The Carceral Geography Working Group is delighted to announce the winner of our 2022 Postgraduate Paper Prize:
Bronte Alexander (Griffith University) “Intimate Geographies of Precarity; water infrastructure in Brazil’s humanitarian response”.
Congratulations Bronte!
Abstract
The recent increase in Venezuelan migrants and refugees to Brazil has prompted a military-humanitarian response coordinated by multiple government agencies and (inter)national organisations. This coordination effort sits under the umbrella of the Operation Welcome task force. Situated in the northern state of Roraima, bordering Venezuela, this article explores one particular site of humanitarian care, a set of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) facilities located in the capital city of Boa Vista. I draw attention to the water infrastructure of the site, which is managed by local government and military personnel. This paper investigates the shower block, a space that serves over one thousand Venezuelan refugees and migrants who are living without shelter. Addressing the spatio-temporal features of this site reveals the practices of debilitating mobilities that aim to provide basic needs under the guise of humanitarian care, while simultaneously governing migrant (embodied) mobilities. I argue that the military-humanitarian approach to Venezuelan migration produces intimate geographies of precarity. The (often subtle) violent consequences of providing aid not only impacts migrant mobilities, but also the bodies and lives of those migrants, which reinforces their vulnerabilities and keeps them in a cyclical loop of exclusion.