WOODING, BRIDGET
Director @ Observatory Caribbean Migranta (OBMICA)
Bio
Bridget Wooding is a researcher, advocate, writer, trainer, and expert witness on migration, statelessness and related issues. She has coordinated the Caribbean Migration and Development Observatory (OBMICA), based in Santo Domingo (www.obmica.org), since its inception in 2009. She is the author of numerous publications, including books and articles on nationality matters and the migration dynamics affecting the Dominican Republic, the island of Hispaniola, the insular Caribbean, and respective diasporas. In 2013, she delivered an expert witness testimony in the case of Expelled Dominicans and Haitians v. Dominican Republic, which led to significant jurisprudence on the right to nationality for Dominicans of foreign ancestry (IACtHR 2014).
Geographical location :
Research Area and Interest :
Social Media
Panel
Politics and Community
Presentation
Dar a la luz: Haitian and Dominican Women of Haitian descent and the politics of ‘bordering’
In Clap When You Land (2020) the Dominican writer Elizabeth Acevedo tells the story of Camino, a young girl who lives in the Dominican Republic. When Camino’s best friend Carline, who is of Haitian descent, goes into premature labour, she is not taken to a hospital to give birth. The decision to have a home-birth, as Acevedo briefly points out, is dictated by the huge difficulties that many Haitian women and Dominican women of Haitian descent encounter when they give birth in the Dominican Republic. In this paper we will put Acevedo’s fictional text in dialogue with lived experience and then present ‘on-the-ground’ research to shed light on the current situation.