My Thesis: What I Studied, Where I Went, and Why It Still Matters

The idea of doing this would have felt utterly bizarre to me just a year ago, but here I am devoting this next series of blogs to * holds breath * my MPhil dissertation.

While I find myself inadvertently ensconced in corporate life—growing increasingly numb to the emotional and tax-induced pain of my newfound, non-student existence—the purpose of this blog remains unchanged: to guide any poor souls who stumble upon it through the labyrinth of issues and themes encountered by an amateur, aspiring (& now-alumni) anthropologist.

As I cling to the fading memory of intellectually richer times, I return to this particular artefact—a project that simultaneously gave me crippling pain and swollen pride in equal measure. It was both a thorn in my side and a source of purpose for many months. But more than that, the process of researching and writing my thesis presented a unique sensation: the feeling that, for the first time, I was actually doing real anthropology. That I might in fact consider myself a genuine anthropologist.

Nonetheless, the process – that of first time anthropologying - was a sour cocktail of emotions. A heady mix of fear, excitement, guilt, and uncertainty, shaken up and served with a bitter twist of disbelief. The fact that I had been unleashed by the powers that be into the seeming no man’s land of solo fieldwork felt less like a rite of passage and more like a cruel joke. At best, it was intimidating, at worst, utterly inappropriate. Yet, as with all the other flavours of imposter syndrome, the only remedy is a down-in-one approach. It’s a case of reminding oneself that regardless of perceived worthiness, cleverness or downright wonderfulness, the reality, the task and the responsibility remain the same hence you might as well get on with it (an unfiltered twist on keep calm and carry on).   

And out on my own I did go, stripped of my stabilisers (training wheels if you’re American) and tossed into the material and socio-political chaos I’d only ever brushed up against in the pages of my reading list.

In short, beverage-metaphor-free terms, these posts are excerpts from my MPhil thesis at the University of Cambridge in medical anthropology. Its title - Tracing the Threads of Health: Unveiling the Material Semiotics of Progression amidst Asylum Seekers’ Migratory Journeys – does little for a reader unfamiliar with the conceptual chaos surrounding material semiotics within anthropology and the social sciences more broadly. As my membership into these esoteric circles is soon to lapse, returning to this scholarship with greater candour and accessibility feels like an interesting and worthwhile exercise.

Beyond indulging in intellectual nostalgia, these blog posts are meant to be a reminder of what is truly at stake when we talk about health in the context of migration. My thesis, situated along the US/Mexico border, unpacks just how complicated the idea of health becomes once we shed our homegrown preconceptions. It makes the case for recognising that ‘health’ means different things to different people—shaped by individual experiences, environments, cultural values, and the social baggage each person carries.

The concept of material semiotics helps us in this regard. It’s all about studying the relationship between things (the material) and their cultural and social meanings (the semiotic). Anthropologist (and my academic icon) Emily Yates-Doerr takes this one step further when writing about the material semiotic indeterminacy of health. Besides sounding ludicrously academic, this framework encourages consideration of health as a fluid, ever-changing concept tied to the material things and socio-cultural influences within our lives. In sum, the relationship between the material and the semiotic is not straightforward (or pre-determined) but rather unpredictable and subject to change.

In oversimplified terms, when I see an apple I think ‘healthy’ (the availability of peanut butter also comes to mind but that’s a separate issue). The apple has become a symbol of health largely due to Western advertising, and public health messaging that underlines the importance of eating plenty (circa five a day) of fruit and vegetables. The apple frequently stars in such imagery, reproducing its connotations of health and goodness. Material semiotics shows us how this link between apples and health is not inherent nor universal, but rather specifically engineered by a variety of contextual factors. Furthermore, in different contexts, for different people the apple may not be the heroine of the health story. That role could be filled by something completely dissimilar that to you may seem bizarre or indeed wrong.

Yates-Doerr (and I) want to push the idea that there is no wrong or right and that health isn’t a static concept. It’s constantly being reshaped by the interplay between material objects and the meanings we attach to them. It is this interplay that I attend to within the lives of asylum seekers as they travel northwards through South and Central America towards the Texas border. I look at how a complex web of meanings and materials encountered throughout these migratory journeys produce a much more complicated picture of health than the one sketched out by public health organisations.

If by some miracle the brief conceptual overview makes sense, the subsequent posts should be easy to understand. Yet in all sincerity, what follows is a series of painful narratives; narratives that will be read by few but least of all their protagonists. These are not fictional tales, rather they echo the voices and experiences of the very real people with whom I conducted my research in the borderlands between the US and Mexico.

Against formidable barriers created by systemic injustice, the asylum seekers I worked with – and those I didn’t - demonstrate remarkable resilience. Yet, despite their courage and perseverance, they are continuously silenced and denied the support, comfort and sanction that many of us take for granted. By way of acknowledgement, I invite the reader to consider the privilege inherent in the act of reading this text rather than being its subject. I often feel deep embarrassment when I consider that my academic project, this dissertation, has been endowed with significantly more resource and support than any if not all of the individuals whose stories are articulated throughout. My position as an anthropologist is – or was – about sticking with the uncomfortability of this acknowledgement and remaining attentive to the lessons it unfurled. May there be kindling for reform within this.

In the contemporary moment, we are witnessing historic political shifts worldwide. Migration and deportation dominate the rhetoric of our so-called leaders, sparking endless debate and sensationalism while providing neither solution nor compassion These issues are consistently exploited by supine politicians in search of public favour, pouring fuel on xenophobic sentiment with their endless pledges to protect our borders and tackle the numbers. What follows – and I really am wrapping up now – is a reminder of the very human realities contained within the numbers, the very human lives and deaths we seem to be so intent on tackling.

Final, final point... I want to express my deep gratitude to the epic team I had the privilege of working with throughout this journey and my kind hosts who made it all possible. Dedication, generosity, and passion such as theirs is the antidote to apathy in a world that pretends not to listen.

Thank you for everything.

Please see link below for more info on Yates-Doerr. https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/directory/emily-yates-doerr