Basia Ellis | California State University, Sacramento (original) (raw)

Papers by Basia Ellis

In recent decades, migration scholars have challenged reified categories of 'illegal' migrants an... more In recent decades, migration scholars have challenged reified categories of 'illegal' migrants and observed migrant 'illegalization' and deportability as exploitative sociopolitical processes. Yet, in the move away from studying 'undocumented migrants' as distinct epi-stemic subjects, we argue that scholars have lost sight of migrants as agents. Consequently, migrant lives are explained in terms of social determinants rather than migrants' intentional acts or cultural meaning systems. This paper shows how a cultural psychological study of migrant 'illegality' can help restore focus on the migrant as situated agent without reifying or legitimizing categories of migrant 'illegality.' To this end, we discuss ethnographic research conducted with Polish 'irregular' migrants living in Toronto and Mississauga in Canada. From a cultural psychological perspective, we examine how these migrants understood and navigated their unique status-related challenges to build meaningful lives in contradictory and precarious conditions. Our research reveals how Polish migrants learn to become 'irregular' as they develop common modes of being suitable for navigating the underground of Canada's Polish Canadian enclave. Importantly, becoming 'irregular' is neither a passive nor unilaterally imposed process but involves discernible psychosocial dynamics characterized by recurrent threats and fears as well as migrants' deliberate attempts to address and overcome these. We discuss these dynamics as cycles of deportability to mark their cyclical and recurrent nature and argue that they are central for the development of migrant 'illegality' and deportability. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for understanding agency in the context of migrant 'illegalization.'

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 408 beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arriva... more Drawing on in-depth interviews with 408 beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA), this article examines how they experienced their new status and improved adult trajectories as they transitioned from an undocumented to a DACAmented status.
Authors' analyses suggest that DACA had a nearly immediate and positive impact on adult trajectories, delaying certain aspects of the “transition to illegality.” In addition, authors found differences in the experiences of respondents who received DACA at earlier and later stages in their transition to adulthood. Nevertheless, important limitations of the program continued to keep DACA beneficiaries in a developmental limbo.

This project critically analyzes how the daily lives of ‘irregular’ migrants in Canada are social... more This project critically analyzes how the daily lives of ‘irregular’ migrants in Canada are socially produced and navigated. Building on the recent work of critical migration scholars, I study ‘illegalization’ as an exploitative sociopolitical process produced not only by laws but also state and non-state agents who draw upon legal and illegal practices to achieve their aims. Deportability is defined as the palpable sociopolitical condition generated by ‘illegalization,’ and a chief disciplinary tactic that renders migrants vulnerable and exploitable as cheap laborers for capital. While deportation studies are growing around the world, so far little is known about the daily experiences of ‘illegalized’ migrants and the subjective life produced under deportable conditions; this is especially the case in Canada, where research on ‘illegalization’ is in its early stages. This study takes a cultural psychological perspective and employs critical ethnographic methods to study the subjectivities of Polish ‘illegal’ migrants living in Toronto and Mississauga, Canada. Specifically, I examine the mixed and contradictory contexts faced by these migrants as well as how migrants interpret and navigate their unequal conditions to build their lives as non-status residents. Analyses of both interview and participant observations reveal how ‘illegal’ migrants experience systematic fears, threats, and concerns, which motivate them to develop kombinowanie and other psychological and social tactics conducive for surviving their unequal conditions. I adopt a trajectory approach to map these developments in lived time and show how various sociopolitical imperatives coalesce to generate vulnerable subjects who suffer from an adverse psychosocial condition; namely, chronic deportability. I differentiate chronic deportability from acute moments of deportability to expose the psychosocial dynamics of deportable life and trace how migrant ‘illegalization’ functions via various gradations of fear produced in recurring, cyclical forms. While the major findings confirm that deportability operates to exploit migrants who choose to work in unequal conditions, I show how migrants are not unilaterally determined by the demands of deportation regimes. Specifically, the final chapter draws upon critical psychological research to examine how migrants express more subtle, psychological forms of resistance that undermine the impositions of deportability and may lead to broader sociopolitical transformations.

Irregular migration is a growing, global issue that is still undertheorized in the Canadian conte... more Irregular migration is a growing, global issue that is still undertheorized in the Canadian context. While economic globalization and capitalist expansion displace growing numbers of migrants, advanced nations including Canada are tightening their borders and increasing their immigration laws. With fewer legal migration channels available, a growing number of migrants are choosing irregular ways of life, whereby they reside, work, and raise their families underground. This paper critically assesses how irregular migration is produced and perpetuated in Canada. Following other critical migration scholars (Andrijasevic 2009; De Genova 2002; Goldring et al. 2009), I begin from the premise that not only laws, but nation-state rulers and agents, employers, and a diversity of social actors who may appear unconnected to the government engage in practices that contribute to the production of irregular migration. From this view, irregularity is seen less as a legal status and more as a sociopolitical condition generated and maintained by a range of structural and psychosocial determinants. Henceforth, I discuss several key geopolitical, juridicial, and sociopsychological determinants of irregularity in Canada. Further, I highlight the challenging conditions that constitute irregular life in the Canadian context in order to make imperative the need for social change as well as propose some directions for political action.

