Miranda Dahlin

Miranda Dahlin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. Her dissertation, tentatively titled, “To wait amongst shadows: traversing the spectral geography of state-cartel and US asylum violence in Ciudad Juárez/El Paso,” traces the experiences of several Mexican asylum seekers fleeing state-cartel violence and corruption in Mexico, and their subsequent journey through the US immigration system in El Paso, Texas. Her dissertation explores the use of affective, imagistic, and textural modes of conveying experiences of state-cartel violence that do not fit with the chronological, explanatory modes of storytelling required by the asylum system. It demonstrates that these imagistic modes of storytelling better illuminate the experiences of state-cartel terror, reveal its modus operandi, and highlight the resonances and linkages between these experiences and other long-term, binational violences in the border region. She unpacks the arguments and perceptions that tend to criminalize Mexican asylum seekers and keep the US national denial rate of Mexican asylum claims hovering around 90% (despite the existence of egregious state-cartel violence), and argues that after fleeing a situation where state-cartel agents operate by creating an atmosphere that incites fear, uncertainty, nervousness, and despair, Mexican asylum seekers then find themselves enmeshed in the US immigration system that often incites similar affects and sensory experiences. Miranda was a recipient of the McCall MacBain fellowship at McGill and the SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship.