From New York to Ecuador and Back Again: Transnational Journeys of Policies and People

In this article, I explore the surprising and unexpected turns that have developed since zero tolerance policing was exported from New York to Ecuador at the turn of the new millennium. Drawing from fifteen years of ethnographic research with young indigenous Ecuadorians, I demonstrate how the impacts of displacement can extend far beyond the local scale. Street work has long been a key survival strategy for the indigenous Kisapincha. Yet, as growing poverty forced rising numbers onto the streets, cities in Ecuador responded by importing punitive neoliberal urban policies to cleanse and sanitize the streets. Deprived of critical income, many Kisapincha turned to transnational migration to seek better opportunities in the United States. Since then, young Kisapincha men and women have endured brutal 9,000-km journeys through South America, Central America, and Mexico to work in garment sweatshops and as day laborers in the United States. This research reveals how existing inequalities are reproduced and exacerbated in the drive to gentrify and modernize cities. I argue that zero tolerance policing in Ecuador pushed many former street vendors to migrate to New York City. These transnational displacements and scalar disruptions have led to profound injustices and intergenerational trauma for the Kisapincha. To untangle the hidden geographies of urban change, I suggest that scholars adopt ethnographic and longitudinal approaches to expose the long-term and unforeseen ramifications of policy mobilities over time and space.