Michael Lynch Lecture: Eithne Luibhéid’s Abolitionist Intimacies
Eithne Luibhéid discusses Abolitionist Intimacies, which centers writings by and about queer- and trans-identified migrants and allies who mobilize intimacies to contest pervasive U.S. deportation practices while working toward a future without detention, deportation, or U.S. immigration controls. Framing U.S. immigration controls as an infrastructure of chokepoints, the chapters center key chokepoints around which queer and trans migrants and allies have especially mobilized: proposed pathways to citizenship for undocumented migrants; marriage as a means for legalization; traffic interactions as a pipeline to deportation; and struggles to end queer and trans migrant detention. Through mobilizing, activists and theorists have advanced new visions and configurations of possible intimacies that not only challenge deportation but also rework what immigration control and citizenship could mean. The book highlights that migrants and citizens alike have stakes in abolishing deportation.
Eithne Luibhéid is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona. She received her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and her research explores the connections among queer lives, racialization processes, state immigration controls, and citizenship. From 2007-2011, she served as the Director of the Institute for LGBT Studies at the University of Arizona. She served as the Acting Director of Gender and Women’s Studies in 2022-2023 and 2024-2026. Luibhéid is a member of the Board of BorderLinks in Tucson.
Luibhéid is the author of Abolitionist Intimacies: Queer and Trans Migrants Against the Deportation State (Duke University Press, 2025), Pregnant on Arrival: Making the ‘Illegal’ Immigrant (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) and Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border (University of Minnesota Press, 2002). She is the editor of Lives that Resist Telling: Migrant and Refugee Lesbians (Routledge 2021), and co-editor of Queer and Trans Migrations: Dynamics of ‘Illegalization,’ Detention, and Deportation (University of Illinois Press, 2020) and Queer Migrations: Sexuality, Citizenship, and Border Crossings (University of Minnesota Press, 2005).