I am currently a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Kentucky. I hold a master’s degree in Societies and Cultures: Europe and America from the University of Poitiers, France in 2013 and a Bachelor’s degree in modern languages from Ecole Normale Superieure, of the State University of Haiti in 2007. My research interests include transnationalism, migration, citizenship, diaspora, the informal economy and the Caribbean. 

Research

I did preliminary research fieldwork in Chicago during summer 2015 with Haitian immigrants examining how they maintain connections with their home country while developing strategies to integrate into the American society. My current doctoral research fieldwork focuses on the Dominicans of Haitian origin, who were stripped of their citizenship by the Dominican government and forced out of the Dominican Republic during summer 2015. These Dominican-Haitians are now displaced in Haiti where they are scattered across different areas in the border region between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  My project explores how these Dominican-Haitians forced to resettle in Haiti, a country that many have never seen before, respond to their exclusion from Dominican citizenry and how they seek to create livelihoods in Haiti. In the course of this research, I conducted 14 months of research fieldwork during 2016-2017 in Anse-à-Pitres, a Haitian border town, where most of the displaced persons took up residence upon their arrival in Haiti. Through this research, I seek to contribute to the process of policy making, migration theories, and the anthropology of citizenship. Furthermore, I am interested in understanding human complexity and the world plagued by disjunctures of identity, ethnicity, classes and gender, and power relations.