Specters of expulsion and the possibilities of life between Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Abstract

In this article, I address two dimensions of the new deportability situation that Haitians and Dominicans faced in the Dominican Republic, starting in 2015. First, I analyze the experience of these actors and how they conceived this new situation together with the political vocabulary that they mobilized. Second, screening how the Dominican state and its counting and control technologies and techniques, especially after the national census in 2010, operated a kind of dubious policy by not being clear about what was being conceived and planned in relation to a specific group considered as “people in transit”. Following the decision of the Constitutional Court 168-13, known as la sentencia, the Dominican government took the opportunity to stage an ambiguous show of exclusion that selectively produced the illegality of people and, at the same time, promoted its own image, nationally and internationally, as one of the most modern nations in the Caribbean, producing not only citizenship but life itself. The way people managed to face this new situation through a political epistemology grounded in historical struggles is the main theme of this article.

Keywords
Haiti; Dominican Republic; life; captivity; census