UC Riverside

This dissertation examines the environmental activism of (im)migrants and their kin in the Inland Empire, CA to explore what their relationships might tell us about nations, borders, place, and relationality. As concerns about climate change and “mass migration” heighten in American discourse, a relational, no-borders approach to (im)migrant and ecological justice enables us to consider how borders organize societies and limit particular struggles within national lines. In order to demonstrate an alternative path forward, I asked: What kinship networks are formed between Latinx (im)migrants after migration/displacement and by extension, what are Latinx (im)migrants’ definitions of place? What sorts of ephemeral ecological relations are formed between non-human and humans and what do these ecological kinship networks tell us about Latinx futurities and world-making projects? In order to address these questions, I engaged with existing migration and environmental scholarship in the following ways: 1) I argue that (im)migrants defy borders and citizenship claims, even while they remain locally and nationally politically engaged by drawing particular attention to the ways that diasporic dialects are less about negotiating with states, and more about fleshing out the global from the local and national. 2) I also integrate the importance of the more-than-human world for diasporic dialects by paying particular attention to the ways that land, water, and non-human animals come to be represented, inform, and transform (im)migrant political struggles. 3) Finally, I analyze the ways in which (im)migrant kinship networks are imaginative and embodied calls for the abolition of borders and nations.