Yuridia Ramirez

As the first historical study of Indigenous Mexican migration to the US South, "Indigeneity on the Move: Transborder Politics from Michoacán to North Carolina" traces the movement of Indigenous P’urhépecha migrants from Cherán, Michoacán, to and from North Carolina during the late twentieth century. It analyzes both sides of the transborder circuit and contextualizes the racial and spatial logics of each with regard to the transformation of indigeneity. "Indigeneity on the Move" shows that the evolution of P’urhépecha indigeneity as it travels and changes not only provides a counternarrative to “Mexican migration” that assumes a homogenous community; it also demonstrates how people moving across borders, and their communities left behind, have adapted racial and ethnic identifications over time as tools of empowerment to confront intersecting systems of racism and colonialism.