The Materiality and Heritage of Contemporary Forced Migration

Abstract

Fleeing violence, poverty, abuse, war, and climatic change, tens of millions of people have fled their homes in the Global South seeking refuge in adjacent nations and in the Global North. This modern migration entails a material, sensual experience in time. The craft of archaeology has traditionally engaged with the material, the sensual, and the temporal. Archaeologists who study the materiality of modern undocumented migration embrace activist-engaged research that applies the craft of archaeology to the contemporary world. They study the materiality of migration to reveal and comprehend the lived experience of displaced persons. They seek to understand the barriers erected to that journey, the things migrants acquire and leave on the trail, migrant placemaking, their stranded lives, how they build new lives, what the migrants have left behind in their home countries, and the heritage of forced migration. They approach this work in critical solidarity with displaced peoples.