By The Catalyst Editorial Board.
The Catalyst team had the pleasure of interviewing Alanna Sereboff to talk about her upcoming article “Making America Afraid Again: The Criminalization and Securitization of Migration in Post-9/11 America” in the Spring 2019 issue of Chrysalis. Her article looks at the Trump, Obama, and Bush administrations in the United States and their policies regarding immigration and refugees. If you want to know more about her article, you can watch her thesis video.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4o1yKGvvA8&w=560&h=315]Alanna is a second year student from Maryland pursuing a degree in international development studies with a double minor in political science and social entrepreneurship. Interestingly, Alanna filled her application to study at McGill the day after the successful election of Donald Trump. Another important reason Alanna chose this school is because she found that McGill was one of the only institutions that offered a program in international development studies. Since then, Alanna has found interest in refugee and migration studies along with gender studies.
Outside of school, Alanna has been involved in Am McGill, a Jewish organization on campus, and McGill Students for World Vision. Moreover, she has recently been elected as the IDSSA Vice-President of Publications for 2019-2020 and as such will act as the Editor-in-Chief of Chrysalis. In addition, she is very interested in languages despite her limited ability to learn them. That being said, she speaks English, Spanish and Hebrew.
Nevertheless, it is in the context of the migrant caravan approaching the United States that Alanna wrote her piece. When Professor Bradley showed a tweet from Trump to her class, Alanna was immediately inspired to write this article. She wanted to know how much of this was a product of Trump’s administration. Her argument is that it is not, in fact both the Bush and Obama administration adopted similar policies.
After graduating, she is hoping to work on a presidential campaign in the United States in 2020. In addition, Alanna would be interested in joining the Peace Corp. After that, she is considering a legal education or a master’s degree to study immigration.
You can find Alanna’s article here.
