Amelia Hintzen on Migration, Race, and Citizenship in the Dominican Republic
Amelia Hintzen joins Thomas Thurston on this episode of Slavery and Its Legacies to discuss her book manuscript, “Sugarcane Citizenship: A History of Migration and Statelessness in the Dominican Republic,” which explores Haitian migration to Dominican sugar plantations during the twentieth century, and the development of a large stateless population of Haitian descent.
Amelia Hintzen, an interdisciplinary scholar studying race, migration, and citizenship, holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Miami and a B.A. from Carleton College. She was recently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Gilder Lehrman Center and previously served as the Ruth J. Simmons Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University. Her research explores how labor migration and plantation agriculture have shaped conceptions of race and national belonging in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Recommended Resources:
- Steven Gregory. Devil Behind the Mirror : Globalization and Politics in the Dominican Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). https://www.amazon.com/Devil-behind-Mirror-Globalization-Dominican/dp/0520282256/
- Atossa Araxia Abrahamian. The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen (New York: Columbia Glocal Reports, 2015). https://www.amazon.com/Cosmopolites-Coming-Citizen-Columbia-Reports/dp/099097636X
- Anne Eller. Dominican Independence, Haiti, and the Fight for Caribbean Freedom (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016). https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Together-Dominican-Independence-Caribbean/dp/0822362376/
If you’re interested in supporting the human rights struggles of Haitian-Dominicans, Amelia recommends that you contact Reconoci.do (http://reconoci.do/) and the Movimento de Mujeres Dominico Haitianos or MUDHA (http://mudhaong.org/en/). Both are run by Haitian-Dominicans and are well regarded. An organization that does important reporting on these issues is the Observatorio Migrantes del Caribe or OBMICA (http://www.obmica.org/).
“Slavery and Its Legacies” is available on iTunes and SoundCloud. Email comments and suggestions to gilder.lehrman.center@yale.edu with subject line “podcast”