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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the "Canal of Dignity”, a peasant-built irrigation canal on the Haitian–Dominican border, as a site of everyday geopolitics. Drawing on ethnography, it shows how transnational solidarities around small-scale infrastructure rework geopolitical structures of exclusion from below

Paper long abstract

In September 2023, tensions escalated between the Dominican Republic and Haiti over the construction of an irrigation canal on the border river Río Masacre. Initiated by peasants in Haiti’s Wanament region, the small-scale project emerged as a grassroots response to prolonged drought and worsening food insecurity. Confronted with decades of unmet state promises, local agricultural producers mobilized autonomously to secure their livelihoods.

The Dominican government opposed the canal, framing it as a violation of a binational treaty. Its response included border closures, the suspension of residency permits, and the intensification of violent deportations of Haitians. Despite an appeal to the United Nations General Assembly the international community refrained from intervening.

In a critique of this anti-Haitian politics and the international community's indifference, the project was named 'The Canal of Dignity', emphasizing claims to human dignity and self-determination. Resonating with the widespread experience of dehumanisation and political marginalisation, Haitians both in Haiti and in the diaspora came together in a transnational movement to support the project, which was perceived as a “Second Haitian Revolution”. Much to the surprise of international observers, the canal was completed within 10 months.

Drawing on ethnographic research, this paper examines the Canal of Dignity as a site of everyday geopolitics, where infrastructural labor becomes a vehicle for renegotiating sovereignty and exclusion from below. While oriented toward agricultural survival amid overlapping crises, the canal also generated affective solidarities that transcended national borders, challenging entrenched geopolitical hierarchies rooted in Haiti’s revolutionary past and enduring racialized marginalization.