial histories of one of India’s most iconic structures, New Delhi’s All-India War Memorial. Designed and built by Edwin Lutyens immediately after the Great War, the memorial commemorated both Indian soldiers who had died in defence of the empire and the reason for such human sacrifice. As such the memorial reaffirmed and celebrated Britain and India’s unbreakable imperial bond, now strengthened by the fiery crucible of war. After independence in 1947, India took ownership of the memorial by renaming it India Gate to symbolise the country’s transition from what it had been to what it was becoming through India’s passion to be free. In the process, the memorial was re-evaluated and re-imagined in ways that transformed this site of unwelcome colonial memory into one of India’s most important symbols of national renewal. And yet this new interpretation remained as highly contested and problematic as its original colonial meaning. While the memorial became a site of national cohesion for many, it also perpetuated a colonial politics of division along communal (religious) and inter-communal (caste) lines that has eroded a sense of well-being and security for significant sections of the Indian community. Today, India Gate serves as a symbol of both national renewal and national fragmentation.