ASLE 2025: Latine Ecologies of Migration: Displacement and Environmental Resistance

deadline for submissions: 
December 1, 2024
full name / name of organization: 
Brian Rivera / University of California, Santa Cruz
contact email: 

This panel seeks to explore how Latin American and Latine writers, filmmakers, and artists depict natural elements—such as water, air, landscapes, and weather—as active forces that shape and mediate human emotions, identity, and survival. Through an environmental humanities lens, we will examine how these works go beyond symbolic uses of nature to show how ecological crises become part of the migrant experience. In many Latine / Latin American narratives, migration is influenced not only by social and political pressures but also by environmental changes like drought, floods, deforestation, or pollution. The environment is not just a setting, but a participant in the story, embodying the intimate connections between human and non-human worlds. Yet, these precarious ecological conditions can also become sites of resistance, where migrant communities build new forms of belonging and survival despite displacement. How do Latine cultural productions depict these more-than-human relationships, and how do environmental forces reshape communal ties, emotions, and survival strategies?

This panel invites scholars (of any stage and discipline)  to examine the relationships between environmental forces, affect, and/or migration in Latine/Latin American cultural production. Possible topics include but are not limited to: 

- How do Latine texts or films represent water, air, landscapes, and other natural elements as mediators of migrant emotions and experiences?

- In what ways do environmental changes and crises trigger or influence migration in Latine/Latin American cultural production?

- How are ecological forces such as water scarcity, climate change, or pollution depicted as active agents of both destruction and transformation in the lives of displaced individuals?

- How do Latine/Latin American writers and artists engage with the environment to reimagine belonging, community, and resistance in conditions of displacement?

Interested participants should submit a 200-word abstract and a 100-word bio to Brian Rivera (briverah@ucsc.edu) by December 1, 2024.