Toffoli, Erica

Biography

Erica Toffoli is a PhD candidate in the History Department. Her project, Imagining “Illegality”: The Origins and Reinvention of the Latin American “Illegal Alien” in the U.S., 1965-1986, explores how the idea of “illegality” became linked with Latin American migrants in the U.S., and traces how undocumented migrants and their advocates challenged this label in the borderlands by working to secure workers’ and human rights that transcended the nation-state’s boundaries. By blending study of undocumented migration in the U.S.’ land and sea borderlands, her work stretches the concept of “the border” and this space’s construction and meaning for the state, citizens, and undocumented migrants. In de-naturalizing "illegality" and charting the emergence of transnational participatory practices that included the undocumented, this project speaks to broader questions regarding the ways exclusionary discourses are constructed to mark the boundaries of national belonging and countered by those identified as outside the realm of inclusion. Erica Toffoli is a PhD candidate in the History Department. Her project, Imagining “Illegality”: The Origins and Reinvention of the Latin American “Illegal Alien” in the U.S., 1965-1986, explores how the idea of “illegality” became linked with Latin American migrants in the U.S., and traces how undocumented migrants and their advocates challenged this label in the borderlands by working to secure workers’ and human rights that transcended the nation-state’s boundaries. By blending study of undocumented migration in the U.S.’ land and sea borderlands, her work stretches the concept of “the border” and this space’s construction and meaning for the state, citizens, and undocumented migrants. In de-naturalizing "illegality" and charting the emergence of transnational participatory practices that included the undocumented, this project speaks to broader questions regarding the ways exclusionary discourses are constructed to mark the boundaries of national belonging and countered by those identified as outside the realm of inclusion.

Research Interest

20th-century U.S. domestic and foreign relations history, 20th-century Latin American history, immigration history, labour history, visual culture and U.S.-Latin American relations