Whereas cross-cultural psychology and cultural psychology have been distinguished as separate pro... more Whereas cross-cultural psychology and cultural psychology have been distinguished as separate projects for decades, talk about their possible collaboration is becoming increasingly common. Several scholars have described their differences as essentially non-oppositional and the latest Handbook of Cultural Psychology combines articles from both research traditions. This paper scrutinizes these consolidating efforts first by tracing historically how the two accounts of culture (cultural and cross-cultural) developed, and second, by examining whether their long-standing epistemological premises allow for the kind of collaboration advocated by some scholars. We argue that attempts to combine the disciplines come primarily from cross-cultural psychologists who appear increasingly challenged by cultural and indigenous psychological approaches. Attempts at a merger have been twofold: on the one hand, cross-cultural psychologists who seek to preserve the status of their discipline have expanded its scope to include cultural theorists; on the other hand, cross-cultural scholars persuaded by cultural theories are creating a new blend of ‘experimental cultural psychology’ that seeks to accommodate both programs. These proposals, in our view, exemplify a cross-cultural discipline in crisis, struggling to account for a growing cultural psychology. We conclude that the overlapping interests between cross-cultural and cultural scholars make this a propitious time for cross-disciplinary dialogue.

The dialogical self, defined as a dynamic multiplicity of I-positions, has been taken up in multi... more The dialogical self, defined as a dynamic multiplicity of I-positions, has been taken up in multiple ways in psychology generally and cultural psychology specifically. As a self unfolding dynamically with others in a world, the dialogical self is at its foundation ethical. Self scholars have recognized the ethical nature of the dialogical self, but have not yet described how the self navigates its course in light of the demands and considerations of others. We examine this by turning to the phenomenological and hermeneutic account of self offered by Paul Ricoeur. Ricoeur provides a dialectical and cultural theory of the self that shares important similarities with the dialogical self, meriting a theoretical comparison. Most importantly, Ricoeur gives a detailed description of the self’s ethical framework. We employ his insights in the current paper to reveal the manner in which the dialogical self is oriented toward the good in lived experience.

The question of time is important for cultural psychologists who study the unfolding of subjecti... more The question of time is important for cultural psychologists who study the unfolding of subjective life. For these scholars, human experience is observed as a dynamic process constituted by sociocultural structures and traditions as well as uniquely navigated by human agents (Kirschner & Martin, 2010). Selfhood is here regarded in cultural and temporal terms, observed as an ongoing practice of interpreting and reinterpreting varied cultural meanings. In recent decades, the dynamics of this process have been widely discussed via dialogical self theory, first proposed by Hermans and his colleagues (Hermans, Kempen & van Loon, 1992) and since then extensively elaborated (Hermans & Gieser, 2011; Hermans & Hermans- Konopka, 2010). The prominence of this theory makes it an important place for examining the relation of time and the self in cultural psychology, and this is our focus here.
In this chapter, we investigate how time is taken up in dialogical self theory and attempt to elaborate the current view with an onto-existential understanding. In our view, such an elaboration is necessary because time in dialogical self theory is for the most part regarded abstractly, as a background—clock time—according to which the dynamics of a primarily spatial dialogical self are traced. We in turn conceptualize the dialogical self as a temporal structure in its own right, unfolding in lived time with others in the world.1 For this we take Heidegger as a contentious starting point, for with him we maintain that the question of time is not one of developmental accounts or narrowly conceived clock time but of our finitude in relation to Being.

Eastern-inspired concepts of mindfulness, compassion, and acceptance have become widely recognize... more Eastern-inspired concepts of mindfulness, compassion, and acceptance have become widely
recognized in mainstream psychological research, especially within applied fields such as clinical and counseling psychology. Within this context it is reasonable to question whether Eastern ideas can also inform dialogical self theory. The question is apposite given that dialogical self theory takes as its prerogative the ‘bridging’ of distinct, even opposing, theoretical approaches and research traditions into a single framework. Our paper examines what is at stake in such attempts through a study of Buddhist understandings of mind and consciousness. We argue that Buddhist principles are grounded in a unique, ethical epistemology contradistinctive from Western traditions and this makes a bridging of dialogical and Buddhist approaches unlikely in the first instance. Attempts to do so, we argue, risk compromising the meanings of Buddhist concepts. Does this preclude the possibilities for dialogue between Buddhism and dialogical self theory? We do not think so. Rather, we suggest that Buddhism can be drawn upon to study the assumptions of dialogical theory, and we exemplify this through an analysis of the dialogical self’s moral program. Our study reveals how dialogical self theory retains a uniquely Western ethics that, despite being explicitly open to alterity, remains at risk of imposing itself onto alternative cultural positions. To genuinely engage Buddhism in dialogue, we conclude, is not a matter of translating Buddhist ideas onto the dialogical platform but to allow the Buddhist position to disturb the certitudes of the dialogical model.