Seeking Refuge: The Geography of Migrant Deaths Near The US/MX Border
The story of immigration has always been contentious. Vilification and persecution of a migratory body has deep roots within the history of the US. These sentiments continue to pervade our dialogue around immigration, especially the migration of Mexicans and Central Americans into the US. The election of Donald Trump, with his candid negative attitude towards Latino migrants, displays our country’s tacit and direct support for this vitriolic discourse surrounding immigration.
Our visualization above aims to transform the dialogue around immigration. The issue is too easily simplified and bifurcated in the dualism of American politics. We want invoke the tragedy of the lived experiences of fatal migrations along the US-Mexico border. The contrast is to visually display the locations of migrant deaths through satellite images by adding these images to a mosaic that forms a “wall”. Trump’s wall is a shallow, hopeless, and abrasive intervention as an effort to address immigration. We hope that filling the “wall” with harrowing and humanizing images of migrant death locations exposes the wall as a superficial apparatus of governmentally supported by a dissolute administration with sinister ideologies. The aim of displaying the locations of death hopes to humanize the issue and spur a more rational dialogue, in turn, stimulating compassionate interventions.
Spurred by conflict, natural disaster, persecution, and poverty, global populations are experiencing growing trends of forced migration. This journey for asylum seekers is more often fraught with danger at every juncture. Vulnerable populations experience perilous conditions at home, forcibly displacing them which requires travels through deadly routes. If these populations are lucky to find a host city, urban environments and refugee camp conditions prove an additional social and health risk.
The ubiquity and frequency of migrations will be exacerbated by climate change. It is crucial to understand the perils of forced migration; investigating the causes of tragedies enroute will provide better knowledge to limit the occurrences and aid in developing solutions. The humanitarian effort in helping refugees is an act of global solidarity. Nascent ethnocentric and populist movements reflect the difficulties of existing in a globalized world, compounding the difficulty in refugee humanitarian work. We currently have the opportunity to understand and adjust how nations can provide safety to forced migrants, an important endeavor as the frequency will increase as lasting environmental changes unfold with climate change.
The election of Trump has created vitriolic discourse around immigration stemming form Latin America. Politicizing this issue undermines the humanitarian challenges involved; the extreme danger and tragedies that occur during these journeys are masked by ignorant rhetoric and blatant disregard. We hope to create an project that focus on these tragedies in light of the political landscape.
Goal: visualization of immigrant deaths as a product of societal hate and exclusionary ideology
Methods:
- Automated random selection of hate crimes related with immigrants
- Automated random selection of satellite images of locations of migrant deaths
- Progressive building of a wall in the Mexican border with those images
Deliverable:
Self building wall over the Mexican border made of images of migrants deaths and triggered by hate crimes headlines
Data:
ProPublica, Google News Lab, and Pitch Interactive. 2017. Documenting Hate News Index. https://projects.propublica.org/hate-news-index/.
IOM. Migrant Deaths by month [excel table]. September 25, 2017. IOM Missing Migrants Project. https://data.humdata.org/dataset/refugee-and-migrant-deaths-while-trying-to-reach-europe. (Accessed: November 12, 2017).
Google Maps https://www.google.com/maps
Team:
Prescedence:
Hate Crime
Tragedies of Forced Migration
import spatialpixel.mapping.slippymapper as slippymapper
import csvdef setup():
size(1400, 1000)
global map
map = slippymapper.SlippyMapper(34, -102.593241, 6, 'carto-dark', 1600, 1000)
imageIndexNum = 1
lenlist = 250
imageNames = []with open("deaths.csv") as f:
reader = csv.reader(f)
header = reader.next() # skip the header
i = 2
for row in reader:
imagename = "location-"+str(i)+"-0.jpg"
death = {
'latitude': float(row[0]),
'longitude': float(row[1]),
'pic': loadImage(imagename),
'xpic': int(row[2]),
'ypic': int(row[3]),
'show': False
}
map.addMarker(death['latitude'], death['longitude'], ProjectMarker(death))
i += 1
map.render()
def draw():
background(255)
map.draw()
# Static text
fill(255, 255, 255)
textSize(18)
text("Seeking Refuge", 20, 30)
fill(255)
textSize(10)
text("The Geography of Mirgrant Deaths Along the US/MX Border", 20, 50)
fill(255)
textSize(10)
text("", 20, 980)
# Drawing the wall
stoneHeight = 100
stoneWidth = 200
numRows = height / stoneHeight
numColumns = width / stoneWidth
# Draw all the stones first
for i in xrange(0, 40):
col = i % numColumns
row = floor(i / numColumns)
x = col * stoneWidth
xoffset= (col * stoneWidth)+100
y = row * stoneHeight
# Reset the map markers
def keyPressed():
global map
for marker in map.markers:
if isinstance(marker, ProjectMarker):
marker.data['show'] = Falseclass ProjectMarker(slippymapper.DataMarker):
def drawMarker(self, latitude, longitude, marker):
diameter = 7
photo = self.data['pic']
ex = self.data['xpic']
why = self.data['ypic']
#offset image row's x value to look like bricks
if ex % 200 == 0:
why += 100
mouseIsClose = dist(latitude, longitude, mouseX, mouseY) <= diameter / 2
if mouseIsClose:
self.data['show'] = True
if self.data['show']:
marker.fill(255)
marker.stroke(0)
marker.ellipse(latitude, longitude, diameter, diameter)
marker.image(photo, why, ex)
marker.stroke(255)
marker.noFill()
marker.rect(why, ex, 200, 100)
else:
marker.noFill()
marker.stroke(255, 255, 255)
marker.ellipse(latitude, longitude, diameter, diameter)
