Sanctuaries In Transit presents engaged, practical, and innovative approaches to conducting research and providing aid to refugees during their migratory journey and their time in immigration detention. By following the lives of a group of Central American refugee community organizers, mainly young undocumented trans women, Dr. Flotte presents an in-depth grounded analysis of border externalization, immigrant persecution, and the creative practices of sanctuary that have emerged in Mexico and the United States, As Dr. Flotte argues in this talk, by focusing in the stories of illegalized people outside of shelters or border towns allows us to move away from the academic trope of studying immigration enforcement from an analytical spatial lens that only interprets meaning in a linear way. Dr. Flotte’s research challenges the oft-assumed, unidirectional, one-time, south to north analytical approach to Central American migration that is often portrayed in international media and some academic canons. Rather, Dr. Flotte proposes a circular analytical framework that follows the cases of people across time and space to better understand the relationship between deportation, displacement, and in-transit migration.
Nakai, also spelled as Nakaya, Flotte is a community anthropologist, scholar, and multi-disciplinary artist Native to the Presidio-Ojinaga border. Dr. Flotte, attended UT-Austin for a bachelor's degree, and later continued her studies at Harvard University, obtaining a Ph.D. in Socio-Cultural Anthropology in 2021. Her doctoral dissertation examined processes of border externalization, migrant incarceration and mutual aid in Mexico and the US-Mexico border. Her field research work has supported various legal cases against wrongful death of trans women in immigration detention. For the past two years, Nakai has worked alongside the Lipan Apache Tribe, the Council of the People of La Junta, as well as the local Indigenous community to support in the stewardship of the Holy Camp at Barrio de Los Lipanes and the revitalization of Lipan Apache and Jumano culture, customs, and language. She is currently living in Austin, Texas and works as a consultant for various foundations, nonprofits and corporations.
