Refreshments will be provided

Animality and Migration: The Intersecting Oppression of Human and Nonhuman Animals

Garrett Bunyak
Ph.D. Student, School of History and Sociology

The field of Human-Animal Studies (HAS) offers ways of thinking that contest and challenge the racist, speciesist, and nationalistic anti-immigration rhetoric exemplified by current U.S. president Donald Trump, who recently described migrants as “not people” but “animals.” In this talk, I ask an unorthodox question: how can animal studies inform scholarly and popular understandings of human migrations? I suggest that HAS offers both intellectual insights and political signposts for overcoming the interlocking production of racism and speciesism that fuels anti-immigrant white supremacy in the early 21st century. In line with a recent turn in HAS to examining the interlocking oppression of human and nonhuman animals, I propose the concept of animality as a mechanism to illuminate the historical and contemporary ways in which racism and speciesism are intersected and co-constituted.