Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

2-2026

Document Type

Master's Capstone Project

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Program

International Migration Studies

Advisor

David Brotherton

Subject Categories

Community-Based Research | Migration Studies | Place and Environment | Social Justice | Urban Studies | Urban Studies and Planning

Keywords

abolition, resistance, belonging, nation state, welfare, immigration enforcement

Abstract

This study explores the relationship between mutual aid and border regimes through the case of Tompkins Distro, a mutual aid group that organises a weekly food distribution in the East Village of New York City. It focuses specifically on two forms of border internalisation that have shaped the emergence and context of Tompkins Distro: welfare state bordering and interior border enforcement. Drawing on four months of participant observations, interviews with core organisers, and documentary analysis, the study examines how Tompkins Distro meets people’s needs each week through a framework of collective care that actively rejects border logics of deservingness and deterrence. Tompkins Distro’s work is further situated within the incipient community politics unfolding across the United States that are refusing the nation state’s authority to dictate who belongs, who can move, and who can stay. Mutual aid efforts like Tompkins Distro contribute to these politics in providing examples of alternative modes of belonging to place that are hyper-local, grounded in reciprocity, and ultimately disinterested in state produced membership to the imagined national community. I argue that this case illuminates the dual importance of mutual aid to the project of border abolition: not only mitigating the immediate violences of border regimes by organising life-sustaining direct aid, but also offering glimpses of other possible, unbordered worlds and how these are being practiced in the present.

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