Pia Berghoff
International Research Training Group 'Temporalities of Future in Latin America'
PhD Candidate
Anthropology
Project: "Temporalities of Transit. Perspectives of Central American Families on the Temporal Discrepancies in Transit through Mexico "
14195 Berlin
Education
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Since 05/2022 |
PhD Candidate, International Research Training Group ‘Temporalities of Future’, Freie Universität Berlin |
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Since 10/2021 |
PhD Candidate at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin (Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schütze) |
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08/2018 – 12/2018 |
Exchange semester at El Colegio de México (Mexico) as part of the direct exchange program of Freie Universität, subject: Gender Studies |
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10/2017 – 09/2021 |
Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Latin American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin |
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08/2014 – 07/2015 |
Two exchange semesters at the Universidad de Cuyo Mendoza (Argentina) as part of the direct exchange program of Leipzig University, subjects: Political Science and Sociology |
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10/2012 – 09/2017 |
Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences and Philosophy with core subject Political Science at Leipzig University |
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10/2012 – 09/2017 |
Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Studies at Leipzig University |
Work Experience
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Since 05/2022 |
Researcher, International Research Training Group ‘Temporalities of Future’, Freie Universität Berlin |
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Since 01/2022 |
Part of the Research Team of the project “Humanizando la Deportación” (UC Davis and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Tijuana) |
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10/2021 – 04/2022 |
Independent Research Assistant with the DFG-Project "Forced Migration and Organized Violence: A Comparative Study in Europe and the Americas" (Direction: Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schütze, Freie Universität Berlin; Prof. Dr. Ludger Pries, Ruhr-Universität Bochum) |
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04/2021 – 09/2021 |
Student Assistant at the Area of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Institute for Latin American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin (Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schütze) |
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08/2019 – 09/2021 |
Student Assistant with the DFG-Project "Forced Migration and Organized Violence: A Comparative Study in Europe and the Americas" (Direction: Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schütze, Freie Universität Berlin; Prof. Dr. Ludger Pries, Ruhr-Universität Bochum) |
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03/2018 – 08/2019 |
Student Assistant to the Gender Equality Officer of Freie Universität Berlin (Dr. Mechthild Koreuber) |
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07/2016 – 08/2017 |
Student Assistant with the sub-project "Maras as Producers of translocal spaces of violence in the Americas and Europe" (Direction: Prof. Dr. Heidrun Zinecker, Leipzig University) of the Collaborative Research Center 1199 "Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition" |
Awards
| 06/2024 |
Award from the "Migrations, Displacements and Mobilities" section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) for the article "Gendering the temporalities of transit migration: Biographical temporalities and maintenance time. The case of migrant women waiting in Tijuana, Mexico", presented at the LASA 2023 congress in Vancouver. |
Project: "Temporalities of Transit. Perspectives of Central American Families on the Temporal Discrepancies in Transit through Mexico"
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Stephanie Schütze (Institute for Latin American Studies, Cultural and Social Anthropology)
My doctoral project focuses on the situations of Central American migrants waiting at Mexico’s northern and southern border and examines them ethnographically in relation to other temporalities associated with migration efforts. While migration research has long focused on spatial change and the production of specific spaces, territories, and borders, temporal dimensions of migration have only recently begun to gain attention. In my doctoral project, I aim to demonstrate that the fractions that emerge from the attempts of temporal control through migratory policies and the anticipated temporal course of the migrant’s projects open up an important field of research. Barber and Lem (2018) conceptualize these fractions as “temporal discrepancies” between irregularized migrants and migration regimes resulting from global capitalist and post-colonial power discrepancies.
Drawing on this concept, I will first investigate the aspirations and anticipations of Central American migrants who migrate to the United States with respect to the course of their migration processes. Secondly, I will focus on the conflicting experiences between their migration projects and the attempts of control by the U.S.-Mexican migration regime. These experiences comprise involuntary pauses during transit in Mexico, but also moments of tension and unexpected hasting. Thereby, I am also interested in analyzing the reactions of migrants to these discrepant experiences. Furthermore, I start from the hypothesis that there is another set of frictions interconnected with those that exist between the migratory regime and the migrants’ future projects: the discrepancies between family and gender time regimes and the temporalities of migration. For this reason, I am particularly interested in researching the perspectives of those migrants who began their migration project as a family. The data, on which my doctoral project is based, will be obtained during two field research stays in Mexico.
Chapter
Berghoff, Pia/Cuéllar, Lya. (2024): Waiting as violence: The interactions of gender and waiting mechanisms in the asylum systems of the United States and Mexico. In: Alba Villalever, Ximena/Schütze, Stephanie/Pries, Ludger/Calderón Morillón, Oscar (Eds.): Forced migration across Mexico. Organized violence, migrant struggles, and life trajectories, London/New York: Routledge, pp. 183-199.
