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• Gender Rights, Human Rights, Citizenship Rights: The Case of Yean y Bosico v. the Dominican Republic
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Gender Rights, Human Rights, Citizenship Rights: The Case of Yean y Bosico v. the Dominican Republic

2008 Ford Scholars Project Description

Description of the Project:

The relationship between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (DR), and specifically the contemporary abuses of Haitian migrants, have received widespread attention in international and human rights circles. In fact, Dominican “anti-Haitianism” has been the dominant intellectual framework for understanding the relationship between Haiti and the DR, in general. Recent scholarship, however, has suggested that these analyses have overly emphasized the state and elite political rhetoric, and called for more empirical studies on the relationships among Dominican and Haitian publics. It is suggested that the narrow emphasis on the dominant frameworks obscures a long history of cooperation, mutual ties, and social exchange that has existed for centuries among Dominicans and Haitians. The empirical study proposed here responds to these concerns by investigating the dynamic social, political, and historical context in which Dilcia Yean and Violeta Bosico v. Dominican Republic was argued, thus bringing together analysis of the state and multiple social actors.

I examine the case of Dilcia Yean and Violeta Bosico v. the Dominican Republic and the public dialogue that surrounded the litigation process, in order to understand how the state, the media, and a diverse public understand race, gender and citizenship in the Dominican Republic, and localized meanings about race in the Dominican Republic are constructed in a dynamic global conversation. In a landmark 2005 ruling, the the Inter-American Human Rights Court (IAHRC) found that the two children, Dilcia Yean and Violeta Bosico, had been denied citizen status as a result of systematic racial discrimination. The two young girls became symbols of the significant number of Dominican born children of Haitian migrants who are denied their right to a birth certificate, and therefore the right to schooling, and who, as the prosecution argued, are constantly reminded of their perceived inferiority and forced to live in fear of deportation. What is the process by which Dominicans and Dominican-Haitian activists come to coalesce both with the girls and international human rights organizers and lawyers? What does it mean that this landmark case has been built on the names of two young Afro Caribbean girls? To what extent does this ruling shed light on race, racism, and anti-racism in the DR? How can this ruling be understood in the context of discussions about race, gender, nation, and mobility in contemporary global capitalism? My research will answer these overlapping questions by moving between analysis of gendered and racialized bodies, states, and global circuits.

Anticipated Summer Activities:

The student will be exposed to all facets of the research project including archival, textual analysis, and possibly interviews. The student will be expected to write short briefs on a regular basis. The student will be encouraged to develop and explore their own questions as they pertain to the broader topics proposed.

Preferred Student Qualifications/Skills:

I propose to mentor a student who is interested in and has a solid background in Sociology, Latin American and Latino/a Studies or a multidisciplinary approach to issues of race, gender, and globalization. A Spanish or Haitian Kreyol speaker would be an especially good match for this project.

Anticipated Follow-up Teaching/Professional Activity for the Student:

The student is invited/encouraged to take a class with me during the following year and will be expected to develop and co-facilitate a unit on race, human rights, and globalization. The primary pedagogical goals of this project are for the student to develop strong research skills and gain confidence in conducting library research, crafting a literature review and theoretical framework, and thinking and writing analytically.