Ulla D Berg
Ulla D. Berg (Ph.D., Anthropology, NYU 2007) is Associate Professor in the Departments of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Anthropology at Rutgers University where she also directed the Center for Latin American Studies from 2015-2021. A visual and cultural anthropologist by training, her research focuses on transnational migration, mobility/immobility, and inequality in Latin America and among U.S. Latinx populations and communities. She is the author of Mobile Selves: Race, Migration, and Belonging in Peru and the U.S. (NYU Press, 2015) and the co-editor, with Robyn Rodriguez, of Transnational Citizenship Across the Americas (Routledge, 2014) and with Karsten Paerregaard of El Quinto Suyo: Transnacionalidad y Formaciones Diasporicas en la Migración Peruana (IEP, Lima, 2005). Additionally, her work has also appeared in numerous disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals including Cultural Anthropology, Current Anthropology, Ethnography, Latino Studies, Identities, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS), Journal of Migration and Human Security (JMHS), Global Networks, and Latin American Perspectives, among others. Ulla is also a filmmaker and has directed, produced and edited the documentary Waiting for Miracles (2003), which follows a Peruvian Catholic brotherhood in NYC as it prepares for its yearly procession honoring the Lord of Miracles.
Berg’s current research and book manuscript, based on completed research supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, examines the effects of U.S. immigrant detention and deportation on migrant communities in Ecuador and Peru. She is also the PI of the project "Migration Detention, Deportation, and COVID-19 Transmission: Public Health and Safety Challenges in New Jersey," which focuses on the spread and management of the Coronavirus in NJ migrant detention centers and along the US-Central and South America deportation corridor, and co-coordinator (with Soledad Álvarez Velasco) of the digital humanities project "Covid-19 and Immobility in the Americas Project" (https://www.inmovilidadamericas.org/).
At Rutgers University, Prof. Berg teaches classes in anthropology, Latinx studies, and ethnographic/documentary filmmaking.
Berg’s current research and book manuscript, based on completed research supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, examines the effects of U.S. immigrant detention and deportation on migrant communities in Ecuador and Peru. She is also the PI of the project "Migration Detention, Deportation, and COVID-19 Transmission: Public Health and Safety Challenges in New Jersey," which focuses on the spread and management of the Coronavirus in NJ migrant detention centers and along the US-Central and South America deportation corridor, and co-coordinator (with Soledad Álvarez Velasco) of the digital humanities project "Covid-19 and Immobility in the Americas Project" (https://www.inmovilidadamericas.org/).
At Rutgers University, Prof. Berg teaches classes in anthropology, Latinx studies, and ethnographic/documentary filmmaking.
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United States – we compare the various relationships between state power and humanitarian claims in these cases. Special emphasis is given to situations that generate rationales for different kinds of humanitarian intervention and claims regarding the regulation of movement and borders. Our comparison of different ‘migration crises’ exposes some of the inherent contradictions between migration control on the one hand and claims in respect of humanitarian action and the protection of migrants on the other. These contradictions both challenge and reinforce deep-seated ideas about sovereignty, security and prosperity, as well as what kinds of lives are deemed worthy of intervention